The Pear Tree Project: a geographico-statistical and linguistic analysis

摘要

The original analysis of the figures relating to the Pear Tree project (see Salway, 2007), involving detailed breakdowns of the results recorded at universities in Catalonia, Ireland, Italy, Poland, and Belgium, have already provided interesting, if rather limited, data relating to how film texts are perceived by subjects from different nations/languages/cultures. These figures have now been supplemented by results recorded in Germany, Greece, South Africa, Britain, Spain, and France. These additions, which have been integrated with the original figures, give greater scope for meaningful examination through first a geo-statistical analysis and subsequently through a linguistic investigation. The figures are subjected to analysis following a number of the canons of systemic-functional linguistics. The Pear Tree texts form a small corpus and this is studied in terms of theme-rheme progression, information flow, clause-type choice, and appraisal.