Research Background Problem Statement

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Research Background

Appraisal is the language that is used to take a position in interpersonal communication that is to evaluate, to argue, to present points of view, to react, and to express attitudes Martin Rose, 2003. The resources of appraisal are used for negotiating our social relationships, by telling our listeners or readers how we feel about things and people, whether spoken or written. Ibid Essentially, our appraisal of a situation causes an emotional, or affective, response that is going to be based on that appraisal. An example of this is going on a first date . If the date is perceived as positive, one might feel happiness , joy , giddiness, excitement , andor anticipation , because they have appraised this event as one that could have positive long term effects, i.e. starting a new relationship, engagement , or even marriage . On the other hand, if the date is perceived negatively, then our emotions, as a result, might include dejection , sadness , emptiness , or fear . Scherer et al., 2001 Appraisal is widely used in opinion column texts to show the writer’s opinion about an issue or a figure’s character. Opinion column usually explains the news behind the scene events discussing social, economic and political issuer. Generally, the articles on this column contains comment, criticism, complain, suggestion or problem solving that may argue, attack, and try to influence and persuade the readers to accept the writer’s principles. Mott, 1958 1 commit to user 2 By analyzing appraisals employed in articles or texts, the researcher will know whether the writer supports or challenges an issue. Besides, the researcher will be able to conclude the prosody, genre and ideology of the texts.

B. Problem Statement

The Jakarta Post is one of newspapers that gives people chances to share their opinion toward an issue through texts or articles in opinion column. Generally, the writers of the texts and articles employ appraisal. Below are the examples: 1 Now that the House of Representatives has ruled the 2008 bailout of Bank Century was unjustified.. Text 1 2 Just last year, you were addressed by the hospital’s directors about the importance of doing what was necessary to prevent the crisis from becoming any worse. Text 2 The bold word in the first example, unjustified, is an attitude. It belongs to affect negative. The writer of the first example expresses his negative feeling toward the bailout of Bank Century and states that the bailout was a wrong decision to take. It means that the writer does not agree with the decision of the bailout of Bank Century. The second example also employs attitudes; necessary appreciation, positive and worse appreciation, negative. However, the writer of the second example text 2 supports the bailout of Bank Century. The writer tries to prove the readers by giving them an analogy of becoming a decision maker who is commit to user 3 responsible for preventing crisis from becoming any worse by taking a necessary decision, in this case, the bailout of Bank Century. In other words, the writer of the second text agrees with the bailout of Bank Century. In this thesis, the researcher is interested in analyzing appraisals including attitude, source, and graduation of two texts on opinion column in the Jakarta Post exposing the bailout of Bank Century. That is why this research intends to study A Comparative Analysis of Appraisals of Two Texts on Opinion Column in the Jakarta Post Exposing the Bailout of Bank Century Based on Systemic Functional Linguistics Approach

C. Research Objective