Functions of Language - Volume 15, Issue 1, 2008

Evaluation — the function and usage of language to express the speaker’s or writer’s opinion — has only relatively recently become the object of systematic linguistic research, for example in stance or appraisal analysis. This paper proposes an alternative, corpus-based approach to evaluation which assumes that there are at least ten different meaning dimensions (parameters) along which speakers can evaluate aspects of the world. This framework helps to explain the complexity of evaluation, and in particular what is here called evaluative interplay or combination: the expression of more than two evaluative parameters at the same time, which can be realized by evaluative conflation (evaluations signalled by one and the same linguistic item) and evaluative collocation (evaluations signalled by different linguistic items). Both the parameter-based framework and evaluative interplay are illustrated with a number of examples from authentic discourse (mostly from British newspapers).

Political interviews are defined as question- and answer sequences in which interviewers and interviewees negotiate validity claims. Looked upon from an interpersonal angle, the interviewer sets up a position and requests the interviewee to ratify their claim by expressing alignment or non-alignment. This contribution examines the expression of non-alignment in a corpus of 12 interviews between journalists and the losers of the general elections in Britain (1997) and Germany (1998). The data share identical external parameters, very similar contextual features and almost identical argumentation strategies. In spite of that, the expression of non-alignment differs significantly. This is primarily due to language-specific preferences for the realization of turn-initial positions and their functions as interpersonal, topical and textual themes. In the British data, multiple themes are more frequent for the expression of non-alignment and thus assigned the status of a preferred variant; their sequential organization adheres to the sequence [[textual theme] [interpersonal theme] [topical theme]], which indicates that a negotiation of meaning is intended. Single topical themes are less frequent and therefore assigned the status of a dispreferred variant indicating that a negotiation of meaning is not intended. In the German data, the sequential organization of multiple themes does not display that kind of preference pattern and multiple themes do not necessarily indicate that a negotiation of meaning is intended. Regarding possible perlocutionary effects, the expression of non-alignment in British English is more process-oriented and thus more dynamic, while its German counterpart is more product-oriented and thus more abrupt.

This paper reconsiders the concept of ‘evaluation of status’ and applies it to visual as well as to verbal texts. The paper explores the relationship between ‘status’ and other related concepts such as epistemic modality. It is argued that a conceptual notion of status is useful in analysing texts, particularly those which construe knowledge. Examples of texts where the status of propositions has high social significance are discussed. The paper then demonstrates how notions of status may be applied to visual images, taking as an example a television documentary film. The status of the various images in the film, and how those images interact with the concurrent verbal text, is then explored.

Evaluation is central to Labov and Waletzky’s (1997) narrative model; without it stories lack any ‘point’. But in narratives elicited from witnesses and suspects at the start of police interviews, evaluation is markedly sparse or absent. This paper examines the presence of three kinds of evaluation in the interview’s questioning phase: interviewer evaluation, elicited evaluation and interviewee evaluation, focusing on discourse markers and evaluative patterns and frameworks that reveal how evaluation is carried out in a range of question and response speech acts (Stenström 1984) and looking at the marking of stance by interviewers in relation to the evidential value of the elicited detail. It shows how interviewers and interviewees change their stance and footing, moving from interrogator to therapist and from cooperation to non-cooperation. Drawing on pragmatic principles from conversational analysis of institutional interaction (Drew and Heritage 1992) and from appraisal theory (Martin 2000), analysis reveals features of contested and collaborative evaluation, marked in turns that reveal concessive and adversative positions. Conclusions point to the function of evaluative frames as important features of interviewer activity, suggesting that these function to achieve a change of state in suspect and witness knowledge and in the evidential value of information.

Evaluation is a pervasive element in spoken and written language but its identification poses serious problems to linguistic researchers, especially when they are dealing with larger amounts of text which require the application of computer-assisted analytic techniques. This article explores ways of identifying items of evaluative meaning in a three million word corpus of linguistic book reviews, a text type that is particularly rich in expressions of positive and negative evaluation. It discusses whether it is at all possible to capture evaluation in a corpus in a systematic way and which analytic strategies may be most promising in the search for a larger set of meaningful patterns. The paper ends with a discussion of some unresolved issues in the area of evaluation research and sketches tasks for future activities in the field.