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Module Two

Part II: ATTITUDE AND EMAIL


INTERACTION: A framework for exploring
textual identity and negotiation in email
interaction
1. Introduction
1.1 Overview
Part II of this module addresses questions relating to the
construction of textual identity and interpersonal roles and
relationships in the unfolding of the discourse of two texts, through
an investigation of the language of evaluation. The analysis shows
how these texts, as contributions to an ongoing 'written
conversation', may be located as responding to previous
contributions in an interactive context. Dimension III of relative
interactivity outlined in Part I, section 3.6, is extended though a
discussion of Engagement, part of the Appraisal framework. In
order to explore these issues, the Appraisal framework, focussing
on the system of Attitude, is presented both as a means of
investigating textual identity through analysis of evaluative
positioning, and as functioning in the development of the text and
its involvement strategies.
1.2 Individual texts as representative of social practice.
A number of approaches based on Appraisal analysis are used in
the discussion comprising Part II. These are used to reveal patterns
of discourse organisation which contribute to the construction of
textual identity. The Appraisal framework offers a set of categories
which can be employed to do this. The results of analysis using
Appraisal is also able to offer insights into the nature of the context
of situation - as well as the norms of the discourse-using
community in which they take part. One of the challenges of
analysis addressed by this module lies in accounting for the
possible interpretations of each unit of text as an instantiation of a
wider set of potential meanings. Part of this accounting is inevitably
intertextual in nature: all text-units are part of a larger set of texts,
either as a class of similar texts, or as part of a chain of on-going
textual events. This thesis is concerned to identify interpersonal
positioning strategies as the basis for analysing discourse as a
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'chain of on-going textual events': in other words, from a


fundamentally dynamic perspective. This perspective approaches
each text as logogenetically developed (see for example, Halliday &
Matthiessen 1999, Martin & Rose 2003), and as making meanings
in co-textual configurations pointing both forwards (prospectively)
and backwards (retrospectively). This becomes especially
significant in overtly interactive contexts such the textual events
comprising the email list under investigation. As Martin & Rose (op
cit: 87) observe, "the positioning of participants is often covert,
and can only be brought out by analysing their participation as a
text develops". This means that the default location of any text is
heteroglossic
space-time
(Holquist
1990,
Baxtin
1978 1).
Furthermore, while interpersonal positioning moves can be located
at specific junctures of a particular text, the relationships
constructed between writers and their audience is cumulative in
nature, and needs to be regarded as both a product of the whole
text, and from the perspective of the text as a function of the
abstract 'social space' in which it participates. However, as soon as
this social space is invoked, its boundaries in space-time need to be
delimited for analytical purposes, since meanings need to reference
the synoptic perspective as well, a perspective which takes into
account the 'class of similar sets of texts', including those not part
of the immediate context of interaction.
A related difficulty concerns the nature of the framework
introduced in this module, a framework which aims to uncover
patterns of interpersonal evaluative positioning in texts. Appraisal
analysis is conceived of as a typology, as a covariate system of
choices (Lemke 1985), yet it depends almost entirely on discourse
semantic features of text - on interpretive probabilities. This means
that boundaries between categories are almost impossible to
assign any absolute form-function relationship, unless appeal is
made to both co-text and context of situation and culture.
Intertextuality is effectively the key, and assigning category
membership - especially in terms of attitudinal and positioning
strategies - to forms using the Appraisal framework depends very
11"

Moreover,wesomehowmakesenseofeveryphenomenon,thatis,weincludeitnotonly
inthesphereoftemporalspatialexistence,butalsointhemeaningsphere.Thismaking
senseincludesanelementofevaluation.Butthequestionoftheformofbeingofthissphere,
and the question of the character and form of the interpreting evaluations, are purely
philosophical(butnotofcourse,metaphysical)questionswhichwecannotdiscusshere.The
followingisofimporttous:whateverthesemeanings,inordertoenterourexperience(our
socialexperience)theymustreceivesometemporalspatialexpression,thatis,takeona
semioticformwhichwecanhearandsee(ahieroglyph,amathematicalformula,averbal
linguisticexpression,adrawing,etc).Eventhemostabstractthinkingisimpossiblewithout
suchtemporalspatialexpression.Consequently,entryintothesphereofmeaningscanonly
beachievedthroughthegatesofchronotopoi."(ibidpp.527528).

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much on reference to intertextual knowledge: the analyst needs to


take the role of ethnographer and the reading position of
participant-observer. The Appraisal framework presented here is
therefore augmented by reference to that part of heteroglossic
space1 which is engendered by intertextuality, something which the
framework itself does not attempt.
The nature of the difficulties referred to here is addressed by
Martin & Rose (op cit):
Grammatical analysis is concerned with distinguishing between
and accounting for all types of figures and their elements, and a
lot of time can be spent on classifying more delicate or
borderline categories. Discourse analysis on the other hand is
concerned more with relationships between figures and their
elements as a text unfolds. Grammatical categories underpin the
analysis of discourse, but are not its primary goal. (pp. 81-82)
In this thesis, semantic categories underpin the analysis of the
discourse, but the primary goal is to identify patterns of linguistic
interaction which constitute some of the unmarked ('normative')
social practices of the written speech community under
investigation. These generalised social practices are seen as taking
part in a two-way realisation relationship with texts themselves
(and the various units of analysis on which each analysis may
focus), and so analysis of whole texts, the units which comprise
them, and their rhetorical organisation must form the basis of the
research. However, at the other end of the spectrum - the wider
contexts in the language-using culture, its institutions and the
conventionalised interpretation of particular forms - research would
involve large corpus studies of a wide variety of texts. This is an
area of future research into the validity of analyses using the
Appraisal framework. One avenue for pursuing this type of research
is suggested by the results of corpus analysis on the nature of
'semantic prosody' (e.g. Louw 1993, Hunston 2001).
1.2.1 Textual identity as a function of social space
Tacit group norms are the product of ongoing social practices which
structure the abstract social space in which interaction takes place.
Each text can be viewed as an attempt to negotiate legitimate
positions within this social space, and to contest the norms in some
cases by naming and defining the nature of this social space and
the roles of the actors who take part (cf. Module 1). In this sense,
interpersonal positioning strategies create the abstract social space
in which legitimate interaction may take place.
1

Thenotionof'heteroglossicspace'willbediscussedinmoredetailinthesectionon
Engagement,2.3below.

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This thesis takes the position that the 'value of evaluation'


(Hunston 1989, 2000) can be equated with the social value
accorded to various positioning strategies such as naming practices
and reference (Module 1), or having specialised orders of discourse
(big 'D' discourses - Lemke 1995) recognised as legitimate means
of representing 'reality' within the social space. This includes the
power to position the self as having the power to define social
space. As Chouliaraki & Fairclough put it, "..the network of orders of
discourse is not a simple positioning device but a resource in
interaction which can be drawn upon more or less creatively in
ways which themselves depend on positioning within that network."
(1999: 58). At the same time, the means of evaluating persons,
actions/events and things negatively or positively within these
practices is, as hinted at above, field specific to a large extent:
"valuation is especially tied up with field, since the criteria for
valuing a text/process are for the most part institutionally
specific"(Martin & Rose op cit: 64).
In the context of the mailing list as a written speech
community of practice, and in the context of the immediate field of
discourse represented by the dynamic relations between
contribution and response, what positioning strategies are being
used by each participant in their texts? How do positioning moves
as strategies for signalling affiliation (dis/alignments of solidarity
according
to
contact/familiarity,
axiology/value
system,
status/power) construct the Addresser's relationship to the persons,
groups, events, and ideas represented in the text as it unfolds in
discourse time, and how are these legitimised? In particular, how
are affiliations constructed or rejected in relation to the ongoing
nature and status of the 'exchange'? For example, when any post is
responded to negatively, or when positions are rejected
(challenged) in any response, this is regarded as an indicator of
some form of boundary, or norm maintenance. In the light of this,
how does each text (or part thereof) act as both a response to what
has already gone before, and indicate any orientation to expected
responses (interactive prospection) - in this way contributing to the
legitimate reproduction of positions, roles, and relationships in this
mode? Furthermore, what responses do contributions actually
engender, and can the nature of the positioning strategies evident
in any contribution predict responses to any degree? These
questions are addressed in the course of the thesis, and this
module discusses two texts - and their location in the dynamic
unfolding of a written conversation - as examples of how Appraisal
analysis can provide a useful framework with which to answer
them.

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1.3 The texts


The texts in this study are edited posts1, written by two
different posters whose personal evaluative styles were felt to use
the resources of the lexicogrammar differently. In general, editing
of any posts in this thesis is only done to remove extraneous text for example, reproduced posts that are not the focus of analysis,
sections of the header, especially full names and email addresses,
sig files that are long or which include addresses or company
names, and so on. Some texts have also been sentence-numbered
for ease of reference, and the fonts, line-wrapping and other
features have sometimes been changed so that the texts are easier
to read.
For this module, the two posts used were chosen more or less
at random, and mainly for length and similarity of formatting (for
example, less quoting of other posters, and a less obviously
interactive dialogic text: the (b) "relevance-in" style (c.f. above Part
1: section 3.5: dimension II. i. (b); and below section 5), and so the
topics discussed, and therefore arguments made, are not obviously
similar. Both posts are, however, ostensibly discussing the nature of
email interaction itself, if from different perspectives, and so
something of the nature of their differences in approach may still
be gleaned from an analysis of the attitudinal values evident in
each text.
The motivation for choosing these two texts is also related to
the motivation for choosing to look at the interaction of an email
list in particular, as distinct from any other text-type or contextual
configuration: the whole of the context can be regarded as
available to observation, since the archives represent the extent of
the co-text at its widest limits. Possible interpretations can be
checked against actual responses, and the on-going textual events
and the negotiations over norms amongst the participants are all
recorded as one logogenetic product. From my experience as a
participant-observer in this community, it appears that many
contributions are engendered by a need to be recognised, or a need
to have one's voice validated by others in the community - to
'manage one's image' as Goffman (1959, 1967) might put it. In
other words, no matter what the ostensible topic or field of
discussion might be, each contribution is concerned to construct an
identity or persona via alignment with sets of values and/or
affiliation with other participants. This tends to put all interpersonal
meanings at risk in such an environment, and contributions appear
to be the sites of contestation over legitimate behaviour and
expectations, sites where ideological assumptions are always in
1

SeeAppendixOne:"Glossaryofterms"fordiscussionofsomeCMCrelatedtermsused
throughoutthisthesis.

