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An APPRAISAL Comparison of Imagined Communities in Letters to Two South African Newspapers

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An APPRAISAL Comparison of Imagined Communities in Letters to Two South African Newspapers For the People: An APPRAISAL Comparison of Imagined Communities in Letters to Two South African Newspapers A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts of Rhodes University by Jade Smith November 2012 i ABSTRACT This thesis reports on the bonds that unify imagined communities (Anderson 1983) that are created in 40 letters prominently displayed on the opinions pages of the Daily Sun, a popular tabloid, and The Times, a daily offshoot of the mainstream national Sunday Times. An APPRAISAL analysis of these letters reveals how the imagined communities attempt to align their audiences around distinctive couplings of interpersonal and ideational meaning. Such couplings represent the bonds around which community identities are co-constructed through affiliation and are evidence of the shared feelings that unite the communities of readership. Inferences drawn from this APPRAISAL information allow for a comparison of the natures of the two communities in terms of how they view their agency and group cohesion. Central to the analysis and interpretation of the data is the letters’ evaluative prosody, traced in order to determine the polarity of readers’ stances over four weeks. Asymmetrical prosodies are construed as pointing to the validity of ‘linguistic ventriloquism’, a term whose definition is refined and used as a diagnostic for whether the newspapers use their readers’ letters to promote their own stances on controversial matters. Principal findings show that both communities affiliate around the value of education, and dissatisfaction with the country’s political leaders, however The Times’ readers are more individualistic than the Daily Sun’s community members, who are concerned with the wellbeing of the group. The analysis highlights limitations to the application of the APPRAISAL framework, the value of subjectivity in the analytical process, and adds a new dimension to South African media studies, as it provides linguistic insights into the construction of imagined communities of newspaper readership. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to Priscilla Boshoff of the Rhodes University School of Journalism and Media Studies for allowing me access to her Daily Sun collection to complete my data set. I am also most grateful to the delegates of the 39th International Systemic Functional Congress (ISFC39), who introduced me to the concepts of coupling, bonds, and affiliation. Though I have only explored the basics, these ideas have become integral parts of this thesis. Thank you to Associate Professor Susan Hood and her organising committee for their help in getting me to Sydney for the conference. Thanks to my parents for their support, and for never hanging up the phone at 11pm when I had to know if a sentence ‘sounded right’. I am sure that they could hold their own in a conversation about APPRAISAL by now. The humour, guidance, and encouragement of my supervisor, Professor Ralph Adendorff, have ensured that this research process has been enjoyable and fruitful. Without his never- tiring willingness to discuss everything from meaning potential to document formatting, this thesis would not have taken flight. I appreciate the opportunity to teach the APPRAISAL system to the third-year linguistics class; nothing makes one question the fundamentals like lecturing, and this has made my thesis richer. Thank you. The financial assistance of the National Research Foundation (NRF) towards this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at, are those of the author and are not necessarily to be attributed to the NRF. Other than where I have indicated otherwise, the work contained in this thesis is my own. Jade Smith iii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION PAGE 1.1 Background to the Research 2 1.2 Research Questions 4 1.3. Context of the Research 6 1.3.1 The Daily Sun: Forward with the People! 7 1.3.1.1 The tabloid genre worldwide 7 1.3.1.2 The tabloid in South Africa 8 1.3.1.3 The Daily Sun’s readership 11 1.3.1.4 Attitudes towards tabloids 13 1.3.1.4.1 Negative responses 13 1.3.1.4.2 Positive responses 14 1.3.2 The Times: The Paper for the People 16 1.3.2.1 The Times’ readership 16 1.3.3 The letters page 18 1.4 Research Methods: An Overview 21 1.5 Structure of the Thesis 22 1.5.1 Chapter overview 22 1.5.2 Conventions used in the thesis 24 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Introduction 27 2.2 APPRAISAL 28 2.2.1 Situating APPRAISAL in Systemic Functional Linguistics 28 2.2.2 The APPRAISAL framework 30 2.2.2.1 Attitude 30 2.2.2.2 Graduation 36 2.2.2.3 Engagement 40 2.2.2.3.1 Dialogism 40 2.2.2.3.2 Expansion 44 2.2.2.3.3 Co ntraction 47 2.2.3 Inscribed and invoked meaning 51 2.2.4 