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摘 要

书籍短评不仅可以简要说明书籍的内容，好的书评还可以吸引读者的注意，从而激发读者的购买欲。随着出版业的竞争越来越激烈，书籍短评对著作的推销有着至关重要的作用。然而，国内外对这方面的研究比较少。本文在马丁评价理论和海兰德互动式元话语的指导下，以最大的书籍销售商亚马逊上的中国作家余华的英译本书籍短评为研究语料，对书籍短评的特征做出了一些总结，以期为书籍短评做出一些学术贡献。

关键词：书籍短评；评价理论；互动式元话语；余华作品

Contents

1. Introduction………………………………………………………………1
2. Literature Review…………………………………………………………2

2.1 Book blurbs………….…………………………………………………...2

2.2 Martin’s appraisal theory…………………………………………………....2

2.3 Hyland’s interactional metadiscourse……………………………………...4

1. An Analysis of Features of Book Blurbs of Yu Hua’s Works…………...7

3.1 Features of book blurbs through the lens of Martin’s appraisal theory...9

3.2 Features of book blurbs through the lens of Hyland’s interactional metadiscourse...................................................................11

1. Conclusion……………………………………………………...…….12

Works Cited…………………………………………………………………...14

Introduction

Nowadays, with the acceleration of information transmission and knowledge renewal, more and more publishers begin to pay attention to how to sell their books, as a result of the competition in the publishing industry becoming increasingly fierce. As the most direct and prominent embodiment of the work, the book blurb has a vital impact on the promotion of the work. Blurbs refers to brief introductions traditionally displayed on book covers. However, with the popularity of the Internet and the development of electronic commerce, the introduction of the book has been put on the official website of the publishing house by more and more publishers, as well as on some online trading platforms, in order to attract potential readers or buyers. Buyers use book blurbs to understand whether a book is of purchase value, so book blurbs should attract buyers in a limited space, within the shortest time, and persuade buyers to buy the work. In a word, book blurbs can publicize books, tap the potential needs of readers, stimulate readers’ interest in buying books, and more or less affect the sales of books. Although the marketing role of book blurbs is so prominent, the research on book blurbs is extremely limited, especially in China. In view of the persuasive function of book blurbs, I started to learn online book blurbs from the website Amazon, a company that sells books online, especially the blurbs of Chinese author Yu Hua’s works.

The advantages and disadvantages of book blurbs directly affect the sales of books, so they have attracted more and more attention. At present, the research on short blurbs of English works mainly focuses on genre analysis, appraisal theory and cross-cultural comparison, which needs to be further studied. Under the guidance of Martin’s appraisal theory and Hyland’s interactional metadiscourse, I have summarized some features of book blurbs.

Book blurbs can affect the sale of books, and even have a key position in the promotion. While introducing books, they are also promoting sales and conducting publicity, which will tap readers’ potential demand and stimulate readers’ purchasing desire. However, there are relatively scant studies on book blurbs whether in domestic market or in foreign market. Thus, based on the attitude system of Martin’s appraisal theory and Hyland’s interactional metadiscourse, the researcher hopes that readers can better understand the characteristics of book blurbs and learn lessons how to read and write of book blurbs well after reading this thesis. What is more, the researcher hopes that there will be more and more people paying attention to the research field of book blurbs and make efforts to study the field.

1. Literature Review

Belonging to marketing and promoting factors, the book blurb is one kind of the most helpful advertisements to attract readers to buy books, so it is of importance to make research in this field. Thus, I have studied book blurbs of the Chinese author Yu Hua’s works at the website Amazon.

2.1 Book blurbs

The book blurb generally refers to a brief review that introduces the contents of books printed on the cover or envelope of books, advertises books, taps the potential needs of readers, and stimulates readers’ desire to buy books to recommend books. It is generally introduced and evaluated by the publishing house on the cover of the book, and sometimes includes the introduction of the author to achieve the recommendation and publicity of the book. This part is very important. Good writing will win more readers and make the reader feel the need to read the whole book.

