Selnistia Hidayani, 2201504015 (2006) APPRAISALS USED IN THE DIALOGUES OF OSCAR WILDE’S DRAMA “THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST. Masters thesis, Universitas Negeri Semarang.

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Abstract

Appraisal is a system of interpersonal meaning (Martin and Rose, 2003). People use appraisal to negotiate their experiences, feelings, and thoughts in a social relationship with others. It is concerned with the linguistic recourses by which texts come to express, negotiate, and naturalize their inter-subjective and ideological positions. It has five devices: Affection, Judgment, Appreciation, Amplification, and Source of Attitudes. Drama that is performed by its characters draws human being’s interaction through its dialogues and settings. The characters may use one or more of those appraisal devices. Therefore, the dialogues of the drama can be the media to know the intentional use of language throughout the characters’ negotiating attitudes. This thesis was intended to analyze what appraisal devices are employed in the dialogues of Oscar Wilde’s Drama “The Importance of Being Earnest” and to find out the power of the drama and of the author based on the appraisal devices used in the dialogues. My research design was a qualitative one with Eggins and Slade’s (1997: 138-140) data analysis model: identifying, classifying, summarizing, and interpreting. The data are the dialogues that were broken down into some clauses. Then I identified the clauses whether they employed appraisal devices or not. While collecting the data, I encoded the speaker and the clauses by numbering them. After that, I identified and classified the encoding data in accordance with the appraisal devices: affection, judgment, appreciation, amplification, and source of attitudes. I calculated the classified data into a summarization table. It contains total number of clauses and total number of appraisal devices per character. Last, I interpreted the classified data and the table in order to discover the ideology or the relation between the characters in the drama. After applying Eggins and Slade’s model, I found 1.187 total appraisal devices and 1.659 total clauses. The largest numbers of appraisal devices are amplification (489 words) and appreciation (336 words). The characters use 196 words of judgment and 53 words of source of attitudes. These show that generally the characters are more concerned with evaluating things than with evaluating human behavior. Algernon, Jack, and Lady Bracknell have the largest number of appraising words; therefore they tend to be the most expressive speakers of all. Through the characters’ dialogues, Oscar Wilde tries to explore the Victorian custom and society of that time. Hopefully, the readers can understand and know how to interact interpersonally to their environments. This thesis is very important for students, teachers, language practitioners, and curriculum developers who want to enrich their appraising vocabulary. They also can use the vocabulary as tools to help their work.

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