评论理论视角下国际商务谈判的人际意义探讨

d on Appraisal Theory has been applied in various fields. However, the analysis of business negotiation, especially in conversations of business negotiation is relatively  few.  Based  on  the  framework  of  Appraisal  Theory,  this  thesis  aims  to explore  how  interpersonal  meaning  is  realized  in  conversations  of  business negotiation.  To  be  more  specific,  this  thesis  will  study  and  analysis  some conversations extracted from business negotiation in detail. By analyzing the features of the way people choosing appraisal resources, interpersonal meaning will be easily understood. The study can help negotiators achieve successful international business negotiation. 

Chapter 2   Literature Review

2.1   Definition of Interpersonal Meaning

The  person  who  first  proposed  the  concept  of  interpersonal  meaning  is Bakhtin in 1929. According to Bakhtin (1984), meaning does not reside in the word or in  the  soul  of  the  speaker  or  in  the  soul  of  the  listener.  Meaning  is  the  effect  of interaction  between  speaker  and  listener  produced  via  the  material  of  a  particular sound complex (p. 103). It can be seen that Bakhtin pointed out the importance of the interactive aspect in meaning construction. 

  From Halliday’s (1978) perspective, he views language system as a “meaning potential”  (p.  112).  To  be  more  specific,  interpersonal  function  is  regarded  as  an interdictor  of  the  speaker’s  meaning  potential.  By  using  this  function,  speaker  can express  his/her  attitudes  and  judgments,  and  try  to  influence  other  people’s  attitudes or behaviors. 

Thompson (2000) holds that interpersonal meaning is the one that language is used  to  interact  with  other  people,  to  establish  and  maintain  relations  with  them,  to influence their attitude or behavior, to express their viewpoints (p. 28).

2.2   Notions of Appraisal and Evaluation

Appraisal is a label within SFL which is used for collecting semantic resources. These  resources  are  used  for  evaluating  people,  behaviors  and  things  (Attitude),  for adjusting  our  stance  to  what  we  evaluate  (Engagement),  and  for  up-grading  or lowering the degree of appraised things (Graduation). Thompson and Hunston (2000) view  evaluation  as  a  broad  term  employed  by  language  users  to  express  attitude  or stance towards, viewpoint on, or feelings about the entities or propositions that he or she  is  talking  about  (p.  5).  To  compare  Appraisal  and  Evaluation,  both  of  Appraisal and  Evaluation  are  concerned  with  the  relationship  between  language  and  speech. However, Appraisal focuses more on discourse analysis and Evaluation is a concrete notion  for  the  encoding  of  interpersonal meanings.  To  sum  up,  Appraisal provides a framework for analyzing evaluation in discourse. 

Chapter 3   Theoretical Framework and Methodology..................13

3.1   Development of Appraisal Theory...............................