Affection, Appreciation, and Judgment in the Speech of the Soap Opera

Abstract

From the perspective of the soap opera as a cultural product, out of which emotions and judgments of communities emerge, as well as stereotyped speech as their counterpart, this paper proposes an analysis of melodramatic speech. This study follows the principles of the Appraisal Theory, which is an extension of Holliday’s research on interpersonal meta-function (2004). Based on the three subsystems of Attitude, Affection, Appreciation, and Judgment, according to Martin and White (2005), two Colombian soap-operas are analyzed, focusing on the mechanism used by performers to set up power, contact, and affection, and to measure their opinions, by giving emphasis and force to melodramatic speech (discourse), thus leading to the conclusion that melodrama is not only reduced to the love story but that it also seeks to show the origin of feelings through different speech resources and representations. The soap opera, therefore, entertains and becomes a way to approach life-like stories where the represented characters are located at a prudent distance to allow viewers to enjoy, consume and feel embedded in this reality.