St. Theresa Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

An Appraisal and Corpus-informed study of Media attitudes towards the Government leader found in Bangkok Post during the 2013 - 2014 Political unrest in

Wimonwan Aungsuwan Ph.D. Student in English Language Studies, Department of English, Thammasat University, Thailand Email: [email protected]

Abstract

The previous studies have been concerned with political conflicts in Thailand in many aspects such as cohesion and lexical analyses and the comparison between various news agencies (Chana, 2011, and Chantrasupawong, 2011), and media attitudes towards found in The Nation (Aungsuwan, 2017). However, little attention has been paid to attitudes towards Yingluck Shinawatra found in Bangkok Post. Thus, this corpus-informed study aims to identify typical collocations of the appraising items in each judgement type with an attempt to uncover positive and negative attitudes towards Yinglucks Shinawatra found in Bangkok Post. The corpus data in this study were compiled from English daily online newspaper: Bangkok Post, focusing on political conflicts in Thailand between Shinawatra’s government and the anti-government members which took place between 31 October 2013 and 22 May 2014. Typical lexical items used to express each judgement type based on the Appraisal Theory (normality, abnormality, capacity, incapacity, tenacity, untenacity, veracity, inveracity, propriety, and impropriety), as well as their collocations generated by Antconc corpus analysis software, were identified and analyzed to uncover the media attitudes. The results revealed that Bangkok Post contained more various judgement types than those found in The Nation such as normality, capacity, incapacity, tenacity, untenacity, veracity, inveracity, propriety, and impropriety. Implications of the study in relation to journalism, news readers, and future research are also discussed.

Keywords: appraisal; corpus linguistics; judgement; political unrest in Thailand; Bangkok Post; Yingluck Shinawatra

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1. Introduction, Rationale for the Study, and Research Questions

The study of media attitudes towards issues or news subjects being reported can be considered as part of research in media discourse, which is known to be a study of interactions that take place through a broadcast platform (O’Keeffe, 2011). While earlier studies on media discourse put an emphasis on linguistic analysis, recent studies have shifted to an examination of attitudes and evaluation in media texts which can be manifested in various forms using various tools. One of the recent approaches used for scrutinizing evaluation in texts is the Appraisal Theory which largely looks into the attitudinal positioning in many aspects: combination of frequency comparison of appraisal types and meaning of appraisal types (Birot, 2008), frequency comparison of appraisal types (Dongmei & Xuehua, 2013; Wahl-Jorgensen, 2012), and meaning of Appraisal types (Ben-Aaron, 2005; Hardy, 2011; Hood, 2004; Tilakaratna & Mahboob 2012). In this study, the Appraisal framework, particularly the sub-system of “judgement”, is adopted as the main analytical framework because it accommodates different types of judgements or attitudes, each type being clearly classified into positive and negative stances. Moreover, the framework is strongly associated with lexical choices that manifest or represent each judgement type, which fits well with the analysis of journalistic texts in which lexical selection forms an important basis of news reports.

Appraisal-based studies have recently been influenced by a more data-driven approach to linguistic research, particularly research in Corpus Linguistics, or the use of naturally-occurring texts known as a corpus (or language corpora) for an examination of typicality and centrality of lexical behavior and phraseology such as collocation and language patterning with the help of various tools equipped in corpus analysis software (Baker, 2006, 2011; Bowker & Pearson, 2002; McEnery, Xiao, & Tono, 2006; Hunston, 2002). Following a wide range of research that utilizes language corpora to investigate appraisals and stances of writers/speakers (Cabrejas- Penuelas and Diez-Prados, 2014; Carretero and Taboada 2014; Coffin and O’Halloran, 2010; and Lawson, 2014), the present study also draws data from a corpus of authentic media texts and adopts corpus research tools and techniques to identify and analyze instances of appraisal types. It also conforms to the previous work that focuses on the meaning of appraisal types cited by (Coffin & O’Halloran, 2010). However, unlike some studies that base their analysis on a very small corpus data, this research has attempted to make use of a fairly large size of corpus in order to decrease researchers’ certain cognitive and possibly ideological bias, linguistic Vol.3 No.2 July-December 2017 37

St. Theresa Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences intuitions and chancy. In terms of corpus tools, this work uses more tools than described in the previous work including wordlist, keyword list and concordance for key politician selection and data analysis.

As far as the research context is concerned, the political unrest under examination refers to a political conflict between the government and the anti- government supporters from 31 October 2013 to 22 May 2014. The anti-government demonstrations were organized by the People’s Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC) led by former Democrat Party MP Suthep Thaugsuban. According to Chaubey (2014), one of the most important triggers of the protest was a proposed blanket amnesty bill that would have pardoned several politicians from various charges since 2004, including , Suthep Thaugsuban and . Despite the amnesty bill being withdrawn on November 2013, protests in Bangkok continued. Thaugsuban and eight other Democrat members of parliament resigned from their positions to lead the demonstrations, calling for the general populace to strike and undertake civil disobedience. The protests gradually shifted towards an anti-government agenda, criticizing Shinawatra and her government for being proxies for Thaksin Shinawatra and being an elective dictatorship. On December 2013, in response to opposition pressure, PM Yingluck Shinawatra dissolved parliament and announced that early elections would be held in February 2014 but rejects calls for her to step down in the meantime. On May 22 2014, the Royal Thai Armed Forces, led by General Prayut Chan-o-cha, Commander of the Royal Thai Army (RTA), launched a coup d'état which was the end of the political conflicts which ended Shinawatra’s status and the street protest led by Thaugsuban (BBC, 7 May 2014, 22 May 2014, 23 January 2015, 19 August 2015).

While there are studies, that examine media coverage of political conflicts in Thailand, most of which looking into cohesion and lexical analyses and the comparison between various news agencies (Chana, 2011, and Chantrasupawong, 2011). In addition, the previous work has been concerned with media attitudes towards Yingluck Chinawatra found in The Nation (Aungsuwan, 2017). However, little attention has been paid to attitudes towards Yingluck Shinawatra found in Bangkok Post. As a result, this study aimed at investigating media attitudes towards the government leader, Yingluck Shinawatra using a detailed appraisal framework based on a large corpus of news reports. It specifically attempts to provide a qualitative and objective analysis to find out the local English-language newspaper

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St. Theresa Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences appraise the government leader. The research goals could then be described in terms of specific research questions as follows:

1. What are the key appraising items identified in each judgement type? 2. What are the typical collocations of those key appraising items? 3. How do the appraising items and their collocations express positive and negative attitudes of the media on the government leader under investigation?

2. Literature review

Appraisal is developed and heavily influenced by a broader, widely- researched area of Systemic Functional Linguistics or SFL (Halliday, 1978, 2004; Halliday & Hasan, 1989). While SFL focuses more the three kinds of function, or metafunction simultaneously: ideational metafunction, interpersonal metafunction, and textual metafunction (Halliday et al., 1989), the Appraisal Theory puts more emphasis on different types of judgements and the lexico-grammatical resources employed in expressing opinions or attitudes towards a person or an entity. The framework offers a comprehensive means of exploring judgements made by speakers or writers on people generally, other writers/speakers and their utterances, material objects, happenings and states of affairs. It also explores how attitudes, judgements and emotive responses are explicitly presented in texts and how they may be more indirectly implied, presupposed or assumed (Bednarek, 2006; Hunston, 2011; Macken-Horarik, 2014; Martin and Rose, 2007, and White, 2012). The appraisal contains two main types or positioning including attitudinal positioning, and dialogistic positioning. Attitudinal positioning can be divided into three main types including affect, judgement, and appreciation. In addition, dialogistic positioning is concerned with dialogistic contraction, and dialogistic expansion. As mentioned earlier, this work is concerned with media attitudes towards two opposing politicians; therefore, the concept of judgement was employed in this study. Martin (2003) and White (2012) explain that judgement is normative assessments or evaluation matrix for human behavior typically making reference to rules or conventions of behavior. It focuses on a view to control what people do. According to White (2012), judgement involves language which criticizes or praises, condemns or applauds the behavior, actions, deeds, sayings, beliefs, and motivations of human individuals and groups. Besides, it involves in assessments by reference to systems of legality/illegality, morality/immorality or politeness/impoliteness. (See detail of judgement types below.)

