Cover not available
Part of
The Construction of Discourse as Verbal Interaction
Edited 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

| Northern Arizona University, USA
| Northern Arizona University, USA
| 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
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.296.08bib
References (42)
References
Biber, Douglas. 1988. Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2004. “Historical Patterns for the Grammatical Marking of Stance: A Cross-Register Comparison.” Journal of Historical Pragmatics 5: 107–135.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2006a. University Language: A Corpus-Based Study of Spoken and Written Registers. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2006b. “Stance in Spoken and Written University Registers.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 5: 97–116.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2015. “Stance and Grammatical Complexity: An Unlikely Partnership Discovered through Corpus Analysis.” Corpus Linguistics Research 1: 1–19.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Jesse Egbert, and Mark Davies. 2015. “Exploring the Composition of the Searchable Web: A Corpus-Based Taxonomy of Web Registers.” Corpora 10: 11–45.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas, and Jesse Egbert. 2016. “Register Variation on the Searchable Web: A Multi-Dimensional Analysis.” Journal of English Linguistics 44: 95–137.Google Scholar
. 2018. Register Variation Online. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, and Edward Finegan. 1988. “Adverbial Stance Types in English.” Discourse Processes 11: 1–34.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1989. “Styles of Stance in English: Lexical and Grammatical Marking of Evidentiality and Affect.” Text 9: 93–124.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas, and Bethany Gray. 2016. Grammatical Complexity in Academic English: Linguistic Change in Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan. 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, and Meixiu Zhang. 2018. Expressing evaluation without grammatical stance: Informational persuasion on the web. Corpora 13: 97–123.Google Scholar
Chafe, Wallace L., and Johanna Nichols (eds.) 1986. Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Charles, Maggie. 2006. “The Construction of Stance in Reporting Clauses: A Cross-Disciplinary Study of Theses.” Applied Linguistics 27: 492–518.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2007. “Argument or Evidence? Disciplinary Variation in the Use of the Noun that Pattern in Stance Constructions.” English for Specific Purposes 26: 203–218.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Egbert, Jesse, Douglas Biber, and Mark Davies. 2015. “Developing a Bottom-Up, User-Based Method of Web Register Classification.” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. (Currently available through Advanced Access: [URL])Google Scholar
Fitzmaurice, Susan M. 2004. “Subjectivity, Intersubjectivity and the Historical Construction of Interlocutor Stance: From Stance Markers to Discourse Markers.” Discourse Studies 6 (4): 427–448.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gray, Bethany, and Douglas Biber. 2013. “Current Conceptions of Stance.” In Stance and Voice in Written Academic Genres, ed. by Ken Hyland, and Carmen Sancho Guinda, 15–33. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
. 2014. “Stance Markers.” In Corpus Pragmatics: A Handbook, ed. by Karin Aijmer, and Christoph Rühlemann, 219–248. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hunston, Susan. 1993. “Evaluation and Ideology in Scientific Writing.” In Register Analysis: Theory and Practice, ed. by Mohsen Ghadessy, 57–73. London: Pinter.Google Scholar
. 1994. “Evaluation and Organization in a Sample of Written Academic Discourse.” In Advances in Written Text Analysis, ed. by Malcolm Coulthard, 191–218. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 2004. “Counting the Uncountable: Problems of Identifying Evaluation in a Text and in a Corpus.” In Corpora and Discourse, ed. by Alan Partington, John Morley, and Louann Haarman, 157–188. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
. 2011. Corpus Approaches to Evaluation: Phraseology and Evaluative Language. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hunston, Susan, and John Sinclair. 2000. “A Local Grammar of Evaluation.” In Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse, ed. by Susan Hunston, and Geoff Thompson, 74–101. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hunston, Susan, and Geoff Thompson. 2000. Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hyland, Ken. 1996. “Writing without Conviction? Hedging in Science Research Articles.” Applied Linguistics 17 (4): 433–454.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1998. Hedging in Scientific Research Articles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2005. “Stance and Engagement: A Model of Interaction in Academic Discourse.” Discourse Studies 7 (2): 173–192.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hyland, Ken, and Giuliana Diani (eds.) 2009. Academic Evaluation: Review Genres in University Settings. London: Palgrave Macmillan.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hyland, Ken, and Carmen Sancho Guinda (eds). 2013. Stance and Voice in Written Academic Genres. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Labov, William 1984. “Intensity.” In Meaning, Form and Use in Context: Linguistic Applications, ed. by Deborah Schiffrin, 43–70. Washington: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, J. R. 2000. “Beyond Exchange: Appraisal Systems in English.” In Evaluation in Text, ed. by Susan Hunston, and Geoff Thompson, 142–175. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, J. R., and Peter R. R. White. 2005. Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Mauranen, Anna, and Marina Bondi (eds.) 2003. “Evaluation in Academic Discourse.” Special issue of Journal of English for Academic Purposes 2 (4).DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ochs, Eleanor, and Bambi Schieffelin. 1989. “Language Has a Heart.” Text 9 (1): 7–25.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Palmer, Frank R. 1986. Mood and Modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, Mike, and Christopher Tribble. 2006. Textual Patterns: Keyword and Corpus Analysis in Language Education. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taboada, Maite, and Jack Grieve. 2006. “Analyzing Appraisal Automatically.” In Proceedings of AAAI Spring Symposium on Exploring Attitude and Affect in Text, 158–161.Google Scholar
Taboada, Maite, Julian Brooke, Milan Tofiloski, Kimberly Voll, and Manfred Stede. 2011. “Lexicon-Based Methods for Sentiment Analysis.” Computational Linguistics 37: 267–307.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Geoff, and Laura Alba-Juez (eds.) 2014. Evaluation in Context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Jadoulle, Pauline
2023. L1 novice writing as a missing piece in the Learner Corpus Research puzzle. International Journal of Learner Corpus Research 9:2 ► pp. 180 ff. DOI logo
Larsson, Tove
2022. Grammatical stance marking across registers. Register Studies ► pp. 243 ff. DOI logo
Curry, Niall & Pascual Pérez-Paredes
2021. Stance nouns in COVID-19 related blog posts. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 26:4 ► pp. 469 ff. DOI logo
Dontcheva-Navratilova, Olga, Martin Adam, Renata Povolná & Radek Vogel
2020. Persuasive Strategies Across the Academic, Business, Religious and Technical Discourses. In Persuasion in Specialised Discourses, ► pp. 39 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 july 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.