Use Of Evaluative Language Research Articles

The Discursive Journey of Meta-Awareness: Literacy (Teacher) Identity Within Preservice Teacher Preparation

The purpose of this study is to examine preservice teachers’ (PTs) meta-awareness related to their developing literacy (teacher) identities and examine the discursive belief systems and patterns embedded within this context. In this instrumental case study, we aim to determine the relationship(s) between meta-awareness and PTs’ literacy (teacher) identities through how they demonstrate their knowledge of literacy instruction and envision future literacy practices. The findings include PTs’ demonstration of their meta-awareness of literacy through their use of evaluative language, explicit memories, and content appropriation. Because personal and professional identities draw deeply from one another in shaping how PTs demonstrate their learning, our discussion expands upon this duality. Implications for teacher educators include recontextualizing one's past experiences as a reader and writer in literacy methods coursework as a means of moving toward agentic redress and responsive instruction.

Unpacking Evaluative Meaning-Making Resources in Verbal Movie Descriptions: A Comparative Study of Native and Non-Native English Speakers

The present study explored how native speakers (NSs) and non-native speakers (NNSs) of English exploit evaluative meaning-making resources of English when sharing their judgements and opinions on English movie descriptions. To this end, 10 native speakers of Australian English and 10 Iranian non-native speakers took part in on-line informal interviews, based on an approach known as snowball sampling. The study employed a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis. The results revealed significant differences in the use of evaluative language between the two groups, with NNSs focusing more on Affect, Judgment and Appreciation respectively, while NSs prioritized Appreciation, followed by Affect and Judgment. The findings are discussed by reference to cultural and linguistic differences in the use of evaluative resources. Moreover, NSs relied more on invoked evaluation whereas NNSs showed a preference for inscribed evaluation. However, both groups utilized a higher frequency of positive descriptions in during their descriptions of English movies. These findings can provide valuable insights for language teaching and research, highlighting the significance of incorporating evaluative language resources into language instruction. The study further brought attention to the interconnectedness of diverse evaluative resources such as reference to emotions and judgements with complex linguistic and cultural domains.

Functions of idioms in English as lingua franca: An appraisal system account

AbstractIdiomatic expressions are not just neutral equivalents of their literal counterparts, but exert some sort of evaluative force. This study employed the appraisal system (AS) to explore the functions of idiomatic expressions and their variations in English as a lingua franca context, and to compare different academic domains in terms of use of evaluative language in the form of idiomatic expressions. To this end, the corpus of English as a lingua franca in academic settings and the Vienna–Oxford International Corpus of English were searched for idiom tokens through whole‐phrase and keyword search. The idioms and their variations were classified based on the AS. The findings indicated that social and behavioral scientific texts included higher proportions of evaluative idiomatic expressions whereas medical and natural scientific texts generated lower percentages of appraisal idioms. There was a stronger tendency in both corpora toward using idioms as appreciation as compared to judgment and affect. Given the employed methodology, the AS could not be applied to some idioms for their compositionality nature.

Exploring Evaluation Language in the Conclusion chapter of MA Dissertations: Analyzing of Iraqi EFL Learners' Writings

One of the most important functions of language for writers is to communicate their opinions or thoughts about people or things. Thus, in academic writing, a writer must be able to use evaluative and interactive language. In this study, we focus on the use of evaluative language, appraisals, in academic writings that were conducted by Iraqi EFL writers, as captured by appraisal theory (Martin & White 2005). We are interested in how those writers express evaluative meanings in their work. This study focuses on Attitude, one of the three subsystems of the Appraisal Theory. The results showed that Iraqi writers used more Appreciation resources than Judgment and Affect. This fact informs us that those writers chose to reveal less personal feelings and avoid clear ethical or moral evaluation.

