A filial son or a loving mother?: Evaluation as recontextualisation devices in property transaction reports

Abstract

Many of the utterances that we speak are evaluative. Although there have been increasingly systematic attempts at classifying evaluative lexes, such constructs have not been applied in real contexts. One of the problems is the implicit realisations of evaluation, which is not ‘simply there’ to be pinned down. The second problem is how evaluation is related to the intertextual positioning of the readers. This paper argues that the system underlying evaluation should best be situated in the practice of recontextualisation through which different frames or activities can be invoked. Drawing on data from property transaction reports, it is shown that the genre is intertextually constructed as a news report and an advertisement in a subtle manner, which is made possible by the use of evaluation as the recontextualisation of the two different activities involved. [Display omitted] [Display omitted]