HELPING LANGUAGE LEARNERS ALIGN WITH READERS THROUGH NARRATIVE: INSIGHTS INTO THE BREADTH, TARGETS, AND EXPLICITNESS OF EVALUATION FROM APPRAISAL STUDIES OF SECOND LANGUAGE GERMAN WRITERS A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in German By Justin Erle Quam, M.A. Baltimore, MD August 13, 2020 Copyright 2020 by Justin Erle Quam All Rights Reserved ii HELPING LANGUAGE LEARNERS ALIGN WITH READERS THROUGH NARRATIVE: INSIGHTS INTO THE BREADTH, TARGETS, AND EXPLICITNESS OF EVALUATION FROM APPRAISAL STUDIES OF SECOND LANGUAGE GERMAN WRITERS Justin Erle Quam, M.A. Thesis Advisor: Marianna V. Ryshina–Pankova, Ph.D ABSTRACT Language users never communicate in a vacuum. Successful meaning-making through language depends on an awareness of one’s presumed audience and the choice of linguistic tokens appropriate to that interaction. In their engagement with that presumed audience, literate language users are characterized by their ability to express individuality, offer explicit and implicit opinions, assert affiliation with their readers, persuade their readers, and reinforce or challenge socially valued concepts. In Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), these uses of language fall under the interpersonal metafunction, which encompasses the goal of the action performed by the language user and their relationship with an intended audience (Eggins, 2004; Halliday, 1984). One key component of interpersonal meaning making is evaluative language, described within the context of SFL by the APPRAISAL system (Martin & White, 2005), which operates at the level of discourse semantics and facilitates analysis of evaluation patterns beyond the word or sentence level (Coffin, 2002). Current L2 writing research on interpersonal meaning making is characterized by a lack of studies examining (a) genres outside of academic writing and (b) languages other than English. To expand instructors’ awareness of (a) students’ command of interpersonal resources at various curricular levels and (b) instructional activities that can foster students’ continued iii development, this project explores the use of evaluative language in narrative texts written by L2 learners of German at three proficiency levels. This project consisted of two rounds of data collection. In the first study, fairy tales written by a small group of students of varying proficiency levels were analyzed in detail; potential patterns in APPRAISAL were flagged for further analysis. In the second study, a larger set of texts were analyzed to assess whether patterns emerging from the first study achieved statistical significance. Results revealed trends in the use of APPRAISAL types across the various levels, with lower proficiency writers relying more heavily on APPRECIATION and narrator- centered evaluations, whereas higher proficiency writers drew more often on AFFECT as a vehicle for implicit evaluation and broadened the scope of their evaluations to include valued behaviors and traits. The thesis concludes with potential instructional activities and remarks on the applicability of the current APPRAISAL scheme to narrative analysis. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am deeply grateful to my advisor, Marianna Ryshina–Pankova. Even before I asked her to take on that role, she offered her time and insight whenever I found myself twisted around a concept or research problem. Without her encouragement, I would never have considered a Ph.D a real possibility; when my first year of teaching full time left me rudderless, she believed more strongly than I did that I would still finish this project. Большое спасибо за то, что ты меня поддерживала, вдохновляла и побуждала меня к развитию на протяжении всего периода моих исследований. Я счастлив, что ты была моим куратором, и я надеюсь на нашу совместную работу в будущем. I offer my deepest appreciation to my committee members, Joe Cunningham and Lourdes Ortega, as well as Mary Helen Dupree, who helped assess my oral comprehensive exams. A professorship entails a slew of duties one is expected to take on without additional recompense, which can become onerous at the best of times; for volunteering their time on my behalf during an ongoing global health crisis, I thank and honor them. I owe a debt of thanks to the faculty, staff, and graduate students of the entire GUGD, a learning community rich in curiosity, insight, and solidarity. I recognize Courtney Feldman, for remembering our birthdays; Anja Banchoff and Astrid Weigert, for their constructive criticism on my teaching and their support for my musical endeavors; Peter Pfeiffer, for his counsel during my job search and his well-chosen Goethe references; and Friederike Eigler, for her sympathy after an unexpected medical setback. I also learned a great deal from my fellow graduate workers in other departments, and I applaud the Georgetown Alliance for Graduate Employees for their tireless work to secure protections and stability for the entire graduate community. For their direct assistance