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play. From this perspective, the two texts chosen represent useful
examples of the nature of this contestation, but for the same
reason, they pose challenges for the Appraisal analyst.
Text1 was originally 29 sentences long, while text2 was
derived from a post comprising 38 sentences altogether, but whose
'body' was felt to be complete after sentence 34, since the poster
'signed off' using a closing remark, followed by a postscript (c.f.
appendix B).
In terms of generic structuring and rhetorical staging, this allows a
comparison of the texts as complete structured units. At the same
time, it also allows an investigation of the ways in which Appraisal
analysis can be revealing of how staging takes place in both texts:
the choice of the texts using the 'relevance-in' style was done
advisedly in order to provide such an opportunity. In determining
the unit sentence, orthographic signalling such as fullstops and
capitalisation takes precedence over independent clauses, and
therefore the terms clause and clause complex will be reserved for
particular classes of sentence. Reference to the texts will be made
to text1 and text2 (reproduced in appendix B), sometimes followed
by the clause complex (sentence) number. For example, reference
to text2, sentence 24 is in the form 2:24.
1.3.1 Appraising the two texts: first paragraphs
In the excerpt which follows (Ex.1.1), sentences 1:1 to 1:12 of text1
are reproduced from Appendix B1, in which values of Attitude have
been analysed. These sentences realise the first orthographicallysignalled paragraph in the text. The use of colour to highlight
different types of Attitude enables any regularities, or clustering of
evaluative positioning to be observed. The framework itself will be
presented in detail in section 3 below, but some idea of the nature
of the text and its use of evaluative positioning in a type of metaevaluative field can be gained by the first paragraph reproduced
here.
Briefly stated, the system of Attitude is concerned to identify
all types of evaluative assessments, either negative or positive,
which may appear in texts. The framework recognises three subtypes of Attitude: Affect (concerned with assessments based on
emotional responses), Judgement (concerned with assessments of
human behaviour and social norms), and Appreciation (concerned
with assessments of objects, events and artefacts in terms of
aesthetic and social value). The framework also makes a distinction
between those Attitudes which are inscribed or made explicitly, and
those which may be implied, or activated in the text by other
means. In addition, each subtype of Attitude recognises a variety of

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sub-categorisations. These appear in the excerpted analyses below,


and will be used in later discussions of the two texts.
Analysis is not complete when instances of Attitude are all
coded, however. This represents the first step, after which the
analysis is expanded to take note of the targets and sources of the
Attitudes and their realisations from a discourse organisation
perspective. All of the issues touched on above, will be taken up
again in detail in Sections 3 and 4 below.
Types of attitude:
Red = Affect
Blue = Judgement
Green = Appreciation
Purple = double coded, provoked/evoked Judgements
Example 1.1
1The concept of "task," has a rich history here[appreciation: valuation].
2Not only [graduation]is there a
common sense meaning of task as the job to be done,[appreciation:
valuation] but it is a technical term in Bion's group psychology.
[appreciation: valuation: evoked via reference to valued discourse] 3I
have been one to see task as analogy -- harking back to its roots in "tax"
or an onerous tribute to be paid[appreciation: reaction: negative] [via
contrast with next clause?]. 4In Bion, it has more positive [appreciation:
valuation: positive]connotations, and being a work group in
accomplishment of a task is not only [graduation: force]healthy but
morally good[judgement: propriety: positive]. 5It is hard to mesh all
this.[appreciation: composition: complexity: positive][judgement:
capacity: negative?] 6I set out to work at the warehouse this morning.
7I will have a task, I suppose, [modalization: probability]or various ones.
8I must [modulation: obligation] unload some trucks. 9I must
[modulation: obligation] aid the company in any legit way to help it
make a profit[judgement: propriety: positive: provoked: via series of
obligations + legit way]. 10I must [modulation: obligation] fit myself
into the sometimes odd[appreciation: reaction: quality: negative] social
scheme there[judgement: tenacity: positive: provoked: via graduation
and repetition]. 11My goal, however, [counter-expect: retro]for this day
is to have as pleasant and as delightful [appreciation: reaction: quality]a
day as I can [modalization: ability][judgement: tenacity: provoked: via
Appreciation of his identified goal] -- to tell no lies, hurt no one on
purpose, and be a good citizen [judgement: propriety]while squeezing
the best out of whatever situation I may encounter.[judgement: tenacity:
positive: provoked from sentence 6 on] 12Out of this fluid
[appreciation: complexity]plan for the day, one that will most

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likely[modalization: probability] materialize, which activities constitute


'tasks.'[rhetorical question]
This example shows one pattern immediately: a lack of red - no
values of Affect are apparent in this section of the text. Moreover,
Judgement (evaluation of human behaviour), is always made in the
environment of Appreciation (evaluation of 'objects' - see below
section 3). So that, it would appear that this writer is concerned to
evaluate without the use of any inscribed affect. Going one step
further involves an examination of what the targets of these
evaluations are - who or what is being evaluated, and investigating
how this figures in the development of the role relationships being
construed in the text overall, and the ideological alignments that
seem to be legitimated in this way.
In the excerpt above, and in both texts reproduced in full in
Appendix B1, the colour purple denotes invoked or implied
appraisal - a value of Attitude that contrasts with attitudes which
are made explicitly, or inscribed in the text. Purple highlighting is
also used to draw attention to instances of 'ambiguous' evaluation propositions whose exact targets or evaluative positioning with
respect to those targets, cannot be determined with certainty. The
topic of invoked or implied appraisal will be addressed again below
in section 3.3.3, but briefly stated, Appraisal values can be invoked
in two ways: through either provoked or evoked Appraisal. These
depend on either Engagement values (see below 2.3) in the
immediate co-text to 'provoke' an attitude, or local value systems
'evoked' by experiential meanings.
In Example 1.1 above, the colour patterning which the analysis
reveals suggests that this paragraph is actually composed of two
broad rhetorical text units, or phases (Gregory 1985). This
observation is to some extent linked to the function of sentence
1:5: It is hard to mesh all this in co-text. The labelling of this clause
has been highlighted in purple since there appears to be some
evaluation being made, but the exact position of the Addresser in
relation to all this is ambiguous.
My hypothesis is that this type of ambiguity in positioning can
be regarded as a textual strategy (akin to the use of ideational and
interpersonal metaphor), in which propositions with either
ambiguous or implied evaluative positions are marked in co-text,
and may act to 'articulate', or provide transition points in the
development of the text's organisation. By using the term
'strategy', I do not imply that these are necessarily conscious acts
on the part of the Addresser, but that such moves realise strategies
for text organisation that are 'picked up', or responded to on the
part of the reader. Because a reader may need to, unconsciously
perhaps, spend more time processing such a proposition due to its
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very ambiguity, I suggest that these types of clauses in which


evaluative positioning is unclear act as 'speed bumps' in the
development of the text's organisation. Macken-Horarik takes such
a view one step further:
"within texts, its implicitly evaluative meanings that are most
coercive of the reader simply because they appear to pass
beneath the threshold of conscious awareness. (2003: 314)
One observation that analysis has provided is that both provoked
and evoked Appraisal appear in both texts at regular intervals, and
generally in the penultimate sentence of each paragraph (their
proposed function in the rhetorical organisation of texts in general,
and this e-list interaction in particular is set out below in sections
1.4 and 4 below). The colour-coding of the two texts also allows a
visual comparison of the preferred attitudinal values used by each
writer. The most conspicuous difference seems to be in the
appearance of values of Affect. Example 1.2 below gives an idea of
how the patterning apparent in the first paragraph of text2 differs
from that used in text1 above.
Example 1.2
2I'm glad [affect: happiness]you answered Roy's question because it is
obvious [modalization: probability]that I need information.[judgement:
capacity: negative: evoked?] 3I do feel 'under the microscope'[affect:
insecurity] as any new member is going to feel, and be, in any group
(not just the Web). [judgement: normality]4In my expectation to be
targeted, I had anticipated [affect: disinclination: via the following
expectations of negative emotions directed at herself]\\ curiosity,[affect:
inclination] fear,[affect: disinclination] jealousy,[affect: insecurity]
among others, but [counter-expect]not [neg-pol]suspicion,[affect:
insecurity] and particularly [graduation: focus]of my identity.... this is, in
my experience, unique [graduation: focus]to the Web.[judgement:
normality: negative] 5As for stating your suspicions or doubts, I value
honesty [affect: satisfaction]in communication and would rather
[modulation: inclination]hear your fear, suspicion or doubt [affect:
insecurity]directly [graduation: focus]than to hear their echoes in all
[graduation: force]of our exchanges or in the poverty [appreciation:
composition: negative]of our exchange.[judgement: propriety: provoked:
via positive evaluation of honesty and negative evaluation of exchange
otherwise] 6I usually[modalization: usuality] find that exchanges
between two people are largely[graduation: focus] superficial
[appreciation: composition: negative]until they risk the truth
[judgement: tenacity]of their feelings and thoughts toward each other.
7Roy got the brunt of my indignation [affect: dissatisfaction]because he

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was trying to be honest about his perceptions of me.[judgement:


veracity]
Whereas text1 reveals the use of Affect in only two (significant)
positions - in the middle and at the end of the text (see Appendix
B1), the writer of text2 has employed values of Affect throughout.
Example 1.2 above demonstrates this contrast immediately, and
shows how Appraisal analysis can reveal stylistic differences in the
type, and amount of evaluation used, as well as the dispersion of
such values in textual organisation. This may be done with single
texts, but more revealingly, in collections of texts representative of
specific writers or groups of writers. 1 In sections 3 and 4, the values
and patterns of Appraisal in the two texts will be examined in more
detail.
Already it can be seen, however, that the opening paragraph
of text2 does have some similarity with that of text1, since it also
appears to be comprised of two broad rhetorical units, whose
juncture is marked by the transition from values of Judgement and
Affect, to values which also include Appreciation (highlighted in
green). This transition, at sentence 2:5, also includes a token of
provoked negative [judgement: propriety]. The nature of provoked
Appraisal means that negative Judgement, or threat of sanction,
can target unnamed individuals and use no inscribed evaluative
positioning of behaviour (Judgement) at any specific point in the
proposition under focus. A more detailed examination of these
examples is discussed below in section 3.3.3 on provoked and
evoked Appraisal.
1.4 Appraisal and text organisational patterns
The previous discussion is intended to suggest that positioning
strategies are very much dependent on accumulated values in cotext, and on the organisation and development of Appraisal in any
text. Section 3.3.3 below introduces an extended discussion on
provoked and evoked Appraisal, but in the meantime, I want to
point out that the construction of textual personae which I contend
is both at stake in texts of this type, and which may be revealed by
Appraisal analysis, is not merely a matter of the appearance of
certain attitudinal positions as discrete, countable, tokens in a
corpus of texts, and similar in flavour to the work done by Biber
(1988 inter alia), but that their location in the unfolding of the
1

Itisintendedthat,inModule3,thedataproducedfromtheanalysisofacorpusofemail
textswillbediscussedforthispurpose.AsoutlinedinModule1,thiscorpuscomprises5
texts written by three different posters, as well as the edited posts of three threads or
'conversations',aswellasavarietyofotherpoststakenfromotherthreadsandmailinglists.

