Chapter published in:
The Construction of Discourse as Verbal InteractionEdited by María de los Ángeles Gómez González and J. Lachlan Mackenzie
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 296] 2018
► pp. 201–226
Lexis and grammar as complementary discourse systems for expressing stance and evaluation
Douglas Biber | Northern Arizona University, USA
Jesse Egbert | Northern Arizona University, USA
Meixiu Zhang | Northern Arizona University, USA
Although ‘stance’ and ‘evaluation’ are closely related theoretical constructs, stance is normally investigated through corpus-based methods focusing on the use of lexico-grammatical features, while evaluative language, being regarded as more context-dependent, has been investigated through the use of particular words and phrases in individual texts. This study explores the possibility that these two linguistic systems are partially complementary, with some registers relying on lexico-grammatical stance features and others on evaluative lexis. We compare the linguistic discourse styles of three opinionated/persuasive web registers: ‘Opinion Blogs’ (OB), ‘Reviews’ (RV), and ‘Descriptions-with-intent-to-Sell’ (DS). We show that OB and RV use grammatical stance devices more but DS considerably less than most other web registers. However, our detailed study of the lexical keywords found in these three registers reveals the opposite pattern of use.
Keywords: stance, evaluation, web registers, blogs, reviews, keyword analysis
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The corpus for analysis
- 3.The grammatical expression of stance in opinion/persuasion web registers
- 3.1A survey of lexico-grammatical stance features in English
- 3.2Lexico-grammatical stance in opinion blogs, reviews, and descriptions-with-intent-to-sell
- 4.The lexical expression of evaluation in opinion blogs, reviews, and descriptions-with-intent-to-sell
- 5.Discussion and conclusion
-
Acknowledgements -
Note -
References
Published online: 20 September 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.296.08bib
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.296.08bib
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Dontcheva-Navratilova, Olga, Martin Adam, Renata Povolná & Radek Vogel
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