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Evaluation in Context
Edited by Geoff Thompson † and Laura Alba-Juez
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 242] 2014
► pp. 241–258

Register diversification in evaluative language: the case of scientific writing

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In this chapter, we investigate register diversification in evaluative language focusing on scientific writing. For this purpose, we explore selected epistemic and attitudinal variants of evaluative expressions. We consider (1) the situational context of these expressions according to Systemic Functional Linguistics and register theory (cf. Halliday and Hasan 1985; Biber 2006) and (2) selected aspects of their syntagmatic contexts (cf. Hunston 2011). The research questions we pose are (a) which typical evaluative expressions occur in scientific research articles and (b) whether the usage of particular evaluative expressions is rather discipline-specific or discipline-neutral. To answer these questions, we carry out a corpus-based analysis on a corpus of scientific research articles from nine scientific disciplines, combining quantitative and qualitative analytic methods.

Published online: 4 February 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.242.12deg
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Dong, Jihua & Feng (Kevin) Jiang
2019. Construing Evaluation Through Patterns: Register-specific Variations of the IntroductoryitPattern. Australian Journal of Linguistics 39:1 ► pp. 32 ff. DOI logo

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