EEJ 8 (4) (2018) 439 - 444 

 

  

English Education Journal 

  
http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/eej 

 

 

The Appraisal of Eulogies Delivered at Mrs. Lee Kuan Yew Memorial 
Service  
 

Inayatul Maula , Djoko Sutopo, Sri Wuli Fitriati 

 

Universitas Negeri Semarang, Indonesia 

 

Article Info 

________________ 

Article History: 

Recived 2 August 2018 

Accepted 06 October 

 2018 

Published 23 

December 2018  

 

________________ 
Keywords: 

Appraisal, 

Eulogies, 

Memorial Service 

 

Abstract
 

___________________________________________________________________ 

The study reports the appraisal analysis and the rhetorical structure of eulogies 

delivered at Mrs. Lee Kuan Yew memorial service. Eulogies are meant to 

remember the person who died in a positive light, and offer an opportunity to 

speak about who the deceased was and the ways in which she or he made a 

difference in the lives of family, friends, and his or her community. Since 

eulogy contains praises for someone admired, and the speaker recalls the 

memories shared, he has to evaluate his feelings and relation by expressing 

attitude, his position towards the deceased, and gradable valuation. Such 

evaluation has to do with appraisal system. The research integrates the 

appraisal theory proposed by Martin and White (2005) and rhetorical structure 

(Kunkel and Dennis, 2003). This study employs discourse analysis method of 

research. The findings reveals that the eulogies have primarily used the 

judgement resources rather than affect and appreciation within the attitude 

system. As eulogizing function, the eulogy composed largely of laudation and 

praise, the use of judgement appraising items shows how the eulogizer‟s 

assessment towards the admiring behaviour of the deceased during her life. 

Moreover, the utilization of the rhetorical structure contributes to the 

achievement of the communicative purpose of eulogy. Through the well-

structured eulogies, the eulogizers heighten the audience member‟s feelings of 

regard, love, and appreciation for the deceased. 

 

© 2018 Universitas Negeri Semarang 

 

Correspondence Address:  
Kampus Pascasarjana Unnes, Jl. Kelud Utara III Semarang 

5023 Indonesia 
E-mail: inayatulmaula3000@gmail.com 

 
 

 
 

p-ISSN 2087-0108 

e-ISSN 2502-4566 

 
 

mailto:inayatulmaula3000@gmail.com


Inayatul Maula, Djoko Sutopo, Sri Wuli Fitriati/ EEJ 8 (4) 2018 439 - 444
 

439 

INTRODUCTION 

 

Eulogies are meant to remember the 

person who died in a positive light, and 

offer an opportunity to speak about who the 

deceased was and the ways in which 

she or he made a difference in the lives of 

family, friends, and his or her community. The 

eulogy is part of ritualistic speaking events 

existing in nearly every culture in the world 

(Kent, 1997: 1). The funerals as ritual provides 

some amount of closure and helps individuals 

deal with their grief. In most cases, the funeral 

oratory, or eulogy is delivered within the 

context of the funeral itself. According to Frijda 

(1997: 3) the important ritualistic functions of 

funerals, such as affirming affection and 

bonding. A eulogy must respond to the situation 

and the special expectations of the audience. 

Hence, it is a mandatory to celebrate, to 

commemorate, to honour, to dedicate, to 

mourn, and to praise the life of the deceased.  

Eulogy is kind of genre in English. Genre 

is defined by Martin (2009: 10) as staged goal-

oriented social process. It has particular purpose 

to commemorate someone who passed away, 

and it is commonly delivered in memorial 

service. To achieve the goal, it has to be 

structured in sequential order and contain 

distinct feature with other genres. In writing 

eulogy, appraisal contributes a significant role in 

order to achieve the purpose of eulogy. 

According to Martin and White (2005), 

appraisal is composed of three interacting 

domains: attitude (feelings, emotional reactions, 

judgements of behaviour and evaluation of 

things), engagement (sourcing attitudes and the 

play voices around opinions in discourse), and 

graduation (grading phenomena whereby 

feelings are amplified and categories blurred). 