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10

discourse is an integral part of the realisation of interpersonal


meanings, and hence registerial tenor. In systemics, interpersonal
meanings are regarded as realising tenor, but because Appraisal, as
part of interpersonal discourse semantics, appears to depend on
related meanings that are made at the level of the textual
metafunction (collocation, ellipsis, conjunction, repetition, themerheme development) both systems of meaning-making need to be
acknowledged as contributing to the development of Addresseraudience roles and relationships via positioning.
As described above, Appendix B1 reproduces the two texts
which have been analysed for values of both inscribed and invoked
Appraisal, and it is evident that values of invoked Appraisal both
evoked and provoked (c.f. 3.3.3 below) tend to appear at specific
junctures in the text, most obviously in the last or second last
clause complex of orthographically-signalled paragraphs in these
two texts1. Such patterning may provide a means for examining
paragraphs as having some loose internal organisation that is
activated by interdependent evaluative statements. What I find
most interesting about this organisation, however, is that transition
units are perhaps signalled by implied rather than explicit
evaluation, that is, they can be regarded as using 'strategies'
through which the interpretation of evaluative positioning is less
easily made. On the other hand, as Hunston & Sinclair (2000: 80)
point out, the placement, or actual 'structural position' of language
units in any text often overrides their constituency in determining
whether the unit is regarded as (negatively or positively)
evaluative. Yet another way of regarding the organisation of
example 1.2 above would be to see it as setting out a situation, and
a set of problems in that situation ('problems' including a negative
evaluation of the situation), with sentence 2:7 representing a
response to the problems. The solution in this case, is yet to be
introduced.
Hoey (1991 [1983]: pp. 9-15) suggests that paragraphs are
chained or linked together by means of cohesive ties - especially
those which signal that an idea is complete - but that internal
organisation of paragraphs is not regular. Without wishing to claim
that there is any recurrent constituent patterns which hold for any
paragraphs or for any genre, I would suggest that evaluative
positions revealed in Appraisal analysis are as important as
thematic structure, cohesive ties and matching relations, for tracing
the means by which writers organise their texts - especially in
persuasive, argumentative, or identity-managing texts such as the
ones found in this email list.
1

Appraisal analysisofothersamplesof'argumentative'textsfrom theselectedcorpus,


usingtheextendedexpositorystyleevidentinthe'relevancein'stylehaveshownsimilar
results.

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11

This thesis contends that rhetorical text units are semantic, (as
distinct from structural units that might be revealed by analysis
confined to the level of lexicogrammar, and the sentence), and
override any orthographic means by which such utterance
boundaries are signalled. This is seen as analogous to the nature of
moves and move complexes outlined by Ventola (1988) for spoken
interactive texts based on service encounters, and that of
exchange complexes put forward by Hoey (1993), in which he
proposes that the 'interactive development' of a text be linked to its
Theme-Rheme development. In this approach, transactions (in the
sense of the IRF framework of Sinclair & Coulthard) are classed as
an unordered sequence of exchange complexes. The sequencing of
exchange complexes in this model, he suggests could be mapped
on to the identification of 'stages of dialogue' in his ProblemResponse framework in which negative evaluation of a response
does not signal an exchange boundary so much as a Re-Initiation in
the sequence.
Francis (1994) offers another useful perspective with which to
cross-reference the findings revealed by Appraisal analysis in texts
of this type. She points out that 'labelling discourse' has "a clear
topic-shifting and topic-linking function" and that retrospective
labels in particular, have the ability to present the argument up to
that point as 'fact', since the "head noun of a retrospective label is
always presented as the given information in its clause"(ibid: 86).
This suggests a clear link between the nature of provoked Appraisal
and the use of retrospective discourse labels.
More particularly, the idea of rhetorical text units is related to
that described by Gregory (1985), and by Cloran (1993). In
Gregory's approach, transitions are regarded as variable rhetorical
units which mark textual boundaries between other rhetorical units,
which Gregory calls phases, and these are signalled by linguistic
features that are marked in co-text. For email interactive texts the
problem of deciding on the boundaries of an exchange (or
'interactive unit') are multiplied, and therefore the concept of the
move and the move complex which theoretically would comprise
units in any exchange, or exchange complex, I believe needs to be
enhanced by looking at the nature of the evaluative positioning
taking place. The nature of this evaluative positioning is in turn
dependent on textual meanings as outlined earlier, and this thesis
takes the position that the Appraisal framework which is concerned
to articulate the interpersonal meanings of propositions, must also
refer to the nature of the co-textual organisation, and ultimately to
its intertextual location: the institutionalised genres and orders of
discourse to which each text refers. Therefore, the notions of move
and exchange complex, together with the idea of a dialogic
orientation of Addressers to a projected/constructed audience (the
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12

interactive prospection to responses or 'Ideal Reader' referred to


above) form the tools for proposing the rhetorical organisation
potential of this context of interaction in Module Three.
The positioning strategies in which Appraisal values play a
part, means that the targets and sources of evaluation are also part
of the positioning moves and strategies in a text's organisation.
This relates to the concept of 'position' itself, which cannot be
specified except in relation to some other position. Hence this
thesis makes reference to co-positioning strategies, and an abstract
hierarchy of roles, relationships and positions, as outlined in Module
One. Thus, targets of evaluation act to construe dis/alignment of
the Addresser with other values associated with these targets.
Sources of Appraisal are similarly significant in construing the type
of dialogic space enacted between appraiser and appraised.
Section 3.6 below discusses the sources and targets of the attitude
values identified in the texts.
This means that Appraisal values, seen only from a synoptic
perspective, or treated as a set of discrete items across texts, are
only able to reveal the favoured means of representing the world in
statistical terms - and perhaps in terms of periodicity as well. It is
quite possible, for example, that two texts, or the texts of two
writers, will use quite similar types and proportions of Appraisal
values overall. But in addition, the strategies for positioning the self
in relation to others, and others' ideas, is regarded as constructing
the abstract 'social space' in which social actors may 'behave'. At
the same time, many of the social practices referred to in
discussions onlist are undertaken in the material world, separate
from list social practices. These "material world practices",
however, are used as identity markers, justification for textual
identity, and positioning of the self in the context of the email list
group as well. The argument in text1, for example, through the
overt use of analogy, compares and relates 'real world' practices to
the practices of the email list and its members. While text2 also
uses analogy with real world social practices, it rarely refers to
them explicitly (cf. Module 1), and so the identity of the writer of
text2 remains a 'textual identity' only, and its positioning strategies
relate mainly to the abstract social space of the written speech
community itself. When, however, it does refer to the actual
material world of the writer (2:20; 2:35-2:35a), these are marked in
co-text and contribute towards the organisation of the text as well.1
As outlined previously, the value of analysing written
interactive texts in contexts such as an email discussion list as I am
doing here, also lies in the opportunity it affords for checking actual
overt, i.e. written responses (discussed in section 5 below) to
1

2:352:35a comprisesthesignoffsequence,whichinthiscaseincludesapostscriptas
well:hence35a.

ModuleTwo:PartII

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previous utterances. By doing this, it is possible to observe the


evaluative moves by which writers structure their texts, and the
interpersonal positioning strategies they realise. If such evaluative
units are selected at specific types of Transitional Relevance Places
(TRPs), or what have already been determined as move complex
boundaries in previously posted messages, it would provide an
indication that the nature of the positioning strategies evident in
any contribution can predict types and/or content of responses (see
also Ravelli 1995: 202). In Module Three, results of this type of
investigation will be reported. It is the purpose of this module to
present the methodology which will inform the research and results
presented in Module Three.
The Appraisal framework is introduced below as capable of
revealing some of the textual patterns at the discourse semantic
level. This framework, it is suggested, can be used as an effective
tool for tracing text organisation via evaluative positioning moves.
In turn, such evidence of textual patterning across a corpus of texts
whether from a particular mode of interaction (register), genre, or
from the works of one specific writer can be used to show what
regularities are evident in either specific corpora, or in crosscorpora comparisons. Also, as suggested in Part I of this module,
this framework provides tools which are useful for the description of
the context of interaction of email lists such as the one used in this
study - for example, the degree of interactivity evident in these
texts. The introduction to this framework will be illustrated by
detailed discussion of examples from the two chosen texts in order
to demonstrate on what basis some of the more extensive analysis
reported in Module Three will be conducted. It is acknowledged that
the Appraisal framework is a means of categorising evaluative
moves and the strategies they comprise by reference to textual and
experiential meanings as well as those of the interpersonal: this is
because the framework is conceived as super-ordinate to the
lexicogrammar and refers to discourse semantic entities.