With the progress of science and technology and the development of the times, more and more people are shopping online, including buying books. Therefore, book blurbs are also presented on the Internet now. For example, when you browse the book-selling website Amazon and chose whatever book you want, then you will read the book blurb.

• 1. Martin’s appraisal theory

Appraisal theory was developed in the 1990s under the framework of systemic functional linguistics, which is a theory mainly aimed at the study of semantics of evaluation. Appraisal system is an extension of Haliday’s paradigm of interpersonal meaning in Systemic Functional Grammar studied by Martin (Martin 2005). In this system, language is a “means” to evaluate language users’ standpoints, views and attitudes toward situations through the analysis of language.

Appraisal theory is a new lexical-grammatical framework developed by Systemic Functional Linguistics in the study of interpersonal meaning. It pays attention to various attitudes that can be negotiated in discourse. The appraisal system focuses on the author/speaker’s positive or negative attitudes towards people, places, things, events, phenomena, etc., and how to negotiate and convey their attitudes and positions. This theory attempts to describe how attitudes, judgments, emotional responses and other variables can be clearly presented, indirectly implied or hypothetical deduced in discourse. It also explores how such attitudes and judgments can be carefully manipulated to deal with the criticism and challenges of different opinions.

Evaluation theorists have identified three systems to construct the author’s position：Attitude, Engagement and Graduation. Attitude system judges things, people"s emotions and personalities. Attitudes can be positive or negative; they can be expressed explicitly or implicitly. Engagement system studies how the author consults with potential readers about their attitudes or voices. Graduation system studies the intensity of attitudes. These three systems have their own subsystems, as shown in Figure 1. —— Appraisal Theory (Martin and White 2005:11). Choosing strategies from these systems and subsystems is of great significance for the author to achieve his communicative goals.

Figure 1: Appraisal Theory (Martin and White 2005:11)

Attitude system is the core system in the entire appraisal theory, which means the judgment and appreciation of human behavior, text, process and phenomenon after psychological impact. In Martin’s opinion, attitude can be divided into three types: affect, judgment and appreciation. Attitudes are the attitudes of language users towards describing objects (objects, things and people), but they are revealed from the perspective of the reader according to the language of the text, so what language the author chooses to describe the book and its author will have a certain impact on the reader’s judgment. Affect is an emotional response to behavior, text/process and phenomena. Judgment is to evaluate the behavior of language users according to ethical standards. Appreciation is the evaluation of products, processes and phenomena, and the value of some phenomena. Affect, judgment and appreciation have both positive and negative meanings, and evaluation resources have two ways of expression: explicit and implicit evaluation.

Engagement is a series of linguistic resources which is taken to measure the relationship between speaker/author’s voice and various propositions and propositions in a discourse; speakers either acknowledge or ignore many different viewpoints on the issues and challenges involved in their speech, and strive for a human space for their own positions in such diverse perspectives. Engagement system can be divided into monogloss and heterogloss. A monogloss is a direct statement of a proposition, without mentioning the source of information and other possible viewpoints, which means excluding dialogue and involving the language user directly in the situation. Heterogloss refers to presenting and discussing various possibilities in a variety of ways, which means “dialogism”; dialogism refers to explicit dialogism (e.g. direct projection) and implicit dialogism (e.g. indirect projection). The author can seemingly and objectively intervene in the situation through heterogloss, and can shirk or get rid of responsibility by using objective intervention. Heterogloss can be divided into compress and expand. Language users can adjust their responsibilities and obligations to what they say or write by means of intervention.

Graduation means that all values of evaluation can be graded by strength. It includes two subsystems: focus and force. Focus is to classify the original non-classifiable language into different levels and make its semantics clear or vague. Force is to grade the strength of significance of the evaluation. The upgrade of force often indicates that the speaker/author agrees with the value position mentioned to the greatest extent and tries to bring the reader into the position to the greatest extent. The degraded force indicates that the speaker/author only partially or seldom agrees with the position mentioned. Force often indirectly indicates attitudinal meaning.

• 1. Hyland’s interactional metadiscourse

Metadiscourse was proposed by Zelling Harris in 1959 to provide a way to understand language use and to show that the author/speaker guides the audience to understand the text. The definition of metadiscourse has been controversial for a long time. Different scholars have given different explanations. However, in terms of the function of metadiscourse, most scholars tend to agree that metadiscourse has textual function and interpersonal function. The dichotomy of textual metadiscourse and interpersonal metadiscourse is usually used in the classification of metadiscourse.

Generally speaking, metadiscourse is divided into two categories: discourse and interpersonal. The former organizes discourse mainly through topic transfer, sequence signal words, mutual reference, ideological connection and material generalization. The latter uses hedges, reinforcements, self-reference or evaluation resources to show the author"s attitude and guide the reader to understand the text. From the perspective of systemic functional linguistics, metadiscourse has multiple functions, and it is a pragmatic and rhetorical phenomenon. By adding metadiscourse to a text, the author can not only transform a difficult and dull article into a reader-friendly and coherent text, but also connect the text with a specific context to convey the information of the author’s personality and reader’s sensitivity.

In recent years, although a lot of research results have been produced centering on the concept of metadiscourse, its explanatory potential has not been fully tapped. At present, the study of metadiscourse lacks an in-depth theoretical and empirical exploration, and its description and interpretation are still in the embryonic stage. The main problems with the study of metadiscourse theory are the fuzziness of metadiscourse terminology, the “meaning level” of metadiscourse and the insufficient connection with functional linguistics. Based on these understandings, we believe that Hyland’s three principles of constructing metadiscourse theory are reasonable.

First of all, Hyland believes that metadiscourse is different from discourse in its propositions. When defining metadiscourse, it is often necessary to distinguish metadiscourse from propositional content, and consider propositional content as the priority. And Kopple (1985) defines metadiscourse as linguistic material that does not add propositional information but indicates the author’s existence. Williams holds that metadiscourse “whatever does not refer to the subject matter being addressed” (Williams 226). Others believe that metadiscourse is the material in spoken or written language.

Secondly, metadiscourse reflects the interaction between the author and the reader. Vande Kopple’s classification of metadiscourse into two categories: textual metadiscourse and interpersonal metadiscourse is a mistaken understanding of Halliday’s trinity of meta-functional thinking, because in textual practice, it is impossible to completely separate textual metadiscourse from interpersonal or conceptual metadiscourse. The textual function, interpersonal function and propositional function (conceptual function) of metadiscourse are inseparable. For example, connectives expressing concessions not only express what the author wants but cannot expect, but also “monitor” the reader’s response to the conversation.

Thirdly, Hyland distinguishes the relationship between internal and external reference of discourse and points out that metadiscourse is the internal relationship of discourse. The conjunction can not only connect and explain the connecting steps within the text, organize argumentative discourse (internal reference), but also connect the material world (external reference) outside the text, and “experience” a series of events. For example, the conjunction “in contrast” has a distinction between internal and external referential relations. It can be used not only as a conceptual function of comparison, but also as a separable conjunction to remind the reader to leave the expectations established in the preceding article. Connectors such as firstly, secondly, thirdly can also be used to organize arguments and inform the reader of the internal relationship between arguments. They can also be used to reveal the steps of events in a particular process and to relate to the external material world.

According to the above three basic principles, Hyland constructs a metadiscourse theory model, which can be divided into two resources: interactive and interactional. Interactive resources refer to the types of linguistic resources used by the author to guide the reader through the text, which can be further divided into transitions, frame markers, endophoric markers, evidentials and code glosses and so on. Interactional metadiscourse reflects the interaction between the reader and the author, that is, the author reminds the reader to understand the propositional information of the author through some methods, and reminds the reader to realize his existence. Interactional metadiscourse includes hedges, boosters, attitude makers, self-mentions and engagement makers. The model is summarized in Table 1 below.

