| dc.description.abstract | The focus of analysis in the present study will be on how writers establish
evaluative prosodies that resonate across their promotional discourse and try to
accomplish reader positioning by means of their semantic choices. It seems pertinent,
then, to bring into play a model of discourse analysis apposite to the study of evaluative
resources. The theory drawn upon for this study is Systemic Functional Linguistics
(henceforth SFL), which will be delineated in the following chapter (Halliday, 1994,
2004; Martin, 2000, 2002, 2004; Martin & Rose, 2003, 2007). SFL theorises language
as social semiotic, as a meaning-making system from which users choose linguistic
resources when they engage in communication. It regards language as organised into
different strata and performing three major metafunctions: it construes a world of
experience (ideational metafunction), it establishes relationships between people
(interpersonal metafunction) and it organises discourse (textual metafunction). In SFL
the meaning potential of language is described in terms of interrelating sets of options
organised as systems (Economou, 2009). Meaning is realised metafunctionally –as
interpersonal, ideational and textual meanings– by the choices language users make out
of the possibilities available in the language systems. In other words, meaning choices
can be realised across different systems of lexicogrammar (Hood, 2004). EVALUATION1
,
alongside INVOLVEMENT and NEGOTIATION, is one of three major resources that
construe interpersonal meaning. It is located in the interpersonal dimension of language,
at the level of discourse semantics – the stratum that maps meaning systems available at
the level of text. Analysing Evaluation in language involves the study of the resources
writers make use of when adopting a particular stance in an attempt to align the readers
with the value position advanced in the text. These aspects of the interpersonal metafunction have been elaborated on by Martin (2000), Martin and Rose (2003), and
Martin and White (2005) in the APPRAISAL model. | |