ModuleTwo:PartII

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2. An outline of the Appraisal framework:


Graduation and Engagement
2.1 Introduction
This section forms a necessarily brief outline of the framework,
starting with GRADUATION, followed by some implications of the
system of ENGAGEMENT and its usefulness as a tool in analysing the
interaction of mailing list discussion and exchange. Section 3 will
then present the system of ATTITUDE in more detail, before the final
sections in which the application of the model to the analysis of the
two texts is considered in relation to its use in Module 3. The
framework outlined here, has been drawn mainly from White (1998,
2003), Martin (2000a, 2000b), Martin & Rose (2003) and Martin &
White (forthcoming).
2.2 Graduation
Within Appraisal, the subsystem GRADUATION describes a means by
which the evaluator (usually what I refer to as the 'Addresser' in
email modes, but often attributed to other sources) can
intensify/measure, and/or amplify ATTITUDE or ENGAGEMENT values.
GRADUATION is therefore considered to operate across Appraisal
categories. The two main dimensions of GRADUATION as set out in
White (1998) are those of FOCUS and FORCE.
2.2.1 Focus
FOCUS describes the degree to which a quality can be said to
'sharpen or soften' evaluative attitudes, and is sometimes glossed
as 'hedges'. Under Focus, according to White: "scaling operates in
contexts which are not gradable or where the communicative
objective is not to grade ..the lowering and raising of intensity is
realised through the semantics of category membership through
the sharpening or softening of semantic focus" (1998: III.5(b)). In
the two texts analysed here, there was one useful example of
FOCUS, where a writer either 'concentrates' or sharpens the
boundary between categories or the qualities introduced, (e.g. *this
was very much the theme of his argument), or softens the Attitude

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(e.g. *he sort of gave up).1 Focus can also be described as the
degree to which a value is represented as peripheral or central to
some 'core meaning'. In 1:24, the writer hedges the negative
Judgement of Tenacity levelled at other groups with the phrase in
some sort of objective sense.
2.2.2 Force
FORCE, on the other hand, is a means of scaling attitudes through
various linguistic means such as grading ("In some families"; "with
a minimum of negative feelings and consequences." 2:11),
numbering (*there are several things wrong here), repeating (*it
was terrible, terrible), citing quality ("these radical shifts and
changes" 2:11), or using metaphor (*he was up to his ears in debt),
for example. Force may be realised by separate lexical operators
(very, to some degree, a bit, etc), or it may involve intensification
in the grade or scale introduced within a lexical item expressing
Attitude - for example, like versus love versus adore. Martin & Rose
(op cit: 38-43) offer a number of examples of how sets of 'graders'
might be activated in context. In the analyses which I use here,
values of GRADUATION are sometimes tagged in the text itself, but
since their main function is to contribute to the signification and
scaling of Attitude, very few of these appear in the tables in
appendix D. This was because the occurrence and patterning of
Attitudinal values was the focus of this analysis, rather than their
scaling. The occurrence of GRADUATION in a text, however, can
sometimes function as an indicator that some form of evaluation is
being expressed, much in the same way that negative polarity can
alert the analyst to an evaluative position that is acknowledged
through its negation.
2.3 Engagement
In this section I introduce the ENGAGEMENT framework as part of
Appraisal. Engagement provides a means of highlighting how
Addressers can indicate, readers may interpret, and interpreters
identify, signals as to the state of the relationship constructed
between Addresser and Addressee and/or Overhearers at any one
point in the discourse. It is construed as operating via inter-related
typologies outlined in Table 2.1 and 2.2 below: from one
perspective,
the
dialogistic
(or
'heteroglossic',
versus
1

Asdescribedabove,referencestothetextswilltaketheform(2:4)(asanexamplereferring
toText2,sentence4);madeupexamplesare*asterisked;anditemsinterpretedasprovoking
Appraisalvaluesitalicisedinthecontextofplaintext,orunderlinedinthecontextofitalics.
RefertoappendixB:Text1&2.

ModuleTwo:PartII

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'monoglossic': Martin & White in preparation, White 2003) which


either contracts or expands dialogic 'space'; teamed with, from the
other perspective, intra-vocalised versus extra-vocalised (or
'attributed') voicing. Briefly, the heterogloss-monogloss distinction
attends to whether the proposition or utterance is represented as in
any way contingent on subjective positioning (dialogised), or
whether it asserts a proposition as 'fact', unmodalized and nonevaluative (undialogised). Within the dialogised or heteroglossic
dimension, Engagement is concerned to note whether the
dialogistic space is expanded or contracted by the means of
representations used to frame the proposition. The abstract
concept of space is used here to reference dimensions already in
use
in
construing
interpersonal
meanings,
such
as
contact/familiarity (along a cline of 'involved' 'distant') and
status/power (along a cline of 'equal' 'unequal') (c.f. Appendix
2: Interpersonal Discourse Semantic Network). From the
perspective of voicing, the categories 'expand' and 'contract'
overlap with those of intra-vocalised and extra-vocalised. Under
vocalisation, categories are oriented to tracing the source of the
responsibility for the arguability of the utterance - when intravocalised these are seen as located in the subjectivity of the
writer/Addresser, and when extra-vocalised the source of the
proposition is located elsewhere. This issue is expanded further
below.
Under Engagement, certain 'locutions' function in relation to
these categories to construe values of an instructional or
prospective nature in relation to the unfolding of the discourse and
its interpersonal meanings: they may set up values for the
interpretation of what follows, or the re-interpretation of what has
gone before. They may acknowledge differences of opinion via
concessions, the quoting of outside attributions, or the use of
interdiscursivity. These opinions, or Attitudes - whether those of self
or Other - may in turn be meta-positioned as laudable or laughable,
for example, in the context of other values indexed in the same
local unit of analysis. Values of Engagement work at the particulate
level, but may also contribute to the organisation of the text as a
dynamic unfolding of interpersonal meanings. So at one level they
act as framing devices for the propositions to which they refer, and
at the same time act to construct the abstract dialogic space, by
indicating relevance to the ongoing interaction.
Stubbs (1996: 211) makes a similar observation about the use
of modality in text organisation: "Markers of commitment and
detachment are instructions to interpret utterances in more or less
rigorous ways." Sinclair (1993 inter alia) refers to a level of
discourse known as the interactive plane, an organisational level of
discourse that is textual in function. This plane of discourse
ModuleTwo:PartII

17

'prospects' the nature of the textual organisation, enabling a reader


to 'predict' what is to come. Martin & Rose (op cit: 83) refer to
'expectancy' in textual organisation, and link this term with the
function of various types of conjunction. This idea of 'speaker'
orientation towards the readers and their expected interpretations
is extended under Engagement, and discussed briefly below. The
notion of interactive prospection introduced in section 1 above
refers to all those indicators in a text which signal that the
Addresser is aware of the possibility of a response, and thus refers
to both textual and interpersonal prospections. It is this concern to
map the voice, or interpersonal stance of writers in relation to their
implied interlocutors which perhaps distinguishes the goals of
appraisal analysis as a tool for revealing evaluative strategies in
texts.
Hunston (2000: 188-192) outlines a framework which covers a
considerable part of the semantic territory dealt with by the
Engagement system and accordingly it is necessary to at least
briefly outline the similarities and differences between the two
approaches and thereby to explain what rhetorical phenomena the
Engagement framework is specifically equipped to deal with. In
Hunston's framework "the distinction between the self and other as
source has been given priority over the grammatically
distinguished averral and attribution" (op cit: 190). Each of these
frameworks has a slightly different focus and provenance. For
example, as will be discussed in more detail below, the
Engagement framework is entered from a dialogistic perspective,
and so its first distinction is between heterogloss and monogloss,
where heteroglossic propositions are those which indicate copositioning of interlocutors in any way. Hunston's framework is
more concerned to trace the source of the proposition in either the
self as writer, or some traceable 'other'. Both of these options are
dependent on more or less explicit reference to sources in the cotext, so that if the source of a proposition is determined to be 'self',
it is also either averred or explicitly attributed to the self. Averral in
turn, may be sourced or non-sourced. The differences in
perspective mean that there is no possibility of any one-to-one
mapping of Hunston's framework onto the categories of
Engagement, although the categories overlap since each has
similar concerns. For example, many of what Hunston classes as
sourced averral statements would be distinguished under
Engagement as a variety of categories, depending on whether they
acted to expand the negotiatory space and indicate the
contingency of the statement, or whether they acted to close down
any negotiation - unless Addressees were prepared to call the
veracity of the statements into question. At the same time, and in a
similar vein, Engagement is concerned to note whether the voice is
ModuleTwo:PartII

18

primarily self or other - who does the writer represent as taking


responsibility for the arguability of the proposition. For example, for
one of the propositions Hunston cites (op cit:192) "Gibraltar is a
by all accounts not very prepossessing colony," under Engagement
the underlined section would be treated as acting to expand
dialogic space by means of [attribute: acknowledge]. The voicing of
the proposition in this case is regarded as extra-vocalised, as
'hearsay': acknowledge. In Hunston's framework, on the other
hand, the responsibility for this type of statement is located in the
'self as default', as averral, and sourced in an implied consensus.
Even without the reference to the extra-vocalised 'source' of the
assessment regarding 'Gibraltar', in a bare assertion such as
Gibraltar is a not very prepossessing colony the negative in this
clause also covers its arguability, and thereby acts dialogistically to
contract the negotiatory space at the same time. Under
Engagement, the function of the negative also operates to construe
the subjectivity of the Addresser at work, and so would be classed
as intra-vocalised in this case, whereas in Hunston's framework it
would then be classed as averred: non-sourced.
Under Engagement, adverbs of 'concurrence', many of which
are modal adjuncts (Halliday 1994: 82-83) such as naturally and
obviously, are treated as signalling intra-vocalisation: concur. In the
case of modal adjuncts such as certainly and undoubtedly, their
function is much less certain, and may act to signal intravocalisation: pronounce, depending on co-text. In Hunston's
framework these lexical items may act to signal sourced averral
similar to the example cited above, and thus responsibility for the
'assessment' they frame is treated as originating in the 'self', while
the 'basis' for the assessment is sourced elsewhere.
Engagement treats interpersonal metaphors of modality
(standing in for modals of probability such as perhaps, probably,
maybe, etc) such as I think, it seems to me, I wonder, I suppose,
and so on, as 'framing' the evaluation in any projected statements,
and tend to signal what it terms as [intra-vocalisation: entertain],
again dependent on their co-textual function (cf. below Tables 2.1
and 2.2). For Engagement such locutions act to signal that the
proposition is grounded in the subjecthood of the speaker/writer
and that, therefore, the proposition is being represented as
contingent - as just one of a possible range of positions which might
be taken. The text in this way allows for or 'entertains' these
dialogic alternatives. In Hunston's framework, these would be
classed as attributed: sourced: self: emphasized. Projecting clauses
in this sense, tend to identify the attributed source of the
statements in both frameworks. In general then, the two
frameworks, while concerned to address the representation of the