An Analysis of the Engagement System of Vietnamese Research Articles in the Light of the Appraisal Framework

Evaluation is widely accepted by many scientists as one of the most basic and important functions of language worth studying deeply. As a result, evaluative language has drawn a lot of interests worldwide. Yet, the Vietnamese language community appears to be rather unfamiliar with this term. In order to shed further light on the use of evaluative language in Vietnam, this article examines how evaluative language is exploited by Vietnamese linguists in a corpus of 35 Vietnamese empirical research articles in the light of the Appraisal framework by Martin and White (2005). More specifically, the study analyses the frequency of categories of the Engagement system in the Appraisal framework and studies in-depth realizations of the Contract sub-system. Results show that Contract resources are more frequently employed than Expand. Writers tend to contract their dialogues more in the Conclusion section of the articles. It is hoped that the research results will be a useful reference for article writers and they can contribute to the literature materials for the fields of evaluative language and academic writing pedagogy in Vietnam.

Academic writing and identity: evaluative discourse in academic papers across cohorts of 20th century linguists

Abstract Using a cohort sequential quantitative design and evaluative features drawn from Systemic Functional Grammar, this study investigates diachronic variation in linguists’ use of evaluation to perform scholarly identities in English academic writing. More specifically, it focuses on the use of statements, commands, modality, comment assessment, and positive and negative lexis, in early and late career papers from 30 linguists born between 1905 and 1960. These linguists were grouped into three cohorts based on year of birth and studied in terms of variation along developmental and cross-generational timescales. Within the developmental timescale, scholars were found to use more evaluation in early career writing than in late career writing. Cohort-specific developmental changes are identified in the frequency of modality and comment assessment. Developmental and cohort-specific trends are found to occur within the backdrop of an overall decrease in the use of evaluative language within the discipline. Results point to a complex diachronic model of academic identity enactment in writing, whereby evaluative features pattern in similar or different ways depending on the timescale considered.

Online learning and language

Online learning is a well-established mode for tertiary education and training. However, technology-mediated learning at a distance continues to face challenges to participant engagement, despite the proliferation of models of effective online learning and the implementation of increasingly sophisticated technologies to enhance learning (Bragg, Walsh & Heyeres, 2021). The critical need to build and maintain relationships for effective learning continues to be confounded by the geographic and temporal distribution of online participants as well as the nuances of the technology in use. Online learning occurs in collaborative text-spaces within learning management systems, social media spaces and their attendant learning objects such as forums, many of which foreground language as the primary resource for making meaning with others. As such, ongoing challenges to engagement in online learning may be viewed with fresh eyes by considering the language-based interpersonal affordances of these text-spaces. This pecha kucha presentation examines how the language choices made by learning facilitators impact on student engagement in online learning. It draws on a case study of the strategic use of evaluative language – the language used to express feelings and build relationships - by one teacher educator to engage initial teacher education students in online learning. Underpinned by the Systemic Functional Linguistic model of language (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014) and following Martin & White (2005), appraisal analysis of weekly forum posts across three iterations of a unit of study shows how changes to language choices made by the teacher educator positively impacted on student engagement. This illuminates the relationship between online learning and language, and how judicious use of language-based meaning making resources can be used to improve online participant engagement.

Writing History in a Supreme Court Ruling: Evaluative language in the majority opinion concerning Dobbs vs. Jackson

This paper conducts an exploratory investigation into the use of evaluative language in the historical section of the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. (2022). The investigation employs Martin & White’s (2005) Appraisal Theory, adapted specifically for the analysis of the particular evaluative features of historical discourse as elaborated on, for example, by Myskow (2018a) and Oteíza & Pinuer (2013). The findings confirm that a revised version of the Appraisal framework can be fruitfully applied to systematically account for the complex interplay between, on the one hand, the various sources of evaluation, and, on the other hand, the specific attitudinal resources, employed by the authorial voice in an attempt to construe and advance a particular view of the past. This particular ideological view is ultimately leveraged to produce a convincing justificatory argument for the overruling of the two previous landmark Supreme Court decisions that had, respectively, granted and confirmed abortion as a constitutional right in the United States of America.

University Students’ Perceptions of Their Lecturer's Use of Evaluative Language in Oral Feedback

This study investigates university students’ perceptions of their lecturer's use of evaluative language in the oral feedback on their presentation performance. Using appraisal as the analytical framework, we examine the lecturer's use of evaluative language in oral feedback and students’ perceptions of the effects of evaluative language features. Results show that: 1) evaluative language carrying intensified attitudinal meanings closely relevant to students’ effort and performance is perceived as a desirable option to provide specific oral feedback; and 2) questions are regarded as an evaluative device to formulate communicative feedback for academic presentations. The study concludes that students need to understand the use of evaluative language, especially those related to the constructions of a dialogic voice when lecturers invite alternative viewpoints to be discussed in the feedback process. This study highlights students’ interpretations of feedback in the oral feedback process and pedagogical implications for providing oral feedback to facilitate learning.