By applying appraisal, the person who 

will deliver the eulogy tries to gain sympathy of 

the audience, to praise the deceased and to 

console the family. As a funeral ritual, eulogy 

provides some amount of closure and helps 

individuals deal with their grief. As rhetoric, the 

eulogy must respond to the situation and the 

special expectations of the audience (Kunkel 

and Dennis, 2003: 3). Thus, the consolatory 

obligation is crucial to the success of delivering 

eulogy. 

There are some previous studies related to 

this study. Swain (2007), Read (2009), and 

Gallardo and Ferrari (2010) focused on 

engagement resources. Their studies implies that 

constructing an effective persuasive textual 

voice draws on a wide range of engagement 

resources. 

Regarding to attitudinal resources Souza 

(2003), Page (2003), Pekarova (2011), 

Priyatmojo (2011), and Morrish and Stauntion 

(2013) found that attitude is in fact can be 

implicit or invoked, rather than explicitly 

indicated. Dealing with rhetorical analysis, 

West (2014) analyzed President Barrack 

Obama‟s rhetoric in three of his national 

eulogies in order to examine how Obama 

consoled the nation following various tragedies, 

and how his strategies differ from the past 

presidents. The result of the study illustrated 

that President Obama focused on the survivors 

of tragedy rather than the victims which 

promoted a sense of hope for the survivors and 

the nation by empowering the people to move 

on from the tragedy. 

In analyzing the eulogy, it was performed 

using a form of genre criticism. The components 

of the genre criticism were drawn from Kunkel 

and Dennis‟s (2003). Kunkel and Dennis 

proposed a framework concerning eulogy 

rhetoric. Therefore, the framework of genre 

criticism proposed by Dennis and Kunkel (2003) 

is used in this present study. 

This study is different from previous 

studies above since not only presenting the 

appraisal manifested in a certain genre but also 

investigating the rhetorical structure of a 

particular genre which is eulogy. Therefore, the 

researcher hopes that this study will contribute 

to the field of appraisal and rhetorical studies. 

 

METHOD 

 

This study employs the discourse analysis 

method of research. Mouton (2001: 168) stated 

discourse analysis as a design type is a recent 



Inayatul Maula, Djoko Sutopo, Sri Wuli Fitriati/ EEJ 8 (4) 2018 439 - 444
 

440 

version of textual analysis which aims to study 

the meanings of words but within the larger 

“chunks” of text such as conversation or 

discourse. It aims to explain the appraisal of 

attitude, engagement, and graduation 

manifested in eulogies delivered at Mrs. Lee 

Kuan Yew memorial service and how the 

rhetorical structure contributes to the 

achievement of its communicative purpose. The 

object of the study was the eulogies delivered at 

Mrs. Lee Kuan Yew Memorial Service. 

In order to collect the data, the researcher 

used some documents as the research 

instruments. The documents were in the form of 

tables to analyze each of the Appraisal 

subsystem as well as the rhetorical structure of 

eulogies. 

After collecting the data, the researcher 

classifying and marking the appraisal of attitude, 

engagement, and graduation based on Martin 

and White (2005) and identifying the rhetorical 

structure of eulogies proposed by Kunkel and 

Dennis (2003). The researcher focuses on the 

data to achieve the objective and displayed those 

data to help her understand the findings then 

explains them. This is also followed by 

tabulating the percentage of the data result and 

interpreting the data analysis. Next, the 

conclusion is drawn. 

 

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS 

 

In this section, we present the results and 

discussion of the appraisal of attitude, 

engagement, and graduation of the eulogies and 

how the rhetorical structure contributes to 

achive its communicative purpose. 

 

The Appraisal of Attitude, Engagement and 

Graduation 

After conducting the analysis of the 

appraising items, some findings are generated. 

The summary of the findings of the appraisal of 

attitude manifested in the eulogies are shown in 

table 1. 