ModuleTwo:PartII

19

social space in which interaction occurs, regard its construction


from slightly different vantage points.
Hoey (2001) also maintains that written discourse is itself
based on an interaction between the writer and the imagined
reader, and that texts can be effectively analysed by regarding
them as contributions to an ongoing dialogue. The fact that emaillist interaction allows actual responses to be made may mean that
these types of textual-interpersonal meanings, or orientation to
audience members, are particularly evident in these types of texts.
It is suggested that these interactive prospections contribute
towards the degree of interactivity or 'involvement' evident in texts
created in this mode, and at the same time, operate to signal
textual staging via interpersonal prosody, or overlapping 'fields'
(Young et al 1970). I see this as analogous to the notion of
'rhetorical text unit' as I am using it here, and to Gregory's (1985)
notion of phase.
As indicated earlier, units of analysis realising provoked
Appraisal are variable, and while values of Attitude may be located
in discrete lexical items or phrases, it is also generally the case that
overall values of Attitude derive their meanings cumulatively from
their relationship to other Appraisal values, such as Engagement,
as well as the interpersonal and experiential meanings in larger
discursive units such as paragraphs and even texts as a whole. In
accounting for the dynamics of this email list's interaction, and in
proposing a rhetorical organisation potential that will characterise
the patterns of interaction in this community of practice, a large
part of Module Three will depend upon findings of analysis under
Engagement. The rest of this section is therefore concerned with
discussing in some detail the nature of analyses made under this
framework.
2.3.1 Heteroglossic and monoglossic utterances and texts
As indicated earlier, the first of the two perspectives introduced
above, the dialogistic, is concerned with the degree to which the
Addresser makes reference to, and/or assumes alignment with
potential
reader
positions.
Distinction
here is
between
monoglossic (undialogised) utterances, those which report on
reality with no acknowledgement of any other potential opinion or
'voices' disputing what is being reported, and heteroglossic
(dialogised) utterances. In this sense, as discussed in the previous
section, the utterances of a so-called monoglossic text, or section
of text, will be expressed as 'averred, non-sourced assessments'
(Hunston 2000), whose opinions or value judgements need not be
supported, accounted for or modalized. For example, any reference

ModuleTwo:PartII

20

to a potential demurring opinion would indicate that at least one


voice is foregrounded and that the proposition was open to some
negotiation. In the tables which detail the Attitudinal values
identified in the two texts (appendix D), such monoglossic
utterances have been tagged as 'averred: non-sourced' (after
Hunston, 2000: 190). In other words, the propositions are attributed
to no single person or group in particular, but operate on assertions
which are presumed to be self-evident. On the other hand, all
instances of evaluation or Engagement would indicate the
subjectivity of the writer and his/her orientation towards potential
response - and hence interpersonal meanings.
Heteroglossic (or dialogised) utterances either act to 'contract'
(or narrow) the negotiatory space, or to 'expand' (or widen) it. They
can also be of two broad types. In the first instance, they cite, or
directly quote the words of others, what I am elsewhere referring to
as extra-vocalisation. In the second instance they introduce a
number of internal voices and positions via devices of 'intravocalisation' indicating the subjectivity of the writer. In order to
account for the patterns of evaluation in any text, and the
positioning strategies engendered by them, the sources of Attitude
therefore need to be taken into account.
The following tables represent a summary of the main
resources for construing dialogistic, or heteroglossic positions in
texts, firstly viewed from the perspective of whether the utterance
acts to contract or expand the dialogic space between the
Addresser and the intended recipients, and in the second table,
from the perspective of the internal or external voicing of the text.
The categories are illustrated with examples from the corpus of
texts used in this thesis1.

Table 2.1:
Engagement from the perspective expansion - contraction
Dialogic contraction:
Disclaim:

Referencetotextsotherthanthetwowhicharethefocusofthisstudy,areidentifiedbya
labelandnumberingcode.Forexample"wvn60.23:1"referstothe60thpostinwhichthe
"wideversusnarrow"threadwasembedded,andthe23rdpostdeemedtohavemaintained
thetopic.Thelastnumberreferstothenumbered sentences forthat post/text.Seealso
section5below,andAppendixEforareproductionofthe"alastbouquet"threadinwhich
text1appearsaspost[alb103.43/27vi]or[JSD6]the6th(vi)inthe"justsaydelete"sub
thread.

ModuleTwo:PartII

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Deny: e.g. An open system is not defined by public archives


and open subscription, it is defined by how a family responds
to its new babies and external influences.(2:17)
Counter: e.g. ..Roy, as father or older brother, was assigning
roles for the purpose of helping my older siblings feel safer,
important and loved, but his Diane child saw the false security
in that approach..(2:21); Maybe it is our job to survive, but it
is hard to see why that would be all important..(1:15)
Proclaim:
Concur: e.g. I'm glad you answered Roy's question because it
is obvious that I need information (2:2)
Pronounce: e.g. I believe that I have treated people here with
respect and on occasion have demanded the same.. (2:32) I
proclaim TRIPLE BULLSHIT!!(wvn60.23:1)
Endorse: I know there are people here who fear me, they have
reason to, I am not safe. (2:33)
Dialogic expansion:
Entertain:e.g. Iwonderif"task"isnotabitlikethephysicist's"force"or
Susan's"power."(1:25);Maybeitisourjobtosurvive,butitishardtosee
whythatwouldbeallimportant..(1:15)
Attribute:
Attribute/Acknowledge:e.g. InBion,it[task]hasmorepositive
connotations,andbeingaworkgroupinaccomplishmentofataskisnot
onlyhealthybutmorallygood.(1:4)
Attribute/Distance:e.g.anyonewhoclaimsI'mcold,formal,and
avoidingaffect...isafuckingjerk.(jvs170.29:20)herhusband,John
GoydanofBridgewater,claimedthepairhadplannedarealtrystthis
weekendataNewHampshirebedandbreakfast.(gen96.4.4)

Table 2.2:
Engagement from the perspective intra /extra-vocalisation

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Intra-vocalisation (internal voice the primary source):


Deny: e.g. I do not state or imply that ND is a dysfunctional
family but in many ways it is a closed system - this was my first
observation from the comfort of my former observerhood.. (2:14)
..why shouldn't wide-talkers handle *their* feelings of
constraint.. (wvn27.5:7) ..in reality there is *no confidentiality
on the net*(sftA1:2)
Counter: e.g. I have forgotten most of my Systems Theory but I
remembered enough to understand why there were fears among
the group of its eventual self-absorption or withering demise.
(2:16) ..it makes room for the non-specialist, yet it also ceases to
be as effective..(wvn37.9:20)
Concur: e.g. *Everyone, naturally, knows how to behave in
these circumstances
Pronounce: e.g. *I contend that everyone should know how to
behave in these circumstances; I believe that I have treated
people here with respect and on occasion have demanded the
same.. (2:32) this obviously is quite an advance over a PhD
(sft36.13:7b)
Entertain: e.g. Maybe it is our job to survive, but it is hard to
see why that would be all important..(1:15); I wonder if "task" is
not a bit like the physicist's "force" or Susan's "power." (1:25);
We must converse in writing, I suppose (1:14)
Extra-vocalisation (external voice the primary source)
Endorse: In my first post I attempted to do four things: 1. to
respond to Eileen's plea for the group to wake up from its
complacency - one of her posts stated so clearly to me her
desire to shock herself and the group out of their sleep - (2:24)
Though we represented different camps -- and our sigs showed
it! -- I felt we reached some common ground in those
discussions.(sft59.22:11) I even assumed that it had been a byinvitation-only group before the Tracy trauma until Simon set
me straight. (2:15)
Acknowledge: e.g. Attending a seminar would be viewed
suspiciously [by my company] as a waste of valuable company
time while being part of the collection in the diner across the
street is considered a promotion earned by keeping ones nose to
the grindstone..(1:20)

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Distance: e.g. "Gator" was coined (by?) [someone] to compare


certain subscribers to the urban-legend alligators that dwell in
New York City sewers and allegedly crawl out of the drain in
one's toilet or bathtub (jvs18.5:8) anyone who claims I'm cold,
formal, and avoiding affect... is a fucking jerk. (jvs170.29:20)
adapted from Martin and White (in preparation)

2.3.2 A closer look at Engagement: examples from the texts


In the following utterance for example:
Ex2.1
Notonlyisthereacommonsensemeaningoftaskasthejobtobedone,butit
isatechnicalterminBion'sgrouppsychology(1:2),
Not only signals a textual prospection (as distinct from
interpersonal prospection which is concerned with orientation to
Respondees), via the negative, acknowledging the dual definitions
of the topic, 'task', before the writer does so: in this case, the signal
functions at an 'interactive' or discourse-organising level to alert
readers that there are two items of information to follow, while at
the same time acknowledges the lack of a single viewpoint for the
benefit of readers1. The function of not here frames and denies the
only meaning of task. An alternative rendering of this information
without the signal might be: There is a common sense meaning of
task as [--], and there is [--] meaning as well. The connection with
textual metafunctionality and the arrangement of Given and New
is, of course, relevant in this expression as well. Here, Not only is
semantically charged with the possibility of another meaning of
task, while at the same time, it functions dialogistically to shut
down the viewpoint in which the 'common sense meaning' might be
the only one, contracting the heteroglossic space via an
unmodalized monologistic statement - [disclaim: deny]. The
grammatical structure uses Not only to introduce a dependent
clause with the process and subject in marked position, while in the
proposed counter-example, There is introduces a clause which is
independent of any additional or co-ordinated (paratactic) clause
which might follow. The construction not only... but also is
conventionally two-part, linked to an expected counter.
Within this monoglossic statement, however, is the extravocalised proposition regarding the meaning of task that is
attributed to common sense : 'the job to be done'. The typology
1

ThisrelatestowhatRavelli1995termsadynamicperspective.

