An appraisal analysis of the language of judges in american idol

Abstract

This study aimed to discover the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic aspects of attitude in the judges‟ evaluative language in the reality game show American Idol. Based on a theoretical framework of Appraisal framework, functional grammar and speech act theory, this descriptive study sought the qualitative information about the semantic values of the judges‟ evaluative remarks in expressing attitude in American Idol. The corpus of about 100 English samples randomly gathered from different sources such as newspaper articles, essays, and transcripts in print and on the internet. The study found that attitude in the judges‟ evaluative language in the reality game show American Idol was characterized semantically in three sub-categories: affect, judgement and appreciation. In terms of affect, it is divided into 4 main types: Dis/inclination, Un/happiness, In/security and Dis/satisfaction. In terms of judgement, it is divided into 2 distinctions: social Esteem and social Sanction. Syntactically, attitude in language of judges in American Idol can be expressed with a variety of linguistic structures with both major and minor clauses. Pragmatically, in terms of speech acts, attitudinal values were recognized with the representative and expressive and declaration meaning of illocutionary force such as representative with function of imparting descriptive information, expressive with fucntion of expressing the judges‟ emotion/feeling about the performances of candidates and declaration with function in giving yes/no to signal the admission for the candidate to the next rounds.