Functional approaches to the study of language may not only be used to characterize discourse structures, but also to assess their communicative quality. In fact, discourse analysis and evaluation are conceptually related activities. In this volume the link between analysis and evaluation is explored in seven studies discussing a variety of discourse genres like package inserts, telephone openings, survey interviews, meetings, government brochures and direct mail letters. The analytical concepts used stem from different strands of research into language, including cognitive linguistics, pragmalinguistics, conversational analysis and persuasion research.

Evaluation is the linguistic expression of speaker/writer opinion, and has only recently become the focus of linguistic analysis. This book presents the first corpus-based account of evaluation; one hundred newspaper articles collated to form a 70,000 word comparable corpus, drawn from both tabloid and broadsheet media. The book provides detailed explanations and justifications of the underlying framework of evaluation, as well as demonstrating how this is part of the larger framework of media discourse. Unlike many other linguistic analyses of media language, it makes frequent reference to the production circumstances of newspaper discourse, in particular the so-called 'news values' that shape the creation of the news. Cutting-edge and insightful, Evaluation in Media Discourse will be of interest to academics and researchers in corpus linguistics and media discourse.

A crucial aspect of any discourse is what the writer or speaker thinks about his/her topic - in other words, how the writer or speaker evaluates the topic. Evaluation in Text brings together work from many different perspectives, providing a unique profile of this important topic which will be essential reading for any student or researcher of Discourse Analysis. - ;This is an accessible and wide-ranging account of current research in one of the most central aspects of discourse analsysis: evalution in and of written and spoken language. Evalution is the broad cover term for the expression of a speakers - or writers - attitudes, feelings, and values. It covers areas sometimes referred to as stance, modality, affect or appraisal. Evaluation (a) expresses the speakers opinion and thus reflects the value-system of that person and their community; (b) constructs relations between speaker and hearer (or writer and reader); (c) plays a key role in how discourse is organized. Every act of evalution expresses and contributes to a communal value-system, which in turn is a component of the ideology that lies behind every written or spoken text. Conceptually, evaluation is comparative, subjective, and value-laden. In linguistic terms it may be analysed lexically, grammatically, and textually. These themes and perspectives are richly exemplified in the chapters of this book, by authors aware and observant of the fact that processes of linguistic analysis are themselves inherently evaluative. The editors open the book by introducing the field and provide separate, contextual introductions to each chapter. They have also collated the references into one list, itself a valuable research guide. The exemplary perspectives and analyses presented by the authors will be of central interest to everyone concerned with the analysis of discourse, whether as students of language, literature, or communication. They also have much to offer students of politics and culture. The editors open the book by introducing the field and provide separate, contextual introductions to each chapter. They have also collated the references into one list, itself a valuable research guide. The exemplary perspectives and analyses presented by the authors will be of central interest to everyone concerned with the analysis of discourse, whether as students of language, literature, or communication. They also have much to offer students of politics and culture. -

This is the first comprehensive account of the Appraisal Framework. The underlying linguistic theory is explained and justified, and the application of this flexible tool, which has been applied to a wide variety of text and discourse analysis issues, is demonstrated throughout by sample text analyses from a range of registers, genres and fields.

It is now an acknowledged fact in the world of linguistics that the concept of evaluation is crucial, and that there is very little – if any – discourse that cannot be analyzed through the prism of its evaluative content. This book presents some of the latest developments in the study of this phenomenon. Released more than a decade later than Hunston and Thompson’s (2000) Evaluation in Text, Evaluation in Context is designed as its sequel, in an attempt to continue, update and extend the different avenues of research opened by the earlier work. Both theoretical and empirical studies on the topic are presented, with the intention of scrutinizing as many of its dimensions as possible, by not only looking at evaluative texts, but also considering the aspects of the discursive context that affect the final evaluative meaning at both the production and reception stages of the evaluative act. The editors’ main objective has been to gather contributions which investigate the manifold faces and phases of evaluation by presenting a wide variety of perspectives that include different linguistic theories (e.g. Axiological Semantics, Functionalism or Politeness Theory), different levels of linguistic description (e.g. phonological, lexical or semantic), and different text types and contexts (e.g. the evaluation found in ironic discourse, the multimodality of media discourse or the world of politics, just to name a few). The volume can be of use not only for scholars who study the evaluative function of language, but also for students who wish to pursue research in the area.

No detailed description available for "Problems in Argument Analysis and Evaluation".

Papers presented at a conference held June 14-16, 2003, in Pontignano, Siena.