ModuleTwo:PartII

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extra/intra-vocalisation notes the source of the proposition - for


example, when intra-vocalised, there is some indication of
subjectivity, representing propositions as contingent and therefore
negotiable, and hence 'dialogistic'. Therefore, for the first clause of
the cited utterance above (Ex 2.1), there are two propositions, one
un-dialogised (monoglossic), the other dialogised and extravocalised: that 1) there is a common sense meaning of task, and
that 2) common sense defines task as the job to be done. This
second embedded proposition would be classed as acting to
expand the dialogic space by means of [attribute: acknowledge].
Also in the cited utterance (Ex 2.1:1:2) above, there are two
intertextual referents: common sense meaning and Bion's group
psychology. To the extent that the utterance refers to voices
outside the text in this way, it can be classed as constructing a
somewhat heteroglossic space. However, these assessments on the
nature of task are undialogised as far as the Engagement system is
concerned: they are neither graduated nor 'hedged' by the
Addresser. This means that even though the clause complex
acknowledges outside voices, thus sourcing responsibility for these
'meanings of task' in extra-textual entities (Bion is later used in
sentence 1:4 as an extra-vocalised source of a proposition), the fact
that it is a technical term in Bion's group psychology is presented
as non-negotiable, as fact, and as not available for argument. We,
the audience, are not given any other information - at least within
the confines of this clause complex - as to the relative validity of
the proposition, nor is Bion's group psychology made authority for
any attributed proposition here.
In order to highlight the difference, the statement could be rewritten as
Ex2.2
*Itwouldseemthatnotonlyisthereacommonsensemeaningoftaskasthe
jobtobedone,butitisatechnicalterminBion'sgrouppsychology
In the counter-example above1, the complex has been modalized
with an (objective explicit) interpersonal grammatical metaphor
(c.f. Halliday 1994: 355) which is used to indicate the degree of
probability for the proposition, while at the same time, its
interpersonal function indexes an Addresser who more or less takes
responsibility for the probability of this proposition, and it is
therefore intra-vocalised (entertain), and at the same time,
dialogistically expansive. The fact that it is, as Halliday terms it, an
'objective explicit' grammatical metaphor, serves to narrow the
1

Exampleswhichare not 'attested',i.e.madeupcounter examples,are marked withan


asterisk(*).

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negotiatory space more than, for example a 'subjective explicit'


interpersonal metaphor, such as I've heard that, might do.
Strangely, given Halliday's categorisation of this as subjective via
the reference to the self, the frame I've heard that.. would be
classified as extra-vocalised (hearsay: attributed to an unspecified
source: acknowledge) in the Engagement model. The relative
degree of dialogistic expansion in this case would be achieved by
means of the unspecified source of what has been heard, and that
the writer must locate the validity of the hearsay in him/herself,
thus representing the proposition as contingent on the validity of
what the writer has 'heard': the source of the proposition. On the
other hand, for the frame It would seem that.. the writer would be
representing the framed proposition as more generally held to be
the case, certainly able to be 'entertained', even though the source
of the proposition itself is intra-vocalised. A more 'contractive'
negotiatory space therefore, construes the propositions and
proposals made, as relatively non-negotiable.
In other systems, such indicators might also be classed as
'hedges' or 'politeness'. For example, in We must converse in
writing, I suppose.(1:14), the writer uses a modal of obligation
directed at an inclusive we (the group - all people/readers onlist);
and in the same utterance/message, he also signals that this may
not be the only position regarding this necessity. He steps back
from asserting that we must converse in writing by acknowledging
himself as the source of such an assessment, via an interpersonal
metaphor (standing in for a modal of probability) as comment
adjunct framing the whole proposition: I suppose.
This also means that within utterances of an overtly extravocalised (heteroglossic) nature, monologistic utterances - or 'bare
assertions' presenting non-modalized non-contentious (with respect
to in-group) orientations to propositions (or proposals) - could also
be made via direct quotation and other attributions. This does not
mean that the overall 'message' to use Hasan's definition (see for
example 1996: 117) is monologistic, since it is overtly extravocalised, but that the framed proposition may act to introduce
such bare assertions. Indeed, this is generally the function of extravocalisation, in that it removes responsibility from the Addresser as
the source of authoritative non-negotiatory positioning. In the email
list on which this study is based, overt extra-vocalisation, i.e.
quoting of outside sources (as well as the use of quoting parts of
previous messages to simulate interaction), is often used as a
means for bringing evaluative commentary into the discussions.

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26

2.3.3 Intertextuality and dialogic expansion


In texts from this context of situation, where norms of interaction
are dependent to a large degree on assumed knowledge, the power
of intertextual reference in constructing the audience cannot be
under-estimated. An example of this can be seen in the opening
clause of Text1 The concept of task has a rich history here, which
also functions to acknowledge the diversity of voices in the
projected audience. The interactants (that is to say the other list
members who had previously been discussing the concept of task')
are objectivated (cf. Van Leeuwen 1996, and discussion in Module
1) via a representation of them as a location or space
circumstantial to the process: here. Through this construction, the
writer acknowledges that he is not the first to discuss this concept
onlist, and in this manner, his opening clause functions as both
setting and theme for the text, as well as retrospectively and intertextually alluding to other members of the group who have made
contributions to discussions of this concept in the past. Again,
although this would function intertextually to open the
heteroglossic space for the reading of the text, via allusion to the
idea that the writer's opinions are just one of many on the topic,
under Engagement, such a statement is monologistic to the extent
that it makes an unmodalized bare assertion that such is the case.
Furthermore, some cases of intertextual reference dependent on
assumed knowledge and past experience group discussion, or
history, can be seen to function to contract dialogic space for those
who may be new to the group or unfamiliar with such historical
references. This topic is addressed again below in section 4.1.1.
The Engagement framework does not address this aspect of
positioning which relies on intertextual reference - including
reference to other interactants, or to specialised terms relating to
orders of discourse outside, or inside, the list discussion - what is
normally addressed under Field. This is partly because Appraisal is
located within the interpersonal and it is concerned with the
arguability of clauses, and hence their relative negotiability.
However, naming, personal pronoun use, and other aspects of
interpellation and referring practices are located at the juncture of
the interpersonal and the ideational, as outlined in Module 1.
Accordingly, this thesis takes into account findings related to the
use of list-specific intertextual referents to mark list boundaries and
norms - referents which act to construe the audience and
Addressees as privy (or not) to particular sets of knowledge, and as
included or dis-affiliated via such naming and referring practices. It
is intended that these areas will be further addressed in Module
Three.

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27

2.3.4 Summary: Engagement and the construction of relative


interactivity
Values of Engagement are therefore implicated in construing the
perceived relationship between any Addresser and their audience,
as well as contributing to what Sinclair (1993), Hunston (2000) call
the 'interactive plane', relating to the structural staging of any text.
In the accompanying analysis of two example texts, values of
Engagement are noted only in passing and are not demonstrated
fully, although instances of extra-vocalisation are noted in the
tabulated analysis (appendix D). However, from the foregoing
discussion it is evident that investigating textual patterns in terms
of their Engagement values can provide means of understanding
the inter-related aspects of the discourse structure as well as
construction of identity and positioning in email interaction.
Analysis of a wider range of texts in Module Three will make greater
use of Engagement in order to investigate the positioning moves,
construction of stance, and rhetorical staging of these texts as a
means of characterising relative interactivity and involvement.
These strategies in turn, contribute to the construction of tenor in
these texts, and to what I have been calling the norms of
interaction of this discourse community (c.f. Part 1: section 3.6.III).
It is also intended that the Engagement framework be applied in
order to account for dynamic patterns of interaction, and the
possible reader interpretation of texts, as revealed in types of overt
responses (replies).

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3. Attitude and the Appraisal Framework


3.1 Introduction: overview of the Attitude system
At the next level of delicacy, ATTITUDE is subdivided into three
subsystems: AFFECT, JUDGEMENT and APPRECIATION. While AFFECT is
concerned with values to do with feelings and emotions, JUDGEMENT
describes attitudes towards human behaviour and actions. Thus,
both these subsystems are concerned with describing the
evaluation of human targets and agents, although it is common for
affectual values to be expressed towards non-human targets. Nonhuman agents of these types of Appraisal values might be
considered marked, and thus may rarely be found outside
metaphor and poetics. APPRECIATION, on the other hand, is
concerned with values which describe objects and the attributes of
'things', or beings construed as things. Each of these subsystems is
discussed in turn below.
3.2 Affect
Within AFFECT the main secondary entry conditions which Martin
(2000b) identifies are positive/negative; surge/predisposition and
low/high intensity. In the analysis presented here I have not used
the latter two unless it seemed particularly useful in analysing each
ATTITUDE in context. The main values of [ AFFECT: negative/positive]
can be summarised as:
value
disinclination
/fear
inclination
/desire
unhappiness
/misery;antipathy
happiness
/cheer;affection
insecurity
/disquiet;surprise
security
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example
counterexample
(2:4)Ihadanticipated[..]
*Ihadanticipateda
birthdaypresent.
fear
(2:25)oneofherposts
*oneofherpostsstatedher
thoughtsonthematter
stated[]herdesireto
shockherself
(2:26)Myonlyregretsince *theonlybruisingIhave
Ihavebeenhere
receivedsincebeinghere
[judgement:capacity:
negative:evoked]
(2:2)I'mgladyouanswered *It'snaturalyouanswered
Roy'squestion
Roy'squestion[judgement:
normality]
(2:33)Iamnotsafe.
*Iamnotamonster.
[judgement:normality]
(2:14)myfirstobservation
*myfirstobservationfrom
29

/confidence;trust
dissatisfaction
/ennui;displeasure
satisfaction
/interest;admiration

fromthecomfortofmy
formerobserverhood
(2:6)Roygotthebruntof
myindignation
(2:5)Ivaluehonestyin
communication

thevantagepointofmy
formerobserverhood.
*Roygotthegistofmy
explanation
*Shewashonestin
communicating[judgement:
veracity]

Table 3.1
Not all of these values are realised in the two texts analysed here,
but where possible, actual examples from the text have been given,
together with made-up (*asterisked) counter examples for
illustrative purposes.
3.2.1 Affect: Comment on some examples
Because Affect refers to largely individually reported subjective
emotion, as distinct from Judgement which deals with social
sanction and esteem, sources of Affect are also considered as
'Appraisers'. When the Affect is reported as 'happening to myself',
perhaps caused by some other person or action, as, for example, "I
have been surprised that no-one identified..."(2:18), the Appraiser
and the Appraised would seem to be one and the same, but in this
type of situation, the cause of the emotional reaction is classed as
the Appraised, or 'target' of the evaluation - that no-one
identified1 In this system it needs to be distinguished for purposes
of analysis, that there is always a 'reporter' (or 'animator' in
Goffman's 1974 terms) who may not appear in the text, but
appraisal values of Affect are classed as originating in an 'emoter'
as a source. In 2:18, for example, Appraiser and source are
coterminous. All statements of any kind represent an 'assessment'
of the state of the world, whether the assessor is explicitly named
or not (for example via intra-vocalisation) and this way of classing
the values of Affect locates them in the person who feels or
manifests such emotional orientation, rather than the Addresser
who reports their assessment of the origin of the Affect. In reporting
such an assessment of the nature of someone else's "evaluative
positioning", the Addresser 'avers' that such an emotion "occurred".
Grammatically, responsibility for the proposition may be unsourced
(even though understood as located in the Addresser), while the
Attitude itself is sourced in the emoter. For example, in "*John looks
happy", the emoter and hence the source of the Attitude is 'John',
1

IngrammaticaltermsthiswouldbeclassedasaprojectedMentalprocessclause.

