日本語を非母語とする日本学習者が書いたお礼の手紙の考察: Attitudinal resources expressed in Japanese thank you letters

This study explores how linguistic resources in Japanese thank-you letters enact interpersonal values using the Appraisal framework (Martin and White, 2005; White, 2001, 2002). The focus of this study is attitudinal accounts within the Appraisal framework. Although the original framework has been widely applied to English texts (Hood, 2004 etc.), it has not yet been applied to Japanese texts. The Japanese system of ATTITUDE has recently been developed based on an extensive analysis of evaluative expressions in the IWANAMI Japanese Dictionary, the Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese, and the Japanese Database of Individual Patient Experiences (Sano, 2011a). The data in this study comprise 11 letters written by intermediate level non-native speakers of Japanese. They were asked to write a thank-you letter to their host family to express their gratitude for their visit. Attitudinal resources in these letters will be identified and discussed.