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Table 1: Judgement types and typical lexical items (based on Martin and Rose, 2007, and White, 2012) Judgement Descriptions Typical lexical items types Normality How unusual of the lucky, fortunate, charmed, normal, natural, appraised in positive aspects familiar, cool, stable, predictable, fashionable, celebrated, unsung. Abnormality How unusual of the unlucky, hapless, star-crossed, odd, peculiar, appraised in negative eccentric, erratic, unpredictable, dated, aspects retrograde, obscure, also-ran. Capacity The appraised’s ability powerful, vigorous, robust, sound, healthy, fit, adult, mature, experienced, witty, humorous, droll, insightful, clever, gifted, balanced, together, sane, sensible, expert, shrewd, literate, educated, learned, competent, accomplished, successful, productive. Incapacity The appraised’s disability mild, weak, whimpy, unsound, sick, crippled, immature, childish, helpless, grave, slow, stupid, thick, flaky, neurotic, insane, naive, inexpert, foolish, illiterate, uneducated, ignorant, incompetent, unaccomplished, unsuccessful, unproductive. Tenacity The appraised’s bravery, plucky, brave, heroic, cautious, wary, patient, thoughtfulness, patience, careful, thorough, meticulous tireless, flexibility, and persevering, resolute, reliable, dependable, dependability constant, flexible, adaptable, accommodating. Untenacity The appraised’s timid, cowardly, gutless, rash, impatient, cowardness, impetuous, hasty, capricious, reckless, weak, thoughtlessness, impatience, distracted, despondent, unreliable, and over confidence undependable, inconstant, stubborn, obstinate, willful. Veracity The appraised’s honesty, truthful, honest, credible, frank, candid, and good manner of direct, discrete, tactful. speaking Inveracity The appraised’s dishonest, deceitful, lying, deceptive, dishonesty, and bad manipulative, devious, blunt, blabbermouth. manner of speaking Propriety The appraised’s good good, moral, ethical, law abiding, fair, manner, and morality sensitive, kind, caring, unassuming, modest, humble, polite, respectful, reverent, altruistic, generous, charitable. Impropriety The appraised’s bad bad, immoral, evil, corrupt, unfair, unjust, manner, and immorality insensitive, mean, cruel, vain, snobby, arrogant, rude, discourteous, irreverent, selfish, greedy, avaricious.

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3. Research methodology 3.1 The corpus and corpus analysis software

The corpus for the study consists of news reports on the two opposing politicians, Yingluck Shinawatra and Suthep Thaugsuban collected from the online version of “Bangkok Post” which is the oldest and highest-circulated English- language newspaper published in Thailand. Online data were preferred to printed texts because of consumers’ habit and the research methodological benefits. Sriwimon & Jimarkon (2014) explain that online news appears to reach a wider audience, and readers are keener online than in any other media. The corpus was made up of 1,861 texts with the total corpus size of 797,716 words, covering reports on the political figure between 31 October 2013, which marked the beginning of the conflicts or the time when to street protests broke out, and 22 May 2014, when a Coup d’état ousted Yinglunk Shinawatra and effectively brought the anti-government demonstration to an end. The selected texts were saved as plain texts and organized by media source in folders for further analysis.

The corpus analysis software used for data analysis was “Antconc” (Version 3.2.1) (See more details of the software http://www.laurenceanthony.net/software/antconc/). The software features basic corpus processing tools such as extraction of terms based on the frequencies (Word List), extraction of key terms that are statistically attested to be frequent words or phrases in a given corpus computed against a larger reference corpus (Keyness), and extraction of words/phrases with left and right contexts to the search terms (Concordances). In this study, the “Keyness” function was used to justify the selection of the term “Yinglunk” as denoting the main politicians central to the political conflicts, that is, when the corpus built for the study was compared to a more general corpus (the British National Corpus or the BNC), Yingluck stood out as having high keyness values in comparison with the other politicians reported about in those news reports. The “Concordance” function was the main instrument for the study as it helped identify and generate extracts that contain the main search term which is “Yingluck” and other terms such as “Prime Minister” or “PM” which is to be described in more details in the next section.

4. The analytical framework, data analysis, and data validation

The judgement types that formed the basis for the data analysis were adapted from the judgement types and lexical items listed in Table 1 (based on Martin and Vol.3 No.2 July-December 2017 41

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Rose, 2007, and White, 2012). The judgement labels, lexical items served as clues, and its system (e.g. the types are presented in polarized pairs of positive and negative items) are identical to those proposed in the main Appraisal Theory, but definitions and scopes of the judgement types were adapted and expanded to be in alignment with the context of political conflicts. The following table presents the judgement types, adapted definitions, and samples from the corpus. The underlined parts were the contextualized extension or adaption of definitions of judgement types.