Table 1. Interactional metadiscourse resources (Hyland, 2005: 49 )

2.4 Previous studies on book blurbs

At present, there are few studies on book blurbs at home and abroad. The research on English book reviews mainly focuses on genre analysis, evaluation theory and cross-cultural comparison. There is still a long way to go for the study of book blurbs.

Qu Wenming(2007) started from the marketing function of academic discourse and took the introduction of book blurbs as the research corpus, he explored the “marketing” function of the cover introduction from three aspects: the positive affirmative tendency of the attitude subsystem in the evaluation system, the direct quotation of the comments of celebrities and people, and the determination of the scope of readers.

Liao Fumei(2010) randomly selected 30 short blurbs of English linguistics academic books to study their genre structure and marketing function, based on genre analysis theory, providing suggestions for the writing of short blurbs and attracting sufficient attention from the domestic book publishing industry to the book blurbs and their promotional functions. In her thesis, the communicative purpose of short blurbs of English academic books is to convey information and persuade readers to buy the promoted books. Genre schema structure is: step 1 (title) - step 2 (book introduction) - step 3 (book evaluation) - step 4 (author or editor"s introduction). Step 1 and step 2 are the core and necessary components of English academic book reviews. Step 3 and step 4 are optional steps. These steps and steps are basically arranged according to the relatively stable structure and order of “step 1 - step 2 - step 3 - step 4”and “step 1 - step 2 - step 3”, but sometimes there are a few changes. The results of the study confirm that book blurbs of English academic books are the product of a series of communicative functions, and show that genre analysis is a feasible method for analyzing corpus and interpreting communicative events.

Li Dong(2011) chose 30 textual book blurbs published by three major western publishing houses from 2004 to 2011 as a corpus, and studies the evaluation strategies and rhetoric purposes of academic book recommendation by using evaluation theory as analysis tool. It is found that academic book blurb is often a “reasoned evaluation”, which should be evidential, objective and persuasive. This study not only expands the application of evaluation theory in discourse analysis, but also enriches the less studied category of academic recommendation at home and abroad. At the same time, it also provides necessary enlightenment for the sensitive grasp of interpersonal meaning, especially for the teaching of academic recommendation writing.

Liu Na and Shi Shunliang(2014) took Hyland’s metadiscourse model as the theoretical framework and interactional metadiscourse as the research object, examined the distribution and application of interactive Metadiscourse in English academic book blurbs from five aspects: hedges, boosters, attitude makers, self-mentions and engagement makers, with a view to providing reference for the reading and writing of academic book blurbs. The results show that the most frequently used with interactional metadiscourse in book blurbs is attitude makers, followed by boosters, hedges and engagement markers. However, the authors of book blurbs do not use self-mentions. Their purpose is to reduce their subjective assumptions and increase the reliability of books. Authors of book blurbs use different forms of metadiscourse resources to interact with readers: in attitude markers, the author uses a large number of adjectives and adjectives with commendatory meanings to enhance the attractiveness of books; In boosters, there are quite a number of positive reporting verbs and cognitive modal verbs in book blurbs to emphasize the value of books; In the use of hedges, the author tends to use negative reporting verbs to reduce the threat of being questioned; In engagement markers, the author prefers to use the form of “we” and questions to close the distance with readers. At the same time, the interactional metadiscourse in book blurbs has the above distribution characteristics, and the author of book reviews uses different forms of interactive metadiscourse resources to achieve interaction with readers, in the final analysis, in order to achieve the purpose of promoting books.

1. An Analysis of Features of Book Blurbs of Yu Hua’s Works

The book blurb is generally the introduction and evaluation of the publishing house on the cover of the book, and sometimes includes the introduction of the author, so as to achieve the recommendation and publicity of the book. It can be can be any combination of quotes from the work, the author, the publisher, reviewers or fans, a summary of the plot, a biography of the author or simply claims about the importance of the work, whose aim is to attract readers’ attention and persuade people to buy books. This part is very important. If you write well, you will win more readers and make the reader feel that it is necessary to read the whole book.