Examining evaluative language used in assessment feedback on business students’ academic writing

Written assessment feedback in higher education has been examined from different perspectives. However, there is limited empirical evidence of how tutors use language to provide assessment feedback on students’ assessed academic writing. By deploying the rarely used Appraisal framework in Systemic Functional Linguistics, this innovative study examined the use of evaluative language by tutors in feedback on undergraduate business students’ academic writing in two assignments at a distance university. The data consisted of 16 tutor assessment feedback summaries on eight students’ written assignments and interviews with those students. The Appraisal system of Attitude ( Judgement, Appreciation and Affect ) was used to analyse the evaluative language of the summaries. The analysis of student interviews provided insights into their perceptions of tutor feedback, complementing the linguistic analysis. The findings suggest that tutors’ evaluative language was primarily used to judge students rather than to appreciate the assignment, and show their emotional reactions, potentially owing to the distance learning context. Additionally, while most of the feedback was perceived positively, students found certain types of tutor feedback less helpful. The paper has implications for moving assessment feedback research forward through applying the Appraisal framework, improving assessment strategies and tutor formative feedback practices in writing assessment. • Examines feedback summaries on distance undergraduate students’ assignments. • Investigates innovatively evaluative language in feedback summaries through an SFL Perspective (Appraisal framework). • Feedback summaries focus on students’ writing behaviour rather than their assignments. • Tutor’s choice of evaluative language can affect student learning experiences.

The Construction of Stance and Authorial Voice in Medical Texts Written by Professional Scholars

The focus of the present study is on how professional scholars argue their propositions while maintaining a relationship of solidarity with their readers in the discussion section of medical research articles. More specifically, it provides explanations of (1) how attitude features of effect, judgment, and appreciation are disseminated across academic medical texts published in reputable journals, (2) how different writer voices are constructed through the use of evaluative language, and (3) the assumptions that professional published writers make about the values and beliefs of their readers. Mackey and Gass (2005) Appraisal theory was employed in the present study because it focuses on interpersonal meanings that provide writers and speakers with the means to be critical, value, reject, accept, and challenge other positions. The findings revealed high instances of Appraisal resources in the discussion section of the medical texts. Thus, language played an important role and was used rhetorically to achieve argumentative goals. The interpersonal language was highly achieved through resources of engagement. The study contributes new understandings of interpersonal meaning in the professional writers’ medical texts from the functional perspective of Appraisal theory. The findings may provide new directions for the development of literacy in the genre of academic research writing.

A corpus-pragmatics approach to evaluation in professor reviews

AbstractThis study takes a corpus pragmatics approach to investigate the use of evaluative language in professor reviews, focusing on how review writers express evaluation through recurrent four-word sequences and the pragmatic functions of these sequences in positive and negative reviews on the website,RateMyProfessors.com. Based on an analysis of a 2.9-million-word corpus of free text comments, the findings indicate that positive reviews used more 4-grams, and more varied types, than negative ones. The 4-word sequences were found to carry out four pragmatic functions: attitudinal evaluation, reader engagement, referential expression, and discourse organization. While a similar distribution of the main functional categories was observed among the top 100 4-grams in both review types, with evaluative clusters being most predominant, distinctive intra-genre variations were found in the ways review writers employed different functional sub-categories. For example, positive reviews relied heavily on hedged suggestion 4-grams to engage readers, whereas negative reviews used directive 4-grams for the same purpose. These findings suggest the important role of multi-word sequences in the understanding of evaluative resources in professor reviews of different valence types.

