Appraisal

www.grammatics.com/appraisal

A description of evaluation – the language of evaluation – speaker attitudes in text

A few examples of the type of questions which Appraisal enables us to investigate:
 the linguistic basis of differences in a writer/speaker’s ‘style’ by which they may
present themselves as, for example, more or less deferential, dominating, authoritative,
inexpert, cautious, conciliatory, aloof, engaged, emotion. impersonal, and so on,
 how the different uses of evaluative language by speakers/writers act to construct
different authorial voices and textual personas,
 how different genres and text types may conventionally employ different evaluative
and otherwise rhetorical strategies,
 the underlying, often covert value systems which shape and are disseminated by a
speaker/writer’s utterances,
 the different assumptions which speakers/writers make about the value and belief
systems of their respective intended audiences,
 how different modes of story-telling can be characterised by their different uses of the
resources of evaluation,
 the communicative strategies by which some discourses (for example those of the
media and science) construct supposedly ‘objective’ or impersonal modes of
textuality.

Three subsystems:
 Attitude – the values by which speakers pass judgements on participants and
processes
 Engagement – the speaker’s/writer’s positioning in a text
 Graduation – raise or lower the impact and force of the utterance

Attitude is divided into three subsystems:

 Affect (emotion) emotional response
positive – negative
low to high intensity
through verbs of emotion (Mental Processes) to love/to hate, to frighten/to
reassure, to interest/to bore, to enrage/to placate - (Your offer pleases me, I hate
chocolate.)
 through adverbs (typically Manner): happily/sadly (Sadly the government has
decided to abandon its commitment to the comprehensive school system.)
through adjectives of emotion: happy/sad, worried/confident, angry/pleased,
keen/uninterested - (I'm sad you’ve decided to do that, I'm happy she’s joining
the group, She's proud of her achievements, he's frightened of spiders, etc),
through nominalisation (the turning of verbs and adjectives into nouns):
joy/despair, confidence/insecurity (His fear was obvious to all, I was overcome
with joy)

 Judgement (ethics) the speaker’s evaluation of human behaviour,

through adverbials (justly, honestly, stupidly),
attributes and epithets (a corrupt politician, she’s brave),
nominal (a hero, a cheat),
verbs (to cheat, sin)
Inscribed, i.e. lexically explicit (a lazy student), or tokens, i.e. indirectly
implied (a student who surfs the internet more than she studies her books)
Social sanction – rules or regulations codified by the culture, legality morality,
Social esteem – lowered or raised in the community but without legal or moral
implications

 Appreciation (aesthetics) evaluation of objects and products

positively or negatively
low to high force/intensity
Reaction: impact: stunning, dramatic/dull, monotonous, quality: lovely,
attractive/ugly, plain
Composition: unified, harmonious/ unbalanced, incomplete
Valuation: important, crucial, dangerous, unhealthy

Engagement – intertextual positioning

 Monogloss – a clear assertion which ignores everything else: the programme is
running over budget and failing to improve standards
 Heterogloss – refers to and acknowledges other sources, opening or closing down:
opponents say the scheme puts too much power in the hands of the sponsors
How texts are construed to persuade and influence, explicitly and indirectly.
Probability – perhaps, it may, I think
Reality phase – it seems
Attribution – his alleged, scientists have found
Proclamation – in fact, it is true
Expectation /predictably - of course
Counter-expectation – amazingly

Graduation
 Force – operates across value of attitude (slightly, somewhat, very, completely, small,
large, near), implicit (adore – love – like), explicit (slightly, somewhat, really)
 Focus – hedging, vague language, sharpen or soften: I was feeling kind of tired, a true
friend