Cover not available
Part of
Evaluation in Context
Edited by Geoff Thompson † and Laura Alba-Juez
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 242] 2014
► pp. 321–344

The expression of evaluation in weekly news magazines in English

This chapter investigates the expression of evaluation in a corpus collected from weekly news magazines in English in an attempt to address two main research questions. I investigate, first, the linguistic patterns regularly associated with the expression of evaluation in this written register and, second, the place of evaluative expressions in this discourse type and the implications for the organization of the text. The analysis has identified five main patterns associated with evaluation: copular constructions, cleft constructions, lexical means, markers of modality and other devices, such as conditional or comparative clauses in contexts of evaluation. For the second question, evaluation has been found to concentrate in some texts either at the end or at a point where it reflects the views of a third party in the story. However, there is insufficient evidence to claim that in news magazines evaluation tends to occur at boundary points in the text.

Published online: 4 February 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.242.16mar
References
Alba-Juez, Laura and Elena Martínez Caro
2011 “ No wonder you’re in trouble! The evaluative function as part of the hidden pragmatic meaning of certain expressions in English and Spanish.” Rocky Mountain Review 65 (2): 188–207. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bednarek, Monica
(ed) 2008a Evaluation in Text Types. Special issue of Functions of Language, 15 (1).Google Scholar
Bednarek, Monika.
2008b “‘An increasingly-familiar tragedy’: Evaluative collocation and conflation.” Functions of Language 15 (1): 7–34. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan and Finegan, Edward.
1999 The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Channel, Joanna.
2000 “Corpus-based analysis of evaluative lexis.” In Evaluation in Text, Susan Hunston and Geoff Thompson (eds), 38–55. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Collins, Peter.
1991 Cleft and Pseudo-cleft Constructions in English. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Conrad, Susan and Biber, Douglas.
2000 “Adverbial marking of stance in speech and writing”. In Evaluation in Text, Susan Hunston and Geoff Thompson (eds), 56–73. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
van Dijk, Teun.
1988  News Analysis . Case Studies of International and National News in the Press. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Downing, Angela.
2001 “‘Surely you knew!’ Surely as a marker of evidentiality and stance.” Functions of Language 8 (2): 253–285. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney.
1984 Introduction to the Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hunston, Susan and Sinclair, John.
2000 “A local grammar of evaluation.” In Evaluation in Text, Susan Hunston and Geoff Thompson (eds), 74–101. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hunston, Susan and Thompson, Geoff
(eds) 2000 Evaluation in Text. Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hyland, Ken.
1998 Hedging in Scientific Research Articles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Labov, William.
1972 Language in the Inner City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
1984 “Intensity.” In Meaning, Form and Use in Context: Linguistic Applications, Deborah Schiffrin (ed), 43–70. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Mahlberg, Michaela.
2005 English General Words: A Corpus Theoretical Approach. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martin, J.R.
2000 “Beyond exchange: Appraisal systems in English.” In In Evaluation in Text, Susan Hunston and Geoff Thompson (eds), 142–175. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, J.R. and White, P.R.R.
2005 The Language of Evaluation. Appraisal in English. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martínez Caro, Elena.
2010 “Discourse functions of th-clefts in English.” In Discourse and Communication: Cognitive and Functional Perspectives, Mª Luisa Blanco Gómez and Juana Marín Arrese (eds), 209–224. Madrid: Dykinson.Google Scholar
Ochs, Elinor
(ed) 1989  The Pragmatics of Affect . Special issue of Text 9 (1).Google Scholar
Ochs, Elinor and Schieffelin, Bambi.
1989 “Language has a heart.” Text 9 (1): 7–25.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Semino, Elena.
2009 “Language in newspapers.” In English Language: Description, Variation and Context, Jonathan Culpeper, Francis Katamba, Paul Kerswill, Ruth Wodak and Tony McEnery (eds), 439–453. London: Palgrave Macmillan.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Siewierska, Anna.
1991 Functional Grammar. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sinclair, John.
1987 “Mirror for a text.” Ms. University of Birmingham.Google Scholar
Thompson, Geoff and Hunston, Susan.
2000 “Evaluation: An introduction.” In Evaluation in Text, Susan Hunston and Geoff Thompson (eds), 1–27. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Nevala, Minna
2019. Two miserable creatures or those atrocious criminals?. In Reference and Identity in Public Discourses [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 306], ► pp. 19 ff. DOI logo
Wu, Yuxi
2023. Outlining Discursive Representations on Macau’s Gaming Industry at the Lexical Level. In Media Representations of Macau’s Gaming Industry in Greater China, ► pp. 47 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 19 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.