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Volume 48, Issue 1
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Abstract

Abstract

This study takes a corpus pragmatics approach to investigate the use of evaluative language in professor reviews, focusing on how review writers express evaluation through recurrent four-word sequences and the pragmatic functions of these sequences in positive and negative reviews on the website, RateMyProfessors.com. Based on an analysis of a 2.9-million-word corpus of free text comments, the findings indicate that positive reviews used more 4-grams, and more varied types, than negative ones. The 4-word sequences were found to carry out four pragmatic functions: attitudinal evaluation, reader engagement, referential expression, and discourse organization. While a similar distribution of the main functional categories was observed among the top 100 4-grams in both review types, with evaluative clusters being most predominant, distinctive intra-genre variations were found in the ways review writers employed different functional sub-categories. For example, positive reviews relied heavily on hedged suggestion 4-grams to engage readers, whereas negative reviews used directive 4-grams for the same purpose. These findings suggest the important role of multi-word sequences in the understanding of evaluative resources in professor reviews of different valence types.

© Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University
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/content/journals/10.1075/consl.21010.ho
2022-05-02
2023-06-02

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A corpus-pragmatics approach to evaluation in professor reviews
Concentric 48, 114 (2022); https://doi.org/10.1075/consl.21010.ho
/content/journals/10.1075/consl.21010.ho
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): corpus pragmatics; evaluative language; multi-word sequences; online professor reviews; 常用詞串; 教師教學評價; 評價語言; 語料庫語用學

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