Evaluative Language: Attitudinal Resources in Vietnamese History Textbooks

It is agreed by many scientists that evaluation is a very important aspect of language that merits deep investigation. However, it seems that the Vietnamese linguistic community is not very familiar with this term. In an effort to shed more light on the use of evaluative language in Vietnamese, this study looks at how evaluative language is expressed in Vietnamese History textbooks. This paper uses Martin and White's (2005) Appraisal framework to analyze how evaluative language is used in a corpus of 15 units selected from three History textbooks currently applied in high schools in Vietnam. More precisely, the study examines in-depth the frequency and realizations of various Attitudinal resources. The findings indicate that Judgment predominates among the Attitudinal resources while the language of emotional evaluation (Affect) only makes up a minor percentage. Furthermore, in terms of polarization, there are more positive evaluations than negative ones. It is hoped that the research will be useful to History textbook writers and learners/readers as well as those who are concerned about how history is conveyed in Vietnam from the perspective of evaluation through language.