Table 2: Judgement types, adapted definitions, and sample corpus data to be used as the analytical framework for the study Judgement Descriptions Sample corpus data types Normality How unusual of the appraised The former prime minister was popular with in positive aspects. In this people in the two provinces wanting to take context, the group includes pictures with her. words describing a politician’s popularity and acceptance. Abnormality How unusual of the appraised Not found in corpus data. in negative aspects. In this context it includes lexical items that show extreme characters of the politicians under research. Capacity Capacity focuses on the Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and appraised’s ability. In this Interior Minister Charupong Ruangsuwan context, words belonging to easily survived a no confidence vote in this group denote or connote a parliament on Thursday morning. politician’s and capability to achieve his or her political goal or the ability to fight off political opposition. Incapacity Incapacity is concerned with In such an event caretaker Prime Minister the appraised’s limitation. In Yingluck Shinawatra and the 35 members of this context, it contains words her current cabinet would not be able to take that denote or connote a any political posts, even if they are returned to politician’s incapability to parliament in the Feb 2 general election. achieve his or her political goal or the disability to fight off political opposition. Tenacity The appraised’s bravery, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra is thoughtfulness, patience, undeterred by whistle-blowing, saying people flexibility, and dependability. have the right to do so to express their political In this research context, it opinion. Vol.3 No.2 July-December 2017 42

St. Theresa Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Judgement Descriptions Sample corpus data types refers to the words in connection with a politician’s bravery, thoughtfulness, patience, flexibility, and dependability. Untenacity The appraised’s cowardness, Thaksin uses Ms Yingluck as a "puppet thoughtlessness, impatience, premier", the senator said. and over confidence. In this research context, words belonging to this group denote or connote a politician’s thoughtlessness, impatience, inflexibility, undependability, and overconfidence. Veracity The appraised’s honesty, and Speaking after the ruling, Ms Yingluck good manner of speaking. In insisted she had worked honestly. this context, the group includes words describing a politician’s truthfulness, and honesty. Inveracity The appraised’s dishonesty, He accused Ms Yingluck of lying to the and bad manner of speaking. people in insisting she was never involved in In this context, the group the bill. includes words describing a politician’s lying, and tricky actions. Propriety The appraised’s good Ms Yingluck became prime minister under a manner, and morality. In this constitutional procedure. context, the group includes words describing lawful, legal, democratic, peaceful or morally political or related actions or activities. Impropriety The appraised’s bad manner, The premier is accused of violating the and immorality. In this charter in her transfer of Thawil Pliensri context, the group includes from the National Security Council to an words describing unlawful, inactive position as PM's adviser in 2011. illegal, non-democratic, aggressive or morally-wrong political or related actions or activities.

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Data analysis involved interpretations of results from concordance lines including the appraiser, the context of appraising items in each judgement type, and connotation.

The data validation method was adapted from Abarghooeinezha and Simin (2015), Kanoksilapatham (2005, 2007), and Wahl-Jorgensen (2012), focusing on linguistic and Appraisal analysis. Data validation method focusing on inter-rater reliability has implication in terms of decreasing subjectivity. Two experts in discourse analysis served as raters for this study. Raters received explanation about the overall study and definitions of each type of judgement under Appraisal framework. After that, raters rated 20% of randomly selected data focusing on appraising items and judgement types identified by the author by indicating the level of agreement: “Agree”, “Disagree”, or “Not sure”.

Cohen’s Kappa was computed to illustrate the level of inter-rater reliability and similarities and differences between the author’s analysis and the raters’ analysis. The level of inter-rater reliability and similarities and differences between the author’s analysis and the raters’ analysis was moderate agreement (0.51 Cappa agreement). There were two main differences between the author’s work and raters’ validations. Focusing on the key appraising items underlined, only key appraising items were underlined without the context of each key appraising item in the author’s work, but the results from the rater A showed that both appraising items and the context were underlined. For this reason, the underline of key appraising items and the context was applied in the author’s work.

Another difference was concerned with the levels of agreement. In some appraising item classification, disagree was found in rater A and rater B but not sure found only in rater B. The differences of appraising item classification between the author and the raters were rechecked which were concerned with the definition of each judgement type mentioned by Martin and White (2005).

