Construing Evaluation Through Patterns: Register-specific Variations of the Introductory it Pattern

Abstract

This study investigates the introductory it pattern (as in it is important that the technique looks effective) in six varied registers in the British National Corpus (BNC), exploring how it is used to construct evaluation and social interaction in different contexts of situation. Register-specific features were identified in terms of the evaluative semantics of this pattern, the associated clauses and the agents of evaluated clauses. Drawing on the affect, judgement and appreciation dimensions within Martin and White’s Appraisal Framework, this study has unpacked the complexity of evaluative meaning conveyed in this pattern, observing the highest proportion of judgement in academic registers but affect in newspaper. The results show that this structure is most heavily used in academic discourse and that though to-infinitive is the most frequent, a that-clause appears more frequently in academic discourse. Register variation is also found regarding the agents of evaluated clauses, in which academic texts and newspapers most often comment on inanimate entities but fiction and magazines prefer to conceal the agents of what they are evaluating. Thus, the introductory it pattern is a salient evaluation device widely employed in the six registers, seeing varying extents to which its rhetorical use indexes different value systems and discursive norms of registers.