Adjective complementation patterns and judgement: Aligning lexical-grammatical and discourse-semantic approaches in appraisal research

Abstract

This study takes a lexical-grammatical approach to exploring the evaluation of human behaviour and/or character. It uses adjective complementation patterns as the starting point to examine the lexical-grammatical resources at risk in the appraisal system of judgement, aiming to explore the extent to which we can arrive at the same categorization of the resources realizing judgement if a formal or lexical-grammatical approach, rather than a discourse-semantic one, is taken. Using a corpus compiled of texts categorized as ‘Biography’ in the British National Corpus, the study, on the one hand, shows that most of the items identified can be very satisfactorily classified in terms posited in the judgement system, suggesting that the nomenclature from that model is useful. On the other hand, a considerable number of items have also been identified which construe attitudes towards emotional types of personality traits, leading to the proposal of a potentially useful new judgement category and further an adjusted system of judgement. The heuristic potential of aligning the lexical-grammatical and discourse-semantic approaches to appraisal is further discussed.

Evaluative Phrase-Frames and Patterns in Doctoral Thesis Conclusions

“…In summary, the above analysis points to a tendency for an association between p-frames anddifferentAppraisalmeanings.Forexample,it is * thatandis/are * to beappeartopreferthe Engagementwhereasit is * toandtheadjectivalp-framescomplementedbyprepositionalphrases show a preference for the Attitude. These findings support Su and Hunston's (2019a;2019b) observationthattheadjectivepatternsintheirbiographytextsareassociatedwithdifferenttypesof Attitude.Theyhavefoundthat,forexample,particularadjectivalpatternscanco-occuronlywith ethicalevaluationofhumancharacter/behaviour(Judgment)(e.g.,itv-linkADJofnto-infinitive) orestheticalevaluationofprocessandproduct(Appreciation)(e.g.,whatv-linkADJv-link-ing).A fewpatterns,however,canexpresseithertheJudgmentortheAppreciationdependingonspecific adjectivesinthepatternandtargetsofevaluation(e.g.,itv-linkADJthat).Interestingly,althoughwe havefocusedonlyonthemostfrequentadjectivalp-framesandpatternsindoctoralthesisconclusions, ourfindingsappeartopointtoasimilardirectionasthosefromSuandHunstondid.Forinstance, whileit is * thatispredominantly(85%ofthetokens)usedtoexpressEngagementmeanings(e.g., it is possible/likely/clear that), thesamep-frameis,toalesserextent(15%ofthetokens),alsoused to express Attitude meanings (e.g., it is interesting/important/heartening that). In other words, particularevaluativep-framesandphraseologicalpatternsmayshowatendencyforeitherAttitude orEngagementmeaningsinacademicdiscoursedependentofspecificadjectives.However,given ourlimiteddataset,thepotentialassociationsbetweenp-framesanddiscoursesemanticsshouldbe furtherstudied.…”

“…Morerecently,SuandHunston(2019a,2019b)exploredthecomplementationpatternsfollowing evaluativeadjectivesonthebasisofpatterngrammar (Hunston&Francis,2000).Inacorpusof biography, Su and Hunston (2019b) searched for to-infinitives, that-clauses, and prepositional phrasesgovernedbyadjectivesandmappedtheidentifiedpatternsontotheAttitudesystemunder Appraisalframework (Martin&White,2005).Theirresultsshowedatendencyforsomeevaluative complementation patterns to align with a particular type of Attitude. For example, over 90% of ADJthat-clausepatternandaround75%ofADJatpatternexpressedAffect,whereas93%ofADJ towardspatternexpressedJudgementandover60%ofADJto NpatternrealisedAppreciation.Based onthosefindings,SuandHunston(2019b)reformulatedtheAttitudesystemandproposedthatthe distinctionbetweenemotionandopinionissupportedbypatterndifferentials.Usingthesamemethod but targeting the Judgement sub-system only, Su and Hunston (2019a) extracted 855 evaluative adjective-in-patterntypesinthesamebiographycorpusandcategorisedthosepatternsaccordingto thesub-systemofJudgement.Theiranalysisconfirmedthatadjectivesandtheircomplementation patternscanbeusedtodifferentiatesub-categoriesofAppraisalandshowedthatanewcategoryof Judgement,i.e.,theevaluationofemotionalpersonality,featuredsignificantlyinthecorpus.Inshort, theirworkhasdevelopedtheresearchonevaluativephraseologybyassociatingthecomplementation patternsofadjectiveswithdifferentAppraisalfunctions.…”

Discursive Strategies of Blaming: The Language of Judgment and Political Protest Online

“…Blaming can be expressed through negative judgment at a micro-linguistic level in various ways that focus more or less directly on the blame takers’ character, behavior, or outcomes of their (in)action. To identify such micro-linguistic patterns, it is necessary to combine the discourse-semantic categorization of Appraisal with some more detailed lexical grammatical analysis ( Su & Hunston, 2019 ).…”

A Cross-disciplinary Study on Evaluative Strategies in Research Articles Conclusion Sections

“…It is posited that academic writing as a 'persuasive endeavor' (Hyland, 2011, p.15) not only produces texts with an external reality, but also uses language to acknowledge, construct, and negotiate social interactions. The centrality of evaluative language has prompted many researchers to investigate its use in different written genres, such as research articles (e.g., Jalilifar, Bardideh & Shooshtari, 2018;Jalilifar, Hayati, & Mashhadi, 2012;Millán, 2014), movie reviews (e.g., Taboada, Carretero, & Hinnell, 2014), book reviews (e.g., Alcaraz-Ariza, 2002), students' argumentative writings (e.g., Liu, 2013;Liu & McCabe, 2018;Liu & Thompson, 2009;Mori, 2017;Myskow & Ono, 2018;Ngo & Unworth, 2015;Wu & Alison, 2003), university lectures (e.g., Bellés-Fortuño, 2017) as well as spoken discourse (e.g., Fernandes, 2011;Llinares, 2015;Põldvere, Matteo, & Carita, 2016), and translation (Munday, 2015), or biography (Su & Hunston, 2019), to name a few. Appraisal framework is advantageous in two major aspects: Initially, it is located at the discourse semantic level of language.…”