Japanese Folk Tales: text structure and evaluative expressions

Hasan’s approach to text structure is a semantic one. In the 1996 paper, The nursery tale as genre, she explains her approach through an analysis of nursery tales. The tale is understood within its contextual configuration using the registerial variables of field, tenor and mode. But further, it is understood as a genre in which instances of the nursery tale share common generic elements of structure, some of which are obligatory and others, optional. It is the obligatory elements of structure which ‘define’ the instance as belonging to the genre of nursery tale. Within the elements of structure are semantic attributes. “I suggest that the essential attributes of ‘the structurally important units’ of any texts will have to be stated in semantic terms” (Hasan 1996, p.58). This paper builds on previous work by Thomson (2001) which adopted Hasan’s Generic Structure Potential (GSP) approach and applied it to the Japanese nursery tale. Thomson’s 2001 study describes the GSP from the perspective of the textual metafunction. This paper further develops the description of the GSP from the perspective of the interpersonal metafunction, noting that the application of appraisal theory (Martin and White 2005) is particularly useful when describing the interpersonal meanings which serve as crucial semantic attributes of the elements of structure. The semantic attributes are, in part, realised by configurations of particular appraisal choices. 1. Research Questions and methodology As mentioned, Thomson’s 2001 study described the GSP of Japanese nursery tales from the point of view of the textual metafunction, demonstrating how particular selections of thematic progression patterns contribute to the realisation of the elements of structure. However, Thomson’s description can only be considered a partial description given the fact that only the textual metafunction was addressed. To build a fuller description, the interpersonal and ideational metafunctions also need to be addressed. It is the purpose of this current study to provide, in the first instance, an interpersonal description of the GSP of Japanese nursery tales. Towards that end, the following research questions were posited: