Actualization of Evaluativity as a Qualitative Category in the Discourse of English Internet Film Review

Abstract

Introduction. The article presents the results of the analysis aimed at identifying actualization methods of evaluativity as a qualitative category within the frames of the evaluative subgenres of expert and professional film reviews. The author assumes that evaluativity serves as a method of explicating subject's attitude towards the content of the film. The relevance of the study is determined by a lack of research dedicated to the analysis of the methods expressing author’s position within the evaluative genre of internet film review. The interconnection of evaluativity category, subject factor and modus as a method of explicating subjective meanings of the statement are analyzed.Methodology and sources. The methodology of the research is based on the classification of evaluative meanings developed by N. Arutyunova. The research methodology includes PoS tagging of the texts, identification of evaluative units including qualitative adjectives and adverbs, as well as description and comparison of leading evaluation types that actualize author's position. The methodology was studied using the example of a text corpora consisting of expert and professional film reviews extracted from the web archive of the journal of Film Criticism and the website metacritic.com.Results and discussion. With the implementation of PoS tagging and quantitative method of analysis leading evaluation categories within the corpora of the professional and expert film reviews were described and compared. The results have shown that the leading type of evaluation within the frames of the referred evaluative subgenres is represented by the emotional evaluation category. The results have also indicated that the leading evaluation types of expert evaluative discourse include prescriptive and ethical evaluation, whereas professional evaluative discourse is characterized by the prevalence of generalized evaluative units.Conclusion. The analysis allowed the author to conclude that the referred genres are characterized mainly by increased expressivity and emotiveness. However, author’s position actualization in the discourse of expert film review implicates detailed analysis of structural contents of the presented norms, as well as content of the film, whereas the discourse of professional film review is characterized by increased generalization tendency, which implicates low degree of authors’ competency.