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30

while the reporter is not mentioned in the text - although indicated


(and dialogically expanded) by intra-vocalisation in this case: looks.
In this example, however, it is not clear what the emoter is actually
evaluating, since the Addresser only reports on someone's apparent
emotional state. In another counter-example "*John looks happy
with his present" it is clear that John would be evaluating the target
'present' via [affect: happiness]. Without an inscribed target, such
as 'present' in the example above, the positioning may be
ambiguous, and the description of John's emotional state may
inscribe Affect as a token of evoked Judgement - depending on the
Addressee's understanding of the nature of John's happiness, and
whether it is culturally appropriate to be happy in the context.
If, on the other hand, we consider an utterance such as "* I
think John looks happy", John is still the source of the Attitude, but
the proposition has been framed by a grammatical metaphor of
probability, and the source of the assessment (the reporter) can be
classed as 'self' or the Addresser. "I think" here, would also function
under Engagement as acknowledging the subjective nature of the
assessment which it frames. With Affect therefore, the subjectivity
of the Evaluator is always either indicated or at issue (cf. Hunston
2000).
3.3 Judgement
Within the system of JUDGEMENT, the two main distinctions are
those of social ESTEEM and social SANCTION. The most succinct
gloss of the differences between these two areas of description is
that given by Martin (2000a: 156):
Social esteem involves admiration and criticism, typically
without legal implications; if you have difficulties in this area
you may need a therapist. Social sanction on the other hand
involves praise and condemnation, often with legal implications;
if you have problems in this area you may need a lawyer.(my
emphasis)
While it seems that people make judgements of social sanction
without the implication that the so-judged will soon be involved in
litigation, it does highlight the major differences between the two
areas, sanction and esteem.
3.3.1 Social Esteem
Social esteem is subdivided into three types of judgement:
NORMALITY, TENACITY and CAPACITY. Again, these subtypes can be
described as being linked to values of modality, in which NORMALITY

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31

is to [MODALIZATION: USUALITY], as TENACITY is to [MODULATION:


INCLINATION], and as CAPACITY is to [MODALIZATION: ABILITY].
These values are tabulated below together with examples from the
text where possible.
3.3.2 Social sanction
Social sanction is subdivided into VERACITY and PROPRIETY, and
these may be usefully linked to values of [MODALIZATION:
PROBABILITY], and [MODULATION: OBLIGATION] respectively (Halliday,
1994). In other words, VERACITY is most likely applied to the
arguability of the target's sincerity, while PROPRIETY would be
invoked in order to suggest that the target should comply with
certain socially held values, norms or rules for moral action and
behaviour.
SOCIALESTEEM
value
normality:negative
normality:positive
tenacity:negative
tenacity:positive

capacity:negative
capacity:positive

example
(2:10)[babies..force
realignmentof[the
family's]]habitualpatterns
(2:3)Ifeelasanynew
memberisgoingtofeel
(1:21)NDhasoftenbeen
takentotaskfornot
stickingtoitstask.
(1:22)inmanywaysweare
quiteproductive

counterexample
*babiescausedistressto
familymembers[affect:
insecurity]
*Ifeelupset[affect:
insecurity]
*NDhasoftenbeentaken
totaskforbeingexclusive.
[judgement:propriety]
*inmanywayswearequite
narrowminded.
[judgement:propriety:
negative]
(2:22)Iamignorantof
*Iampissedoffwithlist
Listjargon
jargon.[affect:
dissatisfaction]
(2:9)Theyrefreshthegroup *Theyobservethegroup
dynamic.
dynamic.

SOCIALSANCTION
value
veracity:negative
veracity:positive
propriety:negative

ModuleTwo:PartII

example
counterexample
*youweretryingtofool
me
(2:7)hewastryingtobe
*hewastryingtocheckhis
honestabouthisperceptions perceptions[judgement:
tenacity]
(2:28)[she]didnot
*[she]didnothandlethis
deservethis(i.e.'Ishould
well[judgement:capacity]
32

propriety:positive

nothavedonethis':targetof
negativeproprietyisthe
self)
(2:28)someonewithher
*someonewithherlegs
courtesy
[appreciation:reaction:
evoked:neg.orPOs
dependentoncotext]
Table 3.2

3.3.2.1 Judgement: normality: Comment on some examples


Values of negative NORMALITY would be invoked if someone or
group were judged to be strange or out of the ordinary, although
this points to one of the problems with Judgements of Normality,
especially in the context of many western subcultures, where 'out
of the ordinary', even though 'negatively normal' would still
constitute a positive evaluation in many cases. This highlights the
fact that Appraisal theory is concerned with the operation of the
discourse semantic level, and as such, evaluative meanings of
positive or negative, are locally contingent, not universal. The
following example: "I had anticipated curiosity,[affect] fear,[affect]
jealousy,[affect] among others, but not suspicion,[affect + negative
polarity] and particularly
of my identity... this is, in my experience, unique [graduation:
focus]to the Web." (2:4), shows how such values of Attitude can
vary with co-text. The word unique on its own might usually have a
positive value of normality in an utterance such as "*She is a
unique person." In this case, a positive evaluation is evoked via
"negative" normality, and the usually positive attribute this ascribes
to a person in western societies. But the negatively evaluative
Judgement in the above example is implicitly provoked (as distinct
from explicitly inscribed: see below 3.3.3) via a series of statements
regarding the types of Affect the Addresser expected to find in her
target, the email list group. These expected types of Affect are then
contrasted with the (negative) value of Affect [insecurity] she
ascribes to this target, and which she did not expect to find (but
did), which 'behaviour' is linked to its being "unique to the Web".
3.3.2.2 Judgement: tenacity/capacity
In the case of TENACITY, values are inscribed in terms of the target's
accomplishments, and any claim to have successfully done
something or shown determination or willingness to sustain work
towards some goal may invoke positive values of Tenacity for
example.
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33

CAPACITY is concerned with values of ability, not permission, and as

such, forms values linked with Judgements of skill in carrying out an


action, or knowledge in relation to some activity, rather than a
willingness to comply with any request or command, which in that
case, would more likely fall under values of TENACITY.
3.3.3 Provoked and evoked Judgements
As discussed previously, Judgement values are not necessarily
inscribed in a text. That is to say, such evaluative judgements are
not always explicitly made but may be, indeed are, usually invoked
via a series of other values, such as Affect, which leads to the
implication that the target may be judged according to the local
norms of social interaction which in turn, sanction or value the
described behaviour. Invoked Judgements may be either 'evoked',
or 'provoked' (White, 1998), with the former arising implicitly via
tokens realised by ideational or experiential value, which depend
for their evaluative status on the assumed value system of the
audience members - or that constructed as assumed. 'Provoked'
Appraisal is usually construed via 'tokens' of Judgement - for
example, more explicit values of Affect, Appreciation, Engagement
and/or Graduation - such as counter-expectation, negation,
intensification, and so on.
This thesis suggests that provoked Appraisal can be extended
to include the effect of cumulative work done on the autonomous
plane of discourse, where the provoked Judgement may arise
implicitly via a string of explicitly inscribed values of Attitude in the
text up to that point, as a cue or trigger, their status traceable to
series of positioning moves in a move complex. These move
complexes can be labelled strategies. The provoked Judgement is
still usually signalled by values of Engagement and other indicators
of interactive prospection which act to link previous values in the
text in setting up a frame of relevance for the (provoked) move
being made. These links are regarded as acting over several
clauses or clause complexes via cohesive devices such as
conjunction, and repetition (lexical cohesion, matching relations).
Evoked appraisal, on the other hand, is dependent for its
evaluative status on assumed shared values and knowledge, and is
realised in texts by experiential meanings which function as tokens
of appraisal via activation of community norms. The boundary
between these two categories and their identifying features is
obviously not clearly defined. Some analysts, for example Jordan
(2001), would regard evoked appraisal as 'description' rather than
as 'assessment', and hence not be classed as appraisal. While
Jordan's (op cit) perspective on text organisation is more concerned

ModuleTwo:PartII

34

to outline the conjunctive macrostructures operating within


stretches of text, here I am concerned to start at the level of
patterns of semantics on the surface of discourse, and so such
'factual' descriptions of objects, events and people need to be
accounted for as dependent on assumed shared values, or
contact/familiarity.
An example of provoked Judgement can be seen in sentence
2:4 quoted earlier (c.f. 3.3.2.1). Here, the Addresser uses a series of
values of Affect to set up a negative Judgement regarding the
behaviour of the participants of the email list. At the same time,
she signals, or prospects, a value of [judgement: negative
normality] via counter-expectation ("I had anticipated curiosity,
fear, jealousy, among others, but [counter-expect] not suspicion..").
As well, she signals that the Judgement may be contentious by the
explicit insertion of an intra-vocalised reference to herself, in my
experience (similar in function to modalization: probability). This in
turn, functions to acknowledge the possibility of other assessments,
and thus operates dialogistically to open the negotiating space for
the declaration, and negative Judgement "..this is, in my
experience, unique to the Web", where this refers to the behaviour
of listmembers which she had not anticipated.
In section 1.3.1 above, excerpts of texts 1 and 2 (Ex 1.1 & 1.2)
were presented as demonstrating a possible use for provoked,
evoked, and 'ambiguous' Appraisal in determining, or at least
signalling, phase boundaries in expository texts. For example, in
the case of the proposed pivotal sentence 1:5, a question centres
around whether it is hard for the Addresser to mesh all this, i.e. all
of the thoughts about the nature of 'task', which is the theme of his
discussion; or whether meshing all this is objectively hard. In the
first case, the writer negatively appraises his own Capacity, and the
positioning with respect to his interlocutors might be one of
deference through an expression of lack of expertise in this field
(c.f. Martin 1992: 530). In the second, more likely case, he
evaluates the nature of all this as 'complex' - as difficult to
comprehend in its entirety. In either case, the appraisal is evoked
by the term 'difficult/hard (to do s.t.)', which may depend for its
negative or positive value on community-held norms regarding
'difficulty'. In this case, the positioning strategy would act to call on
equal status (in terms of expertise) with interlocutors. In terms of
lexical association, something which is 'difficult/hard to do' is
related to onerous tribute to be paid in sentence 1:3. This clause
also acts on the autonomous plane of the discourse encapsulating
all this, while at the same time, it orients to the complexity of the
argument to come: on the interactive plane, all this is about to be
expanded upon in other ways - as a series of personal examples of
what 'task' might mean.
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35

