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media usually present news of politics, crime, economics, education, and others. Concerning with the political news, media are considered effective means of spreading the
news, persuading the readers to follow, or against a certain political view, doing political actions, setting political view, doing political actions, setting political agenda. Media, in
this way, have the power to set political agenda towards their readers. Sometimes there are media that radically do so; mostly they do it very carefully and implicitly. Readers may not
able to realize what media have done to them. News genre, as others genre, should be analyzed from three points: social function,
generic structure, and significant lexicogrammatical features. Based on these three points, generally, people will be able to decide whether one text belongs to a certain genre or not.
Each genre has its own specific social functions to serve. This social function has an implication to the generic structure; forn and function are two inseparable face of a coin.
Further, the form, generic structure, is then realized in lexicogrammar. News item has social function to inform readers, listeners, or viewers about events of the day which are
considered newsworthy or important Gerot and Wignel, 1994: 200.
2.6 Appraisals System
As stated above, in written language interpersonal meanings are realized mostly through the use of appraisal system. Appraisal system is a system of interpersonal
meanings. Appraisal is concerned with evaluation: the kinds of attitudes that are negotiated in a text, the strength of the feelings involved and the way in which values are sourced and
readers aligned. Martin and Rose 2003: 22 state that there are three aspects in appraisal. They are attitudes, how attitudes are amplified, and the sources of attitudes. We use the
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resources of appraisal for negotiating our relationship by telling our listeners or readers how we feel about things and people. In other words, the resources of appraisal are used to
tell the readers our attitudes towards things and people. Appraisal explores how attitudes, judgements and emotive responses are explicitly presented in texts and how they may be
more indirectly implied, presupposed or assumed. Attitudes have to do with evaluating things, people’s character and their feelings. In
considering attitudes, we are concerned with the utterances which can be interpreted as indicating that some person, thing, situation, action or state of affairs is to be viewed either
positively or negatively. That is to say, we classify as attitudinal any utterance which either
conveys a negative or positive assessment.
Amplification of attitudes is based on the assessments or evaluations towards things, people’s character and their feelings. Such evaluations or assessments can be more or less
intense, that is they may be more or less amplified. Therefore, attitudes are gradable. Their volume can be turned up and down depending on how intensely we feel.
One thing that we need to consider about attitude is the who they are coming from – the source of attitude. Attitude may be the writer’s own or it may be attributed to some
other source. It means that the writer may express his own feelings, judge people’s character, or appreciate things by using his own words or referring to somebody else’s
words. The above discussion on the appraisal as a system network can be summarized in the figure Martin and Rose: 2003: 25 on the next page.
In the system network, the enclosing bracket on the left means that the enclosed options for appraisal devices are all selected at the same time, since when we express an
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attitude, we also choose how amplified it is, and what its source is. Enclosing bracket in a system network like this means we select an attitude and its amplification and its source.
By contrast the system shown on the right for attitude, for example, gives three alternative options. This means that, at this stage in the outline, we can express either affect or
judgment or appreciation. The system network of appraisal will be further discussed in detail in the following discussions.
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Emotional state Direct
Physical expression Positive
Negative Extraordinary behaviour
Implicit Metaphor
Positive admiring Personal
Negative criticizing Attitudes
Positive praising Moral
Negative condemning Positive
Negative intensifiers
attitudinal lexis metaphors
Force raise
APPRAISAL Amplification
Graduation lower
sharpen Focus
soften monogloss
Source projection
heterogloss modality
concession Appreciation
Judgments Feelings
swearing
Figure 2.2 System Network of Appraisal
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2.7 Appraisal Devices