5. Results and Discussion

This section is concerned with judgement types found in Bangkok Post discussed as follows:

1. Normality Vol.3 No.2 July-December 2017 44

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The results showed that there was only one lexical item mentioned by Bangkok Post focusing on Shinawatra’s popularity and acceptance in the word “popular”.

2. Capacity

The analysis suggested that there were a wide range of lexical terms explicitly expressing Shinawatra’s capacity concerned with capability to achieve political goal or the ability to fight off political opposition such as “successful”, “do” in collocation with the right thing, and “be able to”.

The results could be possibly interpreted as Shinawatra having the ability to achieve political goal in connection with democratic system expressed by many appraising items such as “be able to” in collocation with reply (to all questions which might be raised by the opposition), and “survive” collocating with the no-confidence vote, and the no-confidence debate. The possible interpretation was that Shinawatra was probably reported as a government leader under democratic system.

In terms of appraiser types, Shinawatra was appraised herself, and appraised by the supporters. Yingluck Shinawatra’s supporters were Prompong Nopparit, and DJ Klong Khaoniew. This may suggest that both media tried to avoid direct evaluation on the news subjects with the only exception of one instance of the Prime Minister’s capacity (survive the no-confidence vote) reported in the Bangkok Post with no clear appraiser, something that might be subtly implied that the press was making an appraisal itself.

3. Incapacity

Based on the collocations, there were a number of lexical terms explicitly expressing Shinawatra’s incapacity focusing on incapability to achieve political goal or disability to fight off political opposition such as “fail” collocating with take any political posts and solve problems plaguing the country, “failure”, and “not be able to” collocating with take any political posts and solve problems plaguing the country. Concerned with Shinawatra’s unintelligence, an inefficient leader, there was an appraising item: “lack” in collocation with intelligence, and efficiency. Concerned with Shinawatra’s mistake, there were many appraising terms such as “wrong”, and “mistaken”. Vol.3 No.2 July-December 2017 45

St. Theresa Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

In addition, the evidence showed that Shinawatra’s incapability to achieve political goal in relation to immorality and illegality was expressed in lexical items such as “fail” in collocation with stop corruption in the rice-pledging scheme, address allegations of corruption in the rice-pledging scheme, and act against corruption.

Based on appraiser types, the results uncovered that Shinawatra was appraised by herself, the opponents, a legal expert, and Bangkok Post media. Shinawatra’s opponents contained the opposition Democrat Party, Suriyasai Katasila, Abhisit Vejjajiva, and Somkiat Homla. A legal expert was National Anti-Corruption Commission. The possible interpretation was that the media probably tried to emphasize Shinawatra’s incapacity.

4. Tenacity

The analysis revealed that many appraising terms explicitly expressed Shinawatra’s tenacity concerned with bravery such as “bold”, “undeterred”, “unyielding”, and “not afraid”. In addition, there were many lexical terms expressing Shinawatra’s dependability such as “show” in collocation with “independence”, and “make” collocating with the decision herself. The results of some collocations such as “undeterred”, and “not afraid” in collocation with whistle blowers might be interpreted that Shinawatra probably tried to fight to the protesters. In terms of appraiser types, Shinawatra was appraised by Bangkok Post media, and the supporters such as , and Chaturon Chaisaeng.

5. Untenacity

Focusing on Shinawatra’s untenacity, the results demonstrated “Stubbornness” focusing on Shinawatra’s over confidence. Lexical items expressing Shinawatra’s undependability include words such as “proxy”, “puppet”, and “be controlled”. The lexical choices seemed to suggest that the government leader was clearly singled out as a “puppet” or “proxy” implying that her brother was behind her administration and political activities.

In terms of appraiser types, Shinawatra’s untenacity was appraised by the opponents: protesters, Suthep Thaugsuban, Ong-art Klampaiboon, and the Democrat spokesman.

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6. Veracity

Based on the analysis, it uncovered an appraising term explicitly expressing Shinawatra’s honesty such as “honestly” collocating with work. In terms of appraiser types, Shinawatra was appraised by herself.

7. Inveracity

The study revealed many appraising items explicitly expressing Shinawatra’s inveracity concerned with dishonesty. There were many lexical items indicating Shinawatra’s dishonest actions: “not sincere”, “insincerity”, and “lack of” in collocation with credibility, and dishonesty in relation to verbal actions such as “lie” collocating with to people, and “liar”.

Concerned with types of appraiser, Shinawatra’s inveracity was appraised by the opponent: Suthep Thaugsuban.