 

 

Table 1. Distribution of Attitude choices 

Type Affect Judgement Appreciation 

Instances 63 92 30 

% 34 50 16 

 

The table maps out that judgement 

exceeds other attitude appraising items by a fair 

margin in the whole texts. 50% of attitudinal 

resources in eulogies constitutes judgement. The 

eulogies have primarily used the judgement 

resources rather than affect and appreciation 

within the attitude system. As eulogizing 

function, the eulogy composed largely of 

laudation and praise (Kunkel and Dennis, 

2003). Hence, the use of judgement appraising 

items shows how the eulogizer‟s assessment 

towards the admiring behaviour of the deceased 

during her life, the eulogizer tends to employ 

positive attitude rather than negative attitude 

through the chunks/ clauses containing positive 

judgement values to reveals their position 

towards the deceased. 

The distribution of appraising items of 

engagement in the eulogies is set out in table 2. 

 

Table 2. Distribution of Engagement choices 

Type Disclaim Proclaim Entertain Attribute 

Instances 70 13 70 2 

% 45 8 45 2 

 

The table shows that the number of 

disclaim and entertain exceeds other appraising 

items. With 45% of engagement resources in 

eulogies constitutes disclaim and entertain. 

Proclaim is in the second place with 8% and 

followed by appreciation with 2%. 

This way of using engagement appraising 

items tends to align than to disalign the 

audience as they are sharing the statements or 

assertions that express a judgement or opinion 

that form a community of shared values. 

Furthermore, using entertain means 

„dialogically expand manner” (Wu, 2007). As 

stated earlier, eulogy is meant to gain sympathy 

of the audience, to praise the deceased and to 

console the family. Thus, by producing 

utterance that acknowledges a proposition as 



Inayatul Maula, Djoko Sutopo, Sri Wuli Fitriati/ EEJ 8 (4) 2018 439 - 444
 

441 

one possibility amost others through the use of 

modals (Wu, 2007). 

The distribution of appraising items of 

graduation in the eulogies is set out in table 3. 

 

Table 3. Distribution of Graduation choices 

Polarity Force Focus 

Instances 187 21 

% 90 10 

 

Graduation is central to appraisal system 

(Martin and White, 2005: 136). It operates 

across two axes of scalability that of grading 

according to intensity or amount, and the 

preciseness by which category boundaries are 

drawn. 

It can be seen from the table that the 

eulogizers had predominantly employ 

graduation as force to express meanings of 

intensity and quantity when they describe and 

their memories and time spent with the 

deceased. 

In the appraisal system, graduation is 

utilised to scale attitudinal meanings and 

engagement resources. The scalling is binary, 

either it is focus „prototypicality‟ or force 

„preciseness‟. The way the eulogizers varies 

these scalling options in writing the eulogy truly 

indicates the positioning or evaluation being 

given in that text. The table shows that 

sharpening are the ones most realized as 

opposed to softening. According to Martin and 

White (2005: 139) focus: sharpening is utilised it 

„often flag a positive attitudinal assessment.‟ A 

number of sharpening values in the text 

positively evaluate the attitudinality of 

participants and entities. 

 

The Rhetorical Structure of Eulogy 

In constructing the eulogy, Lazarus 

(1991) as cited in Kunkel and Dennis (2003: 5) 

suggested that there are two major types of 

coping: problem-focused coping (acting and 

dealing with the problem that is causing the 

stress) and emotion-focused coping (regulating 

and dealing with the emotion that is 

surrounding the stress). Hence, based on 

contemporary grief theories, Kunkel and Dennis 

(2003) proposed a new analytical approach to 

the rhetorical analysis of eulogy by dividing the 

modern eulogy into seven common 

characteristics namely credibility of speaker, 

praise for the deceased, self-disclosure emotion, 

problem focused coping, emotion focused 

coping, affirmation of vivid relationship, and 

continuation of interactive bonds. 

 

Table 4. Rhetorical structure of eulogy 

Rhetorical 

Structure 

te
x

t 
1
 

te
x

t 
2
 

te
x

t 
3
 

te
x

t 
4
 

te
x

t 
5
 

Credibility 

of speaker 

v v v v v 

Praise for 

the deceased 

v v v  v 

Self-

Disclosure 

 v v   

Problem-

Focused 

     

Emotion-

Focused 

v v v v v 

Positive 

Reappraisal 

v  v v v 

Affirma-tion  v v v v v 

Continua-

tion 

     

 

The table shows that almost all 

component of rhetorical framework can be 

found in each eulogy. Credibility of the speaker, 

emotion-focused coping, and affirmation of 

vivid relationships are the component that exist 

in all text while problem-focused coping and 

continuation of interactive bonds cannot be 

found in all text. 

 

Credibility of the Speaker 

It refers to the eulogizer acknowledging 

their relationship with the deceased early on in 

the speech. The instance is in the following 

passage: 

Hi everyone. My name is Xiuqi and I’m Mrs 

Lee’s granddaughter... 

 



Inayatul Maula, Djoko Sutopo, Sri Wuli Fitriati/ EEJ 8 (4) 2018 439 - 444
 

442 

The five eulogizer established their 

credibility as eulogizers by acknowledging their 

relationship to the deceased very early in the 

presentation. Even in a dreadful situation of the 

funeral setting, the eulogizers still feel the need 

to establish their credibility through describing 

the relationship with the deceased. This strategy 

is used by the eulogizer to build a case for his or 

her competence to speak in the ceremonial 

position. In addition, by establising their 

competence through ties with the deceased 

generates the honored role for the eulogizer. 

 

Emotion Focused Coping 

In appreciating the amount of time spent, 

or some particular experiences, that the 

eulogizer shared with the deceased, he or she 

often relate stories and recollection to promote 

the appreciation of the deceased in the audience. 

The instance is in the following passage: 

I have precious memories of our 63 

years together. Without her, I would be 

a different man, with a different life. 

She devoted herself to me and our 

children. She was always there when I 

needed her. She has lived a life full of 

warmth and meaning... 
The focus of this strategy is to shift from 

the loss of present and future experiences to a 

thankfulness for shared past experiences. It can 

be seen from the instance that at first the 

eulogizer describes the time spent with the 

deceased then gradually shift to a gratitude of 

having the deceased in his life. He uses the 

appraising items of positive valuation to show 

how worthy their togetherness. How much he is 

grateful to have her for the past 63 years. Thus, 

this is in line with Dennis and Kunkel (2003) 

eulogy rhetoric of positive reappraisal which is 

defined as „efforts to change, refocus, or reframe 

the meanings of an experience or event so that 

they are more positive and less threatening. In 

addition, these strategy aid in consoling the 

audience and exhorting the audience to take 

actions that honor the deceased. 

 

Affirmation of Vivid Relationship 

The strategy is used to vividly remind the 

survivors that the deceased existed materially. A 

vivid impressions of the lives and and characters 

of the lost promotes griever‟s ability and 

willingness to carry on relationship with them. 

The instance is in the following passage: 

Mama understood how passionately I 

felt about these missions. She did not 

stop me but would calmly put things 

into perspective for me and gently bring 

me down to earth. When I was 

miserable because I failed in a mission, 

she was simply there for me, knowing 

words would be cold comfort... 
In creating a more inclusive internalized 

vision of the deceased, the eulogizers reveal 

some private insights and interaction with the 

deceased. The instance elaborates the memories 

and relationships they shared with the deceased. 

This is actually similar to the Positive 

reappraisal-Affirmation of time(s) spent with the 

deceased strategy. However, this strategy is 

narrowing the relationship shared with the 

deceased. Not only appreciating valuable time 

shared with the deceased, but also the intimate 

relationship with the departed. How the 

deceased‟s strongly influence their life and thus 

represent the deceased well-protected memories 

in their psyche. 

After analysing the rhetorical structure of 

the eulogies, the findings suggest that the 

eulogizers used the strategies to praise the 

deceased through mentions of their life, family, 

deeds, actions and other concerns of value of the 

community, and present the audiences with the 

memorable times spent with the deceased and 

how the deceased strongly affect their life as 

well as thankfulness for the lesson learned from 

the deceased.  