The evaluation of status in Boris Johnson’s political speeches

AbstractThis study compares two seminal speeches given by Boris Johnson in the context of Brexit. The first is from 2018 during his tenure as Foreign Secretary, and the second from 2020, by which time he had become Prime Minister. The transcripts of the two complete speeches together constitute a corpus of 7,270 words. The current study applies Hunston’s (2000,2008,2011) model of evaluation as a means of testing Johnson’s attitude towards the propositions he develops through his political oratory. Using the concepts of evaluation of status and value, this model allows us to identify Johnson’s degree of alignment with his representation of the world, and to perceive an ideological component in his choices here. It is hypothesized that the changes which took place in the political landscape in the time that separated the two speeches, a period of two years in which Johnson became Prime Minister and Britain left the European Union, may have had an effect on his use of evaluative language. The study reveals statistically significant findings. Johnson is found to have changed from contributing primarily world-creating propositional content in his 2018 speech to a more significant use of world-reflecting statements in his 2020 speech, and to rely in both speeches most importantly on himself as the source of information. The study also reveals a reluctance to display any hypothetical speech behaviour, and a strong preference for truth driven statements.

The language of evaluation: What the evaluation says about the evaluator

The language of evaluation as a subsystem of linguistic means with special pragmatic functions is examined in the context of scientific communication on an interpersonal and personal levels. On the one hand, the role of the evaluation language in reflecting social relationships in the scientific field is emphasized, and on the other hand, the individual characteristics of researchers in establishing professional relationships with their colleagues. It is shown how the participants in the scientific discourse construct their professional identity through the choice of certain types of evaluation resources. Four types of means of evaluation are the focus of consideration, which are central to the evaluative qualification and the evaluative positioning in scientific discourse: evaluative lexemes, modal epistemic words, means of authorization and emphasizing metatextual structures with predicates of mental information processing. It has been noted that different researchers use the same means of evaluation in different ways. The different use of evaluative language can be explained by individual preferences when choosing pragmatic strategies for conducting scientific discussions with other researchers. Accordingly, general professional profiles of the authors of the analyzed articles are distinguished, which reflect their typical language behavior models in interaction with potential communication partners. The description of the profiles is operationalized by metaphorical terms scientistdebater, scientist-diplomat, scientist-didactician. The theoretical articles by three German linguists, who are well-known and authoritative experts in their field, serve as empirical material for the analysis. The methodology is based on the theoretical foundations of language pragmatics, interactional sociolinguistics and discourse analysis.

Persuasion in Engineering Reports: Evaluative Resources and Targets in Practice

This study investigates the use of the attitude system in engineering writing, including how attitude resources are deployed and what they target. The study analyses 10 professional engineering texts. Research suggests that professional engineering writing is largely an object-centred form of written communication, that is, focused on physical objects (Ding, 2001; McKenna, 1997). Engineering writing also has a persuasive purpose and an ‘objective’ style (Winsor, 2006), which can be challenging for novice engineering writers as it requires a command of evaluative language including an understanding of how and to what evaluation can be applied. Appraisal system offers an approach to understanding the use of evaluative language. Findings show that the valuation subtype of appreciation, a subsystem of attitude, is used in significant preference to all others. Physical objects and activities are the most commonly evaluated targets. These findings have implications for teaching writing to engineering students.

ASSESSMENT OF A GENRE-BASED APPROACH TO SCIENTIFIC WRITING THROUGH THE ANALYSIS OF STUDENT-PRODUCED ABSTRACTS

A course aimed at writing Scientific Research Articles (SRA) in English was offered to Spanish-speaking researchers at a public university in Argentina. It deployed activities described by the Reading to Learn Pedagogy (R2L) (MARTIN; ROSE, 2012). This article assesses the effectiveness of this pedagogy by analyzing students’ productions. We compared students’ abstracts of SRA written before and after the implementation of R2L’s practices, considering the presence or absence of rhetorical sections and the use of evaluative language under the light of the System of Appraisal (MARTIN; WHITE, 2005). Texts written after the course include a larger number of sections compared to the ones written before, and they also exhibit a larger amount of Attitude and Graduation elements. The higher complexity of the texts written after the course suggests that the teaching of scientific genres to English as a Foreign Language students through an R2L-informed approach is effective.