As a result of the rapid development of technology, the network platforms spring up quickly, more and more people tend to shop online, including purchasing books. Thus, this paper gains the data of book blurbs of the works of Chinese author Yu Hua on the popular book-selling website: www.amazon.com.

3.1 Features of book blurbs through the lens of Martin’s appraisal theory

The appraisal theory consists of three systems: attitude, engagement and graduation. They are systematized separately. Attitude system are subsystematized into affect, judgment and appreciation; engagement subsystematization into monogloss and heterogloss; and graduation into force and focus. As blurb writers cannot show much affect in order to be objective and persuasive, this thesis will not analyze the affect system. What is more, in terms of force, there are almost no negative blurbs, so there is no need to make negative blurbs vague or make positive blurbs clear, so this thesis will not analyze force as well.

First of all, according to the attitude system, the evaluations of book blurbs are almost positive and contain a lot of compliments whether in judgement or appreciation. When introducing and evaluating a work, appreciation can be regarded as a form of expression of the author’s attitude towards the work. Appreciation can be divided into positive and negative situations. Because positive appreciation will play a positive role in the hearts of potential consumers and produce a good impression of the products. Potential readers of books also have the same mentality. The evaluation of books is positive. It will increase the trust in the contents of books and generate an interest in reading and buying books. What is more, Judgement is similar. As we can see in these examples:

1. “Brilliant . . . Daring . . . Yu Hua’s early writing has often been compared to the works of Kafka, a natural parallel, considering the sharp feeling of restlessness in Yu Hua’s prose and its repertoire of lonely, alienated protagonists. It would be just as easy, however, to think of such writers as Kawabata, Barthelme, or Borges in comparison. More important is the overall impression that Yu Hua is jumping, even clawing, at postmodernism. This spate of early stories shows a writer determined to make a name for himself.” —Andrew Hungate, Words without Borders (The April 3rd Incident: Stories)
2. “A work of astounding emotional power.” —Dai Sijie, author of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (To Live)
3. “A collection of 10 quietly audacious essays that blend memoir with social commentary. Yu Hua, who resides in Beijing—a significant detail, given how many important Chinese authors live in exile, where they can write more freely—builds each piece on the foundation of a familiar Mandarin term. The approach is smart literary politics: The Chinese adore their language and consider devotion to it an act of cultural patriotism. The insight it offers and the force and authority it packs is of a kind that few, if any, of those louder, more attention-seeking must-read books can even pretend to match.” —The National Post (China in Ten Words)

Secondly, the frequency of the use of heterogloss is very low, mostly monogloss. There are few book blurbs to evaluate the content of books individually, some evaluations are inserted in the introduction of books, while the content of books introduced by writers or compilers is objective. There is no need for book blurb writers to evaluate and negotiate too much, to worry about the risk of taking responsibility, and to face the threat of being questioned. Therefore, the author of the book blurb uses a large number of monogloss to intervene in the situation directly and subjectively, excluding dialogue. These examples can testify:

1. “A wrenching and blackly humorous tale. Long after I closed the book, the character Xu Sanguan has remained stubbornly impressed upon my heart.” –Dai Sijie, author of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (Chronicle of a Blood Merchant)
2. “Epic . . . offer[s] unforgettable images of cruelty and kindness.” –The Washington Post Book World (Chronicle of a Blood Merchant)

Thirdly, in terms of force of graduation, many powerful words are used to intensify the value of books, while maintaining the positive face of the original author. As we can see in these examples:

(6) “Yu’s clear-eyed voice perfectly suits the lives of his characters, whose humanness we recognize, even as it makes us smile or, more often, flinch.” —Tricia Springstubb, The Plain Dealer (Boy in the Twilight: Stories of the Hidden China)