The eulogizers mostly utilized the 

affirmation of vivid relationship-revelation of 

private insights and unique relationships. It 

creates a more comprehensive internalized 

relationship with the deceased by expressing the 

feelings toward the deceased. Expressing the 

feelings can be done in various ways, one of the 

successful ways is by putting feelings and 

thoughts about that which has been disturbing 

and confusing into language. Construing a 

coherent narrative in the form of eulogy makes 



Inayatul Maula, Djoko Sutopo, Sri Wuli Fitriati/ EEJ 8 (4) 2018 439 - 444
 

443 

the troubling event more understandable and 

less distressed.  

Therefore, the result is in line with the 

general purpose and function eulogy claimed by 

Kunkel and Dennis (2003) which derives from 

contemporary American funeral oratory. They 

points out that as a consolatory function where 

the dead are assimilated to those who preceded 

them and the living are comforted from their 

experiences of emotional pain.  

Through the well-structured eulogies, the 

eulogizers heighten audience member‟s feelings 

of regard, love, and appreciation for the 

deceased. Shifting the grief of losing the loved 

one to a coherent narrative in the form of 

eulogies which foster the audience‟s emotional 

recovery. This result is in line with other studies 

done by Logan et al. (2017) and  Landau and 

Jonker (2018), they agreed that stimulating the 

recovery with rhetoric provokes particular 

reactions and responses to the loss of the 

deceased by creating a new perspectives, 

effective reappraisal of the shocking loss through 

the used reference of worthiness of the 

deceased‟s traits and legacies as well as to her 

afterlife.  

Based on the findings, the eulogies have 

primarily used the judgement resources rather 

than affect and appreciation within the attitude 

system. The result supports the finding of 

another research done by Warsono (2008), he 

found that judgement implies in addition to 

having positive feelings, the writer also ethically 

has positive judgement about the subject matter 

and positive appreciation strengthens the earlier 

conlusions that the eulogizer has positive 

attitudes towards the deceased. 

 

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION 

 

From the research findings and 

discussion, it concludes that the eulogies have 

primarily used the judgement resources rather 

than affect and appreciation within the attitude 

system. As eulogizing function, the eulogy 

composed largely of laudation and praise, the 

use of judgement appraising items shows how 

the eulogizer‟s assessment towards the admiring 

behaviour of the deceased during her life, the 

eulogizer tends to employ positive attitude 

rather than negative attitude through the 

chunks/ clauses containing positive judgement 

values to reveals their position towards the 

deceased. 

Furthermore, dealing with the 

engagement, the realization of engagement 

appraising items including disclaim, proclaim, 

entertain and attribute, are dispersed unevenly 

in the whole eulogies. Both disclaim and 

entertain are highly appeared exceed the other 

engagement appraising items. This way of using 

engagement appraising items tends to align than 

to disalign the audience as they are sharing the 

statements or assertions that express a 

judgement or opinion that form a community of 

shared values. 

 In the realization of graduation, the 

findings indicate that force is used more than 

focus. It can be implied that in expressing 

meaning and describing the deceased the 

eulogizers utilized the degree of intensity and 

amount. 

 In addition, the finding indicates that 

the utilization of the rhetorical structure 

constributes to the achievement of the 

communicative purpose of eulogy. Through the 

well-structured eulogies, the eulogizers heighten 

the audience member‟s feelings of regard, love, 

and appreciation for the deceased. Shifting the 

grief of losing the loved one to a coherent 

narrative in the form of eulogy which foster the 

audience‟s emotional recovery. 

 Based on the findings, the researcher 

suggests that as language learners we should 

understand the language evaluation which 

includes appraisal analysis. By understanding 

the appraising resources, it enables us to explore 

and identify how the speaker or writer of both 

spoken and written discourse pass judgement on 

people generally, the material objects and 

happenings and so on. 

