Appraisal perspective on attitudinal meaning in eulogies for ronald reagan and betty ford

Abstract EN

The current study aims at investigating the discourse of two American Eulogies in terms of Martin and White‟s Appraisal theory framework which is considered as an effective framework for examining attitudes and interpersonal meanings.

The specific aim of this study is to identify and investigate the resources of attitude that eulogists use to express feelings, judgments and appreciation with the audience.

Although, eulogical discourse has a long history that dates back to Ancient Greece, funeral speeches or what is referred to nowadays as eulogy remained an intact area to discourse studies.

In response to this rarity, this study has been conducted.

The study concludes that modern eulogies celebrate the deceased‟s life unlike early eulogies which focus more on the subject of religion.

The results demonstrate that in the system of attitude, more judgment values occur than affect and appreciation; and implicit attitude reveals less distribution than explicit attitude.

Moreover, negative attitudes are in a fairly little amount compared with positive attitudinal meanings.

This shows that eulogists pay more attention to the deceased‟s character in which they tend to use more explicit and positive attitude