8. Propriety

Based on the analysis, there were many lexical terms explicitly expressing Shinawatra’s propriety focusing on morality in connection with responsibility and peaceful actions such as “peacefully”, and “responsible”.

In connection with Shinawatra’s legality, the analysis indicated many appraising items such as “legal”, “do”, “be justified” in collocation with legality, “be required” in collocation with law, and “not violate” in collocation with charter. The results suggested that there were many appraising items showing Shinawatra’s legality involving morality such as “never neglect” in collocation with duties, and “never enable” in collocation with corruption. In addition, the results also uncovered many appraising items concerned with Shinawatra’s legality in connection with constitution such as “under the constitution” in collocation with do, “under the constitutional monarchy” in collocation with be elected, “under a constitutional procedure” in collocation with become Prime Minister, “under the Section 188 of the constitution” collocating with an authority to impose the martial law, and “stipulated by the 2007 Constitution” in collocation with serve as the caretaker prime minister. The possible interpretation was that Bangkok Post might portray Shinawatra as a government leader under constitution. Vol.3 No.2 July-December 2017 47

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In terms of appraiser types, Shinawatra was appraised herself and appraised by the supporters: Pheu Thai Party, Yanyong Phuangrach, Kittiratt Na-Rananong, Charupong Ruangsuwan, Warathep Rattanakorn, and Amnuai Klangpha.

9. Impropriety

The results uncovered that there were many appraising items explicitly expressing Shinawatra’s impropriety in connection with immorality and illegality. Focusing on Shinawatra’s immorality, there were many lexical terms such as “lack of” in collocation with “morality”, “unfair” in collocation with treatment, “unfairly” in collocation with pick on Mr Vicha.

In connection with Shinawatra’s illegality concerned with immorality, the results showed many appraising items such as “malfeasance” in collocation with transfer of a civil servant, and rice-purchase scheme, “dereliction” in collocation with duty charge (over her role in the rice-pledging scheme), “corruption” in collocation with government’s troubled rice-pledging scheme, and charge, “abuse” in collocation with power (over the Thawil Pliensri transfer), and authority, “misuse” in collocation with office's powers, and “turn” in collocation with blind eye to corruption.

In terms of appraiser types, Shinawatra was appraised by Bangkok Post media, the opponents, and legal experts. Shinawatra’s opponents included the opposition Democrat Party, Thawil Pliansi, Abhisit Vejjajiva, Chavanond Intarakomalyasut, and demonstrator. In addition, Legal experts consisted of Court, Senators, and National Anti-Corruption Commission. The possible interpretation was that legal experts were mentioned because Bangkok Post probably tries to emphasize Shinawatra’s illegality.

As we have seen, the findings also support arguments that the Appraisal framework, with its comprehensive and detailed categorization of attitude types, could uncover some messages that could be subtly conveyed in a media source. For instance, the study revealed that Shinawatra seemed to be portrayed to have different strengths and weaknesses. That is, Shinawatra seemed to be appraised as a politician who adhered to the democratic system but was questioned in terms of dependency and transparency.

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6. Conclusion

When compared between Bangkok Post and The Nation, the results revealed that Bangkok Post contained more various judgement types than those found in The Nation. Capacity, incapacity, tenacity, untenacity, inveracity, propriety, and impropriety were found in two media; normality and veracity mentioned only in Bangkok Post.

In some cases, the results from corpus data are limited. Although abnormality instances are not found in the data, but this does not mean that the two media do not report on this type. It’s just our limited data do not reveal that.

In terms of Appraisal framework, the previous studies show that it has been widely used to examine attitudes in a rather argumentative genre with a clear evidence of subjectivity such as book reviews (Dongmei & Xuehua, 2013; Carretero and Taboada, 2014), literatures (Martin & White, 2005), and discussion broadcast on television (Tilakaratna & Mahboob, 2012) The results in this study conform the previous studies mentioned by Ben-Aaron (2005), Coffin and O’Halloran (2010), Hardy (2011), and Lawson (2014) that the framework can be as robust in analyzing media attitudes that are not very explicit such as news reports that are supposed to be more factual than judgmental, more objective than subjective.

The results reported in this study are also in line with previous studies that draw linguistic frameworks to strengthen the discussion relevant to evaluation in text such as collocations (Baker & McEnery, 2005; Baker, 2006, 2011; Baker, Gabrieltos, Khosravinik, KrcyŻanowski, Mcenery, & Wodak, 2008; Channell, 2003; Gabrielatos & Baker, 2008).