 

REFERENCES 

 

Frijda, N. H. (1997). Commemorating. In J.W. 

Pennebaker & B. Rime (Eds.), Collective 



Inayatul Maula, Djoko Sutopo, Sri Wuli Fitriati/ EEJ 8 (4) 2018 439 - 444
 

444 

Memory Of Political Events: Social 

Psychological Perspectives (pp. 1037127). 

Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. 

Gallardo, S. and L. Ferrari. (2013). How 

Doctors View Their Health and 

Professional Practice: An Appraisal 

Analysis of Medical Discourse. Journal of 

Pragmatics, 42(2010),  3172-3187. 

Kent, M. L. (1997). The Rhetoric of Eulogies: A 

Generic Critique of Classic 

and Contemporary Funeral Oratory. 

Dissertation of Purdue University. 

Kunkel, A. D. and Dennis, M. R. (2003). Grief 

Consolation in Eulogy Rhetoric: An 

Integrative Framework. Death Studies, 

27(1). 

Landau, J., & Keeley-Jonker, B. (2018). 

Conductor Of Public Feelings: An 

Affective-Emotional Rhetorical Analysis 

of Obama‟s National Eulogy in 

Tucson. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 104(2), 

166-188. 

Lazarus, R. S. (1991). Emotion and Adaptation. 

NewYork: Oxford University Press. 

Logan, E. L., Thornton, J. A., Kane, R. T., & 

Breen, L. J. (2018). Social Support 

Following Bereavement: The Role of 

Beliefs, Expectations, and Support 

Intentions. Death studies, 42(8), 471-482. 

Martin, J. R and P. R. R. White. (2005). The 

Language of Evaluation; Appraisal in 

English. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Martin, J. R. (2009). Genre and Language 

Learning: A Social Semiotic Perspective. 

Journal of Linguistics and Education, 

20(2009), 10-21. 

Morrish, L and H, Sauntson. (2013). Business-

facing Motors for Economic 

Development: An Appraisal Analysis of 

Visions and Values in the Marketised UK 

University. Critical Discourse Studies 10(1), 

61-80. 

Mouton, J. (2001) How to succeed in your Master’s 

and Doctoral Studies: A South African Guide 

and Resource Book. Pretoria: Van Schaik 

Publishers. 

Page, R. E. (2003). An Analysis of Appraisal in 

Childbirth Narratives with Special 

Consideration of Gender Storytelling 

Style, Text 23(2),  211-237. 

Pekarova, R. (2011). Evaluative Language in 

Journalistic Discourse. Thesis 

of  Department of English and American 

Studies in Masaryk University. 

Priyatmojo, A. S. (2011). Political Discourse: 

Obama‟s Appraisal Attitude. Language 

Circle: Journal of Language and Literature, 

6(11), 13-26. 

Read, J. (2009). Weakly-Supervised Techniques for 

the Analysis of 

Evaluation in Text. Dissertation of 

University of Sussex. 

Souza, A. A. de. (2006). The Construal of 

Interpersonal Meanings in the 

Discourse of National Anthems; An Appraisal 

Analysis. Proceedings 33rd International 

Systemic Funtional Congress; 

Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. 

Swain, E. (2007). Constructing an Effective ‘Voice 

in Academic Discussion Writing: An 

Appraisal Theory Perspective. in McCabe, 

A., O‟Donnell, M. and Whittaker, R. 

(eds) Advances in Language and 

Education. London: Continuum. 142-

165. 

Warsono. (2008). A Critical Discourse Analysis 

to Unmask the Ideological Stance behind 

“Al-Qaeda in the Asia Pacific: Origin, 

Capability and Threat. Jurnal Humaniora, 

20(2). 

West, V. (2014). Healing Through Hope: A 

Rhetorical Analysis of Barrack Obama‟s 

National Eulogies. Undergraduate Research 

Awards. Paper 26. 

Wu, S. M. (2007). The Use of Engagement 

Resources in Highand Low-rated 

Undergraduate Geography essays. 

Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 

6(3), 254-271.