Evaluative Language in Conclusion Sections of Vietnamese Linguistic Research Articles

Evaluative language has recently been of great concern as, according to Hunston, “evaluation is one of the most basic and important functions of language worth studying deeply” (2011, p. 11). However, the term seems to be rather new in Vietnamese linguistic community. In order to shed further light on the use of evaluative language in Vietnamese, this article is to examine how evaluative language is exploited by Vietnamese linguists in the conclusion section of their research articles. This study combines both quantitative and qualitative approaches to analyse the ways explicit evaluative language is used in the corpus of 30 Vietnamese empirical research articles in three reputable journals of linguistics in Vietnam. More specifically, the study investigates various evaluative acts classified in the three systems of the Appraisal Framework (by Martin & White, 2005) including Attitude, Engagement and Graduation. Findings are expected to show outstanding patterns of evaluative language used in this section of linguistic research articles such as the salient occurrence of certain evaluative domains or sub-systems, etc. Results of the study are hoped to be of reference for article writers as well as to enrich literature materials for the fields of evaluative language and academic writing pedagogy in Vietnam.

A multidimensional approach to Spanish–English bilingual preschoolers’ narrative skills (Un enfoque multidimensional de las habilidades narrativas de los niños preescolares bilingües inglés/español)

ABSTRACT We identify language and discourse skills in 54-month-old Spanish–English bilingual preschoolers and their English-speaking monolingual peers, using multiple measures. Forty-one Spanish–English bilingual and 25 English monolingual children, all US born, viewed an eight-minute wordless video. The bilingual children recounted the story once in English and once in Spanish, in counterbalanced order. The story retellings were transcribed and coded for discourse skills (narrative length, narrative components and uses of evaluative language) and language skills (number of words, number of different words, MLUw). No difference was found in the two groups´ overall language or discourse skills, assessed in the narrative production, with the exception of certain uses of evaluative language. Within the bilingual group, all measures, except MLUw, were highly correlated across the two languages. Our multidimensional analysis of narrative structure and use of evaluative language sheds light on certain differences between the ways in which English monolinguals and Spanish–English bilinguals organize their narrative discourse. We discuss the advantages of using this multidimensional approach in assessing bilinguals´ language and discourse abilities in narrative production.

“Commenting on your work is a waste of time only!”: An appraisal-based study of evaluative language in supervisory feedback

Research on supervisory feedback on master’s theses, especially attitudinal stances conveyed in such feedback, is thin on the ground. Students’ construal of their supervisors’ attitudes, however, can have a profound impact on their engagement with supervisory feedback. Drawing on the appraisal framework, which characterizes attitudinal meanings in terms of affect (i.e., emotional responses), judgement (i.e., normative evaluation of human behaviors) and appreciation (i.e., aesthetically-/socially-based evaluation of objects and products), this study examined Nepalese supervisors’ attitudinal stances communicated in written comments on master’s thesis drafts (n = 76) submitted by English-as-a-foreign-language students and oral feedback on proposal and thesis defences (n = 89). Quantitative analyses revealed that while instances of appreciation dominated in the supervisors’ use of evaluative language, judgements were also frequent, with affective responses trailing far behind. In both the oral feedback and written comments, significant disciplinary variations were observed for certain types of judgment and appreciation. These findings are discussed in terms of disciplinary culture and the potential impact of the attitudinal stances on students’ learning. Implications are derived for the productive framing of supervisory feedback to facilitate students’ feedback uptake.

Persuasion strategies for demonstrating topic significance in reports of randomised controlled trials

Randomised controlled trials are considered the gold standard for assessing the effectiveness of treatments. Since the 1990s, there have been growing concerns about the objectivity of RCT reporting, leading to the creation of The Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) Statement. Although this document provides a medical perspective on the reporting requirements, it does not provide explicit guidelines on language use. This paper focuses on Introductions of clinical psychology research articles (RAs) classified as RCT reports. Within the ESP tradition, RA Introductions have been identified as the most rhetorically complex RA sections. Consequently, a remarkable volume of ESP research on the RA genre has focused on the linguistic means of persuasion in the introductory section. However, the primary focus on lexical and grammatical features has been found to have significant limitations in exploring genre-sensitive language use. This study uses the appraisal system developed in systemic functional linguistics to investigate the use of evaluative language for demonstrating topic significance in RCT Introductions. The results indicate the existence of three strands of evaluation targeting the disorder under investigation with reference to its: (i) symptoms/effects; (ii) affected population, and (iii) treatment. The findings of this study carry important pedagogical implications for teaching novice medical researchers.