to analyze the power of the drama. By applying appraisals, we can feel and understand well what the author may intend beyond the story he made.
The drama I chosen, The Importance of Being Earnest is one of the
greatest comedies so that it was possibly influenced by people’s customs living at that time. It may contain negotiating attitudes.
1.2 Reasons for Choosing the Topic
There are many researches in discourse field, especially in appraisal systems. Why are many people interested in analyzing appraisals? The answer is because
this field talks a lot about the nature of the participants. Appraisal as a discourse system has an important role to interpret people’s attitudes towards their society.
It concerns on evaluating and negotiating attitudes. It relates to the power of a text and makes the text meaningful. Consequently, we can feel and understand
the ideas of the text, including a drama. So, it is very important for us to use appraisal while reading and speaking a text.
In this thesis, I took drama as a media to know the power of the drama itself and the power of its author. Why I took drama? The reason is that the drama
is one of literary texts performing real life. It consists of dialogues being supported by context of culture so that it becomes meaningful. It draws human
beings’ interaction. Therefore, drama as part of our life cannot be separated from its situation and culture. The societal system indirectly will influence what kind
of drama is being produced. Serayawati 2000: 1 asserts that a good dialogue isn’t only such a transcript of sentences, but it is a language that reveals
characters so that it has a context describing times, places, and themes. Grolier in his Academic Encyclopedia 1983: 257 defines that drama refers to actions or
deeds meaning “to act” or “to do” as they are performed in a thearetical setting.
I use Oscar Wilde’s drama, The Importance of Being Earnest. It is one of the English stage’s finest comedies written in 1895. I am interested to analyze it
since comedy is rooted more in the events of our daily lives, such as the way we live together in communities. David L Sill International Encyclopedia of the
Social Science vol. 3, 1968: 210 asserts that in comedies of manners, the action is based on the observation of the ways of life of the characters in the play.
Comedy deals with the lighter side of life. Comedy is also usually used as a medium to criticize social phenomena.
For instance, drama that was written in 1960 must be different from the one written in 2000. It is produced in order to draw people’s powers at that time. We
can know and understand the power of a drama from the characters’ dialogues. Hopefully, we could use these findings to communicate interpersonally to others
in real-life situation. We also could understand the characteristics of people through their ways of speaking. Therefore, this study is very important for
researchers, teachers, or students to understand the power of the drama through the appraisal devices used.
1.3 Statement of the problem
