presidents. This obtaining meaning purpose corresponds to Berg’s explanation that qualitative researches
“… allow researches to share in their understandings and perceptions of others
and to explore how people structure and give meaning to their daily lives. Researches using qualitative techniques examine how people learn about and
make sense of themselves and others” op.cit: 8-9. As for the nature of its qualitative-ness, this research is descriptive in that it
describes the appraisals in the texts as they are without any further action such as comparing or contrasting; it delimitates itself only as a description of the phenomena
being researched.
3.2. The Data
The data are the clauses containing appraisals in the texts of the inaugural addresses of the Presidents of United States of America. There are 6 inaugural
address texts altogether: one text from Bush Senior, two texts from Clinton, two texts from Bush Junior and one text from Obama.
3.3. The Steps of the Research
3.3.1. Data Source Collection
One of the first steps taken in this research is the collecting of the data source,
which is the transcript of the inaugural addresses. The primary source of the inaugural address transcripts is an internet site, bartleby.com, which provides the transcripts of
the inaugural addresses of all of the presidents of America. Each of the inaugural
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address texts is titled according to the names of the presidents delivering it: i.e. “the Inaugural Address of George Herbert Walker Bush, the First Inaugural Address of
William Jefferson Clinton, the Second Inaugural Address of William Jefferson Clinton, the First Inaugural Address of George Walker Bush, the Second Inaugural
Address of George Walker Bush, and the Inaugural Address of Barrack Hussein Obama”.
The writer also finds other websites which provide presidential inaugural speeches, such as presidency.ucsb.edu, and by comparing the content of the texts, the
writer can verify that the texts displayed are indeed the correct text of the American president inaugural addresses. To be able to see the actual situation of the
Inauguration, the writer downloaded three inauguration videos from the internet that of Bush Senior’s, Bush Junior’s first, and Clinton’s first inauguration; this actually
implies that the videos function only as additional information in this research, not as primary as the inaugural address texts.
The text files that had been obtained from the internet were then converted from.hml type into .doc type in order to make them readable to the word processing
software [i.e. Microsoft’s Words]. The texts are examined closely to mark appraisal elements in the texts. Then the results are interpreted to construe their meanings in the
framework of Appraisal Theory.
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3.3.2. Data Analysis