3.2 Features of book blurbs through the lens of Hyland’s interactional metadiscourse

Interactional metadiscourse refers to the way in which the author attracts readers in a text, that is, to remind the reader to pay attention to the author’s views on propositional information and the reader’s attitude. Essentially, the metadiscourse here is evaluative and interventional, which affects the intimacy between the author and the reader, the attitude of the author, the cognitive judgment of the author, the obligations undertaken by the author, and the participation of the reader. This kind of metadiscourse can be divided into hedges, boosters, attitude markers, engagement markers and self - mentions. Hedges (e.g., may, possible, about) refer to the author’s indirect expression of propositional information, while boosters (e.g., in fact, definitely, it is clear that) imply affirmation and emphasis on propositions. Attitude markers (such as unfortunately, I agree, surprisingly) express the author’s assessment proposition and convey information such as surprise, responsibility, approval and importance. Engagement markers (e.g., consider, note that, you can see that) clearly point to the reader, attract the reader’s attention through some words, or interact with the reader through the use of second-person pronouns, imperative sentences, questions, parentheses, etc. Self-mentions (e.g., I, we, my, our) refers to the frequency of the author’s first-person appearance in the text.

Firstly, attitude makers are frequently used in book blurbs, especially attitudinal adjectives and adverbs which are almost in commendatory color. In this way, book blurbs will certainly attract the attention of potential consumers and make them be more interested in purchasing books. The following are some examples:

(7) “Entertaining……Intriguing…… In narrowing his lens, his work carries new urgency.” —The Wall Street Journal (The Seventh Day: A Novel)

(8) “Sensational, sweeping…… tremendous…… In recognition of this terrific literary achievement, I think that, instead of the Year of the Ox, this should be the Year of Yu Hua.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air (Brothers: A Novel)

(9) “Immensely moving…… Artfully constructed, beautifully written, and stealthily consuming–[it] repeatedly stops you in your tracks.” –The Boston Globe (Chronicle of a Blood Merchant)

Secondly, boosters are also often used in book blurbs, because writers need to highlight the confidence in the value of books, grasp the reader’s attention and enhance the Influences of language, so as to attract readers to buy books. Example as followed:

(10)“Waggish but merciless. . . . A consistently and terrifically funny read.” —Los Angeles Times(Brothers: A Novel)

Thirdly, hedges are often used in book blurbs to reduce the threat of doubt and make people feel comfortable to buy books. As we can see in these examples:

(11)“Yu has a fiction writer’s nose for the perfect detail, the everyday stuff that conveys more understanding than a thousand Op-Eds. . . . Perhaps the most bewitching aspect of this book is how funny it is. . . . He comes across as an Asian fusion of David Sedaris and Charles Kuralt.” —Laura Miller, Salon(China in Ten Words)

(12) “This is a tale told by a raconteur, not an academic. . . . The most powerful and vivid sections reach back to Yu Hua’s childhood during the Cultural Revolution. . . . It is a cautionary tale about the risks of subterfuge, of trying to sneak something past one’s father—or, perhaps, one’s ever vigilant government.” —The New York Times Book Review (China in Ten Words)

Fourthly, in terms of engagement makers and self-mentions, authors tend to use “you” rather than “I”:

(13)“Captures the heart of the Chinese. . . . If you think you know China, you will be challenged to think again. If you don"t know China, you will be introduced to a country that is unlike anything you have heard from travelers or read about in the news.” —The Wall Street Journal (China in Ten Words)

1. Conclusion

Book blurbs are of great importance to the promotion and sales of books. Drawing on the guidance of Martin’s appraisal theory and Hyland’s interactional metadiscourse, there are the major findings about features of book blurbs: evaluations of book blurbs are almost positive; the frequency of the use of heterogloss is very low, mostly monogloss; in terms of force of graduation, many powerful words are used to intensify the value of books; in book blurbs, attitude markers, boosters, hedges are often used and attitudinal adjectives and adverbs are almost in commendatory color; engagement markers are used more than self – mentions, authors tend to use “you” rather than “I”.

Book blurbs can conduct publicity for books and play an important role in the promotion of books. This paper analyzes the features of book blurbs, which can help readers better understand the writing and reading of book blurbs. On the other hand, it will make some contributions to the book publication and make Chinese books better go abroad.

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