Evaluative prosody 54 2.3 Affiliation through Bonds: The Coupling of the Interpersonal and Ideational 59 2.4 Identity, Affiliation, and the Imagined Community 61 2.5 Linguistic Ventriloquism 63 2.6 Conclusion 64 iv CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODS 3.1 Introduction 66 3.2 Data Collection 66 3.2.1 Selection of the newspapers 66 3.2.2 Selection of the letters 67 3.2.3 The validity of the data 69 3.3 Coding the Data 70 3.3.1 The Attitude table 70 3.3.2 The Graduation table 72 3.3.3 The Engagement table 74 3.3.4 The role of analyst intuition in the coding process 76 3.4 Analysis of the Data 78 3.4.1 Identifying the imagined communities’ bonds 78 3.4.2 The Evaluation Index 80 3.4.3 Tracing evaluative prosody in the data 81 3.5 Conclusion 84 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 4.1 Introduction 86 4.2 Daily Sun 86 4.2.1 The Daily Sun reader 86 4.2.1.1 Bond 1: Youth 87 4.2.1.2 Bond 2: Education 90 4.2.1.3 Bond 3: Government and political leaders 92 4.2.2 Conclusion: Daily Sun 96 4.3 The Times 96 4.3.1 The Times reader 96 4.3.1.1 Bond 1: The African National Congress (ANC) 97 4.3.1.2 Bond 2: Education 100 4.3.1.3 Bond 3: President Jacob Zuma 103 4.3.2 Conclusion: The Times 104 4.4 The Newspapers’ Imagined Communities: A Comparison 105 4.5 The Role of Evaluative Prosody in Detecting Linguistic Ventriloquism 108 4.5.1 Introduction 108 4.5.2 Daily Sun 108 4.5.2.1 Bond 1: Youth 108 4.5.2.2 Bond 2: Education 109 4.5.2.3 Bond 3: Government and political leaders 111 4.5.3 The Times 112 4.5.3.1 Bond 1: The African National Congress (ANC) 112 4.5.3.2 Bond 2: Education 113 v 4.5.3.3 Bond 3: President Jacob Zuma 114 4.5.4 Conclusion 114 4.6 The APPRAISAL Framework: Analytical Issues 115 4.6.1 Introduction 115 4.6.2 Invoking Engagement 115 4.6.3 The rhetorical effect of Acknowledgement 117 4.6.4 Towards a deeper understanding of the Engagement system 118 4.6.5 Conclusion 120 4.7 Conclusion 121 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS 5.1 Introduction 123 5.2 Summary of Main Findings 123 5.2.1 Research Question 1: Bonds that unify the imagined communities 124 5.2.2 Research Question 2: Alignment of the reader 127 5.2.3 Research Question 3: The nature of the imagined communities 128 5.2.4 Research Question 4: Linguistic ventriloquism 129 5.2.5 Research Question 5: The APPRAISAL framework 131 5.3 Relevance of the Research to South African Media 132 5.4 Relevance of the Research to Systemic Functional Linguistics 133 5.5 Limitations of the Research and Suggestions for Future Research 134 5.5.1 Validating mediated data 134 5.5.2 Assigning values to APPRAISAL strategies 135 5.5.3 Analyst subjectivity 135 5.5.4 The Engagement system 136 5.5.5 Linguistic ventriloquism 136 5.5.6 Daily Sun TV 136 5.6 Conclusion 137 LIST OF REFERENCES 138 vi LIST OF FIGURES PAGE CHAPTER 1 Figure 1.1 Daily Sun: a cover 9 Figure 1.2 The Times: a cover 17 CHAPTER 2 Figure 2.1 Intersection of metafunctions and strata of realisation 29 Figure 2.2 The APPRAISAL system: Attitude 31 Figure 2.3 The APPRAISAL system: Graduation 37 Figure 2.4 The APPRAISAL system: Engagement 45 CHAPTER 3 Figure 3.1 Most prominently displayed letter in the Daily Sun, 13 January 2012 68 Figure 3.2 Most prominently displayed letter in The Times, 9 January 2012 69 Figure 3.3 A sample of the Attitude coding table 71 Figure 3.4 Coding of multiple instantiations of Attitude in one noun phrase 72 Figure 3.5 A sample of the Graduation coding table 73 Figure 3.6 Coding of multiple instantiations of Graduation in one clause complex 73 Figure 3.7 A sample of the Engagement coding table 75 Figure 3.8 Coding of multiple instantiations of Engagement in one clause complex 76 CHAPTER 4 Figure 4.1 Graphical representation of Evaluation Index scores for youth and related words in the Daily Sun 109 Figure 4.2 Graphical representation of Evaluation Index scores for education and related words in the Daily Sun 110 Figure 4.3 Graphical representation of Evaluation Index scores for government and related words in the Daily Sun 111 Figure 4.4 Graphical representation of Evaluation Index scores for ANC and related words in The Times 112 Figure 4.5 Graphical representation of Evaluation Index scores for education and related words in The Times 113 Figure 4.6 Graphical representation of Evaluation Index scores for Zuma and related words in The Times 114 Figure 4.7 Schematic representation of the dialogic continuum 120 vii LIST OF TABLES PAGE (not including appendices) CHAPTER 1 Table 1.1 Division of the Daily Sun’s readers into LSMs 12 Table 1.2 Division of The Times’ readers into LSMs 18 Table 1.3 Division of The Times’ readers into population groups 18 CHAPTER 3 Table 3.1 Evaluation Index scores for the Daily Sun letters 82 Table 3.2 Evaluation Index scores for The Times letters 83 CHAPTER 4 Table 4.1 Evaluation Index scores for young and related words in the Daily Sun 87 Table 4.2 Evaluation Index scores for education
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