In this study, Collocations are beneficial for an analysis of evaluation in text. It helps researchers explore media attitudes towards Shinawatra. In terms of positive media attitudes, Shinawatra is positively reported on legality in connection with morally political activities indicated by many collocations such as “never neglect” in collocation with duties, and “never enable” in collocation with corruption. In addition, Shinawatra is positively portrayed as the government leader under democratic system expressed by many collocations in relation to constitution such as “under the constitution” in collocation with do, “under the constitutional monarchy” in collocation with be elected, “under a constitutional procedure” in collocation with Vol.3 No.2 July-December 2017 49

St. Theresa Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences become Prime Minister, “under the Section 188 of the constitution” collocating with an authority to impose the martial law, and “stipulated by the 2007 Constitution” in collocation with serve as the caretaker prime minister.

In terms of negative media attitudes, Shinawatra is negatively reported on illegality in relation to immorality shown by many collocations such as “malfeasance” in collocation with transfer of a civil servant, “dereliction” in collocation with duty charge (over her role in the rice-pledging scheme), “corruption” in collocation with government’s troubled rice-pledging scheme, “abuse” in collocation with power (over the Thawil Pliensri transfer), and “misuse” in collocation with office's powers.

In addition, Collocations found in Bangkok Post corpus indicate that Shinawatra is negatively reported on incapability to achieve political goal in relation to immorality and illegality, such as “fail” in collocation with stop corruption in the rice-pledging scheme, address allegations of corruption in the rice-pledging scheme, and act against corruption.

Concerned with implications and applications, this work is useful for the media objectivity. As Beder (2003), Ethical Journalism Network (n.d.), Moore (2010) and Pew Research Center (1999) suggested that ethical journalism contains many important principles such as truth and accuracy, independence, fairness and impartiality, and accountability. Fairness and impartiality are concerned with media objectivity by balancing the views of representatives of both sides of a controversy without favoring one side. Focusing on political news reports, the journalists should be aware of using lexical appraising items for expressing key politicians in the similar numbers on positive attitudes and negative attitudes. In terms of appraiser types, it helps the journalists be aware of presenting the views of representatives of both sides of a controversy without favoring one side by reporting attitudes of key politician supporters and opponents in order to decrease journalists’ bias.

From the news readers’ perspective, this study helps news readers interpret media attitudes from political news reports by observing lexical choice, connotation, collocations and appraisers in connection with key politicians. For example, if there are many positive appraising items focusing on key politicians and positive attitudes expressed by their supporters, the possible interpretation is that the journalist may show favor of these key politicians. However, if there are many negative lexical items reporting on key politicians and negative attitudes expressed by their opponents, the Vol.3 No.2 July-December 2017 50

St. Theresa Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences possible interpretation is that the journalists may have negative bias against these key politicians.

From the pedagogical perspective, this research has implications and applications for teaching persuasive writing. Learners can use appraising terms found in this work in relation to positive judgement such as normality, capacity, tenacity, veracity, and propriety, and negative judgement such as abnormality, incapacity, untenacity, inveracity, and impropriety in order to express positive and negative attitudes towards persons. In terms of teaching critical reading, learners can interpret writers’ attitudes from investigating lexical choice, connotation, and collocations.

In terms of further studies, the previous studies mentioned by Birot (2008), Cabrejas-Penuelas and Diez-Prado (2014), and Carretero and Taboada (2014) explains that appreciation pattern is found much more than judgment pattern because the evaluation of things and states of affair is more common than the evaluation of personal behavior (Birot, 2008). However, appreciation is not mentioned in this study. Thus, further studies should employ appreciation for analyzing media evaluation in the political conflicts in Thailand and may be conducted to explore appraisal of news reports on other opposing politicians found in political conflicts in Thailand such as government members including Thaksin Shinawatra, and Pheu Thai Party, and anti- government members, protesters, Abhisit Vejjajiva, and Democrat Party. Besides, the future study can be conducted to analyse similarities and differences of media evaluation of Shinawatra and Thaugsuban between English newspapers and Thai newspapers in Thailand. Additionally, other frameworks such as identity, ideology, and Multimodality should be employed in the future research in order to explore media evaluation of Shinawatra and Thaugsuban in political conflicts in Thailand.

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