Date of Award

2012

Degree Name

English

College

College of Liberal Arts

Type of Degree

M.A.

Document Type

Thesis

First Advisor

Hyo-Chang Hong

Second Advisor

Jun Zhao

Third Advisor

Kazuhiro Teruya

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate the distinct and purposeful differences of the language of evaluation between English textbooks and Japanese textbooks. This thesis applies Appraisal system in Systemic Functional Linguistics to the language arts textbooks used in 2nd to 4th grade classrooms in Japan and in the U.S. The analysis shows that the number of Attitudinal lexical items, especially invoked Attitude, is notably higher than that in the English texts. The analysis also shows that the Japanese texts employ Judgment lexis, which is a resource to form a sense of group harmony, more than the other Attitudinal lexis. On the other hand, although the overall frequency of Attitudinal lexis is not high, the English texts employ Affect and Appreciation lexical items more frequently than Judgment lexical items. The analysis on the deployment of Attitudinal lexis in the texts illustrates that the Japanese texts favor inscribed Judgment items to tell readers the protagonists’ characteristic in the initial stage of the story, whereas the English texts deploy the protagonists’ emotional states first. This thesis argues that the language of evaluation used in the texts is responsible for instructing readers, that is elementary school students, on how to interpret interpersonal meanings as well as ideational meanings. Furthermore, the purposeful differences analyzed in this thesis reveal how knowledge is selected in the curriculum guidelines, and presented in culture-specific ways.

Subject(s)

Linguistics - Textbooks.

Linguistics - Japan.

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