in turning this dissertation from notions into pages, I am grateful to many extremely patient friends, students, and colleagues, including Julia Goetze and Michael O’Donnell, for their advice on coding methodology; James Fallows, for recommending the Scrivener word processing app; Raphael Kabo and Shane McGarry, for developing elegant workflows I used to manage my citations; Christopher Tabisz, for offering feedback on my study materials; Sandra Digruber, for coding even more of the data than I asked her to; the participants in my studies, who gave of their time and creativity, including Ann–Kathrin Koster, Julia Goetze (again), Helene, Jürgen, Lilly, Mara, and Max; Megan Brett and Charlotte Hagerman, for studying alongside me and keeping me on track; Jimmy Rothschild, for insightful comments on a previous paper; Emma Rackstraw, for making time on short notice for a final dry run; and Christina Castelli and Julia Davidson, for offering to proofread my manuscript, catching the typos I swore I had eliminated, and reminding me when I wasn’t making any sense. Had it not been for Waldsee, I doubt I would have learned German or discovered my love of languages. For setting me on that path, I am grateful to my first teachers: Xia, Jan, Monika, Ökorette, Gabi, Michi, Ilona, Dani; my mentors-turned-colleagues: Ellen, David, Detlef, Heidi, Julia, Resi, Steffi, Udo(?); Berndt and Karl; and far too many students and colleagues to name. (I tried to, and then I realized I could fill this thesis and still forget far too many. You know who you are.) I wrote the final chapters of this dissertation in relative isolation during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Maintaining my productivity (and my mental health) proved unexpectedly challenging. For the camaraderie they shared in our virtual game nights, film screenings, e-mail check-ins, and long chats over coffee, I am grateful to my quarantine v buddies—Bill Golba and Christina Tricou—and to Amanda Chang, Andrea Chapin, James Conway, Sarah Hulbert, Antje Krueger, Scott Lewis, Kellie Nance, Allison Parker, Kelly Rolfes–Haase, Emily Tucci, Ted Watson, Anke Woodsmall, and Stephen Wirth; Elmar, Lizzy, and Ian Schärfig; Em Skow, Brad Potter, and Zach Mark; and the authors Daniel Abraham, Tana French, and Max Gladstone, whose worlds of ink and whimsy allowed me to escape the four walls of my apartment even during a stay-at-home order. Throughout my high school and college years, I was fortunate to study with curious, kind, challenging teachers. For their generosity and willingness to nerd out, I am particularly grateful to Lissa Angus, Tom “Bob” Martinez, David Eberhard, R.J. Kasicki, Rebecca Fornelli Bredle, Leland Livingston, Jennifer Winokur Biegen, Bob McBride, Anders Winroth, Paul Kennedy, Paul Lagunes, Akhil Reed Amar, Vasili Byros, Stephen Latham, and the late Kent Youngren. For their collaborative spirit and welcoming arms, I am grateful to the faculty and staff of the German International School of Portland and the St. Paul’s Schools in Brooklandville, Maryland. Throughout my studies, I have taken solace in music. For their insightful direction and patient conducting, I am thankful for Max Blum–Campo, Sharon Corbin, Don Devany, Jeff Douma, Ross Heise, Keiji Ishiguri, Joanne May, Ben Olinsky, Joanna Powell, John Smedstad, Dileep Srihari, Cynthia Viise, and my fellow singers in the choirs of St. Paul’s (IL and MD), the Yale Glee Club, Out of the Blue, the Whiffs, the Capital Hearings, and the 18th Street Singers. I owe an incalculable, uncategorizable debt of thanks to: — Ezra Deutsch–Feldman and Agnes Mazur, for reminding me via political trivia questions that I have a safe harbor in D.C. (I swear, I will watch The Simpsons one of these days); — Justin Jee, for inspiring me by tireless, perceptive example; — Debra Keane, for honesty, greeting cards, and introducing me to Eddie Izzard; — Patrick Rothfuss, who wrote the two books that got me through my darkest hours; — Mike Rowan, best of bassy roommates, for never minding that my books were strewn over every possible surface; — Neil Weyhing, for constantly encouraging me to finish my dissertation (whenever he was not pursuing the more urgent goal of recommending a worthy sci-fi series); — The Waldsee 2020 Betreuerschaft, who sat through as many as three iterations of my defense, for reminding me of the rewards of looking inward; — Evi, Ilse, and Zenzi, my Tuesday night Märchenwald game night partners, for laughter in dark times; — Victor, without whom I never would have tried the most important new things; — Ross Kellan, who taught me how to teach by example; — My might-as-well-be family: Carole, Elise, Justin, Renate, Roger; — …and, first among all: Cassandra, Joel, Nate, Seth, and Vivian. Like Westley, they know there are many ways to show love and support — from invitations to play King of Tokyo and Wingspan, to Harry Potter references and Star Trek crew drafts, to Bovinity Divinity ice cream. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 2.