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CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHOD
This chapter gives the discussion of several points concerning with the research method used in this thesis. The first point is the method of investigation. The method of
investigation used in this thesis is qualitative in nature because it is intended to analyse the news articles for the appraisal system as described in Chapter II. The next points deal with
data collection, unit of analysis, and the procedure of data analysis. Since this study is qualitative in nature, it is necessary to present the sample analysis of the short story to give
a description and clear picture of data analysis of the attitudes that will be exhaustedly dealt
with in Chapter IV.
3.1 Research Design
This study is qualitative and descriptive in nature. The qualitative method of investigation is used in this study to unfold the news articles under study which are taken
from Aljazeera. In this thesis the writer will use the descriptive method as a guidance for conducting the research. It is based on the reason that the following steps like gathering,
composing, analyzing and interpreting the data are included in the descriptive method. It is also descriptive in nature in the sense that this study is intended to describe the realization
of interpersonal meanings in the news articles based on the appraisal system offered by Martin and Rose 2003.
This qualitative-descriptive method of investigation is accomplished through two stages. Firstly, the text is closely read to get the comprehensive understanding . Secondly, the text
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is then broken up into clauses or chunks manageable for analysis following the model offered by White 2001, and then each of the clauses or chunks are analysed for appraisal
devices using the framework of appraisal system offered by Martin and Rose 2003. By so doing the text is firstly approached from general point of view in that the text is treated as a
whole, and then it is approached from more specific one – clause by clause, and finally to smallest units – words of appraisal devices that are used to realize interpersonal meanings
in the written text.
3.2 Object of the Research
As stated in the previous section, the research is intended to investigate the attitudes used in the news articles. It is about how attitudes and feelings are realized through the
linguistic resources under the system of appraisal. The news articles under the research were obtained from Al Jazeera in period of two weeks, March,12 – April, 1, 2008. The
articles chosen were the ones that presented the topic “ Iraq War ”. There are six 6 articles related to “ Iraq War ”. The articles are presented in the table 3.1:
Table 3.1 Analyzed Articles
Article No. Title
Date of Publication
1. Death toll in Iraq clashes
March 12, 2008 2.
Iraq between fear and hope March 17, 2008
3. Bush says Iraq surge is ‘working’
March 19, 2008 4.
Iraq war enters six years March 19, 2008
5. Many killed in fresh Iraq fighting
March 26, 2008 6.
Calm returns to Iraqi cities April 1, 2008
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3.3 Data Collection