Turning now to an example from text2, one of the stretches of


text which operate in this way is Sentence 2:5, reproduced here for
convenience:
Ex3.1:
Asforstatingyoursuspicionsordoubts,Ivaluehonesty[affect:satisfaction]
incommunicationandwouldrather[modulation:inclination]hearyourfear,
suspicionordoubt[affect:insecurity]directly[graduation:focus]than
[comparitor:negative]toheartheirechoesinall[graduation:force]ofour
exchangesorinthepoverty[appreciation:composition:negative]ofour
exchange.(2:5)
The token of Judgement of negative propriety in this clause
complex is provoked by a value of [appreciation: composition:
negative] since the target is not, grammatically-speaking, human
behaviour, but represented via experiential metaphor, as a
nominalisation: our exchange. The negative evaluation is realised
as a nominalised possession of a possible future condition, rather
than an actual 'exchange'. This feature of text2 is common to the
style in this text overall (cf. Module 1) which represents the
attributes of social actors as possessivated (van Leeuwen 1996)
nominal groups. In this clause complex, the writer uses this way of
realising attributes and processes to distance the activities of the
unspecified Addressees she refers to, at the same time developing
her positioning strategy through cohesive ties :
your suspicion or doubts; your fear, suspicion, or doubt
their echoes
our exchanges; our exchange
The provoked negative Judgement of the Addressees is
interpretable in the co-text of the other values of appraisal in this
clause complex: the negative Affect presupposed of the Addressees
via nominalisation, and parallelism: fear, suspicion or doubt; and
the positive Affect she feels towards honesty. The provoked
Judgement also depends on repetition: matching relations of
contrast - what she would rather hear in contrast to what will be the
case if her preferences are not followed: a poverty in interaction.
More particularly, it also depends on the evaluative positioning
which has been made in the preceding sentences, and would not
provoke a negative Judgement value without this context. In other
words, the cumulative work which has been done by the writer on
the autonomous plane of discourse is also very much implicated in
tracing the provocation of implied Judgement.
The following sentence (2:6) I believe is also part of the
transition between two phases in the text - or rather, the section
represented by sentences 2:5 - 2:6 realises for this text a type of
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36

pivotal section in which the negative evaluation of the main targets


is effected:
Ex3.2:
Iusually[modalization:usuality]findthatexchangesbetweentwopeopleare
largely[graduation:focus]superficial[appreciation:composition:negative]
untiltheyriskthetruth[judgement:tenacity]oftheirfeelingsandthoughts
towardeachother.(2:6)
In this clause complex, the values of the previous sentence are
repeated and exemplified: again, Appreciation is used to negatively
evaluate exchanges between two people as superficial, under a
condition realised by a value of positive [judgement: tenacity]. In
both clause complexes, responsibility for the argument can be
traced to the subjectivity of the writer. The argument is expressed,
however, as an orientation to 'usuality' and 'normality' via habitual
present tense (I usually find; exchangesare superficial; they risk
the truth), representing an attempt to define 'reality', and the
conditions under which interaction will be positively evaluated. This
type of strategy I term 'veiled directive' in Module 1, and it seems
related to what Hunston (2000: 189) distinguishes as 'worldcreating', in which the writer makes a recommendation, in contrast
to 'world-reflecting' in which the writer merely reports on the state
of the world as 'fact'. In this section of the text, the two
perspectives are interrelated in a complex way, and the resultant
ambiguity appears to be a feature of this writer's 'style'.
The final clause complex in the paragraph (2:7) realises a shift
via contrast - through its use of a specified social actor (Roy), tense
change, and a return to text which does not involve values of
Appreciation. In this text, 2:7 functions in the role of example for
the evaluative stance. To continue the terminology cited earlier, it
shifts from being 'world-creating', to 'world-reflecting' in orientation,
and seems to also more closely represent what Gregory (op cit)
would term a transitional rhetorical unit. This is underlined by the
sentence which follows it, the first in a new paragraph, one which
changes orientation again:
Ex.3.3:
Newmembersinanygrouparethelifebloodofthegroup...theyarethenew
babiesofthatfamily.(2:8)
In summary, values of evoked (implicit) Judgement are made via
the use of lexis which is of itself 'value-neutral', but which attaches
to it some culturally-charged value. So that, a statement such as
"she shot her father with his own gun", while using no attitudinal
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37

lexis, would need to be given a specific context for such an action


to be viewed as positive in everyday social practice. Values of
provoked Judgement, on the other hand, are usually set up via a
series of inter-related statements, so that the realisation of
Judgement may be spread over several sentences, or even the
whole text via attitudinal lexis, markers of counter-expectation or
proclamation (associated with values of Engagement), explicit
modality, and other values of Affect and Appreciation as mentioned
above. This idea of tokens of Judgement being made though the
use of 'culturally-charged' lexis, or values of Affect and Appreciation
in order to pass Judgement - thus giving rise to ambiguity of
evaluative stance - provides a means of accounting for strategies
used by writers to emphasise or draw attention to significant areas
of their arguments. It also provides a means for accounting for the
variety of interpretations made by readers.
3.4 Appreciation
The final subsystem of Attitude is that of APPRECIATION, which is
highlighted when evaluations of objects, products, events, or even
the products of human behaviour are made, or when anything is
judged in these terms. Such a distinction is useful when people are
evaluated in terms of their appearance, rather than their behaviour,
for example. However, as discussed below (3.4.1), Appreciation,
and its differentiation from values of Judgement, forms one of the
most fuzzy boundaries within the system of Attitude, and thus local
grammars of evaluation may need to be applied in determining
which analytic categories are most appropriate for each value. On
the other hand, it may need to be accepted that, due to the interstratal
tension
which
inevitably
obtains
between
the
lexicogrammatical and the semantic levels, such permeability of
the category boundaries should be viewed as a useful means by
which the framework can enhance the analysis of any text, by
highlighting those areas where ambiguous readings of evaluative
stance may be accounted for. The categories of [ APPRECIATION:
negative/positive] which I have concentrated on as the most
prevalent are summarised and exemplified below:
value
composition:negative

example
(2:13)adisruptedfamily

composition:positive

(1:12)thisfluidplan

ModuleTwo:PartII

counterexample
(2:14)NDisa
dysfunctionalfamily
[judgement:capacity:
negative]
*thiscaringplan
[judgement:capacity:
positive:viainabilityof
38

reaction:negative
reaction:positive
valuation:negative
valuation:positive

(2:20)Ihaveboring
reports
(1:11)Mygoal[..]isto
haveaspleasantandas
delightfuladayasIcan
(2:21)thefalsesecurityin
thatapproach
(1:4)[task]hasmore
positiveconnotations

planstobe'caring']NB:
thisisoneofthesliding
pointsofthissystemandits
interstrataltension
grammarsemantics
*Thereportsboredme
[affect:dissatisfaction]
*Mygoalistobeas
cheerfulasIcan.
[judgement:tenacity]
*thestupidityinyour
approach[judgement:
capacity:negative]
*doingthistaskhasmoral
obligations[judgement:
propriety]

Table 3.3
3.4.1 Appreciation: Comment on some examples
As noted above, ascribing values of Appreciation is sometimes
associated with an indistinct boundary between someone's
activities and their skill in performing them (which would therefore
normally need to be described under values of Judgement), and the
product of that skill as performance or 'thing'. The example which is
frequently quoted involves a skilful batsmen in a cricket match,
who can be judged as a 'brilliant batsman' or that 'he batted
brilliantly' (i.e., [judgement: capacity: positive]), or whose
performance can be described as a 'brilliant innings' (in which case,
a value of [appreciation: reaction: impact: positive] is used as a
token of provoked [judgement: capacity: positive]). The need for
such a distinction only becomes obvious in context. When analysing
texts, the main usefulness of these distinctions is in the search for
patterns - patterns which help to trace the rhetorical organisation
and development of any text as a semantic unit, and patterns
which help to characterise the preferred and typical stylistic
features of any writer or register. The means by which writers use
values of Appreciation as tokens of Judgement is often that of
experiential metaphor, that is, an activity which a social actor may
undertake is construed as the product of that activity - which can
then be evaluated - rather than the social actors themselves, or
their actual behaviour as process. This is one means by which a
writer might set up a textual persona, or style which appears
'objective' or non-judgemental.

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This can be seen in the final paragraph/closing sequence (1:28


- 1:30) of text1 where the provoked Judgement of positive tenacity
is not only related to the comment regarding the writer's 'resolve'
to squeeze the most out of the hours providence has provided, but
in effect summarises the evaluative positioning of the writer-as-self
in the whole of the text, in which the concept of 'task' and its
relationship to work towards goals is consistently positively
evaluated, and with which the writer actively associates himself. In
section 3.3.3 above, and 4.1 below, ambiguity between values of
Appreciation and Judgement in another example from the text (1:5)
is associated with the identification of organisational junctures in
the text.
3.4.1.1 Appreciation or Judgement?
What needs addressing again at this point, and as outlined in
section 1.2 above, one of the contentious areas associated with
Appraisal analysis stems from its reliance on discourse semantic
values, rather than those of the strictly lexicogrammatical: classes
and functions of items are viewed as activated in co-text and
context. When Addressers, their audience, and the analyst are
acknowledged as part of that context, then it is obvious that each
reading may entail a different set of meanings, dependent on
situational variables. This is because context of culture, especially
taken from a dialogic point of view, includes the text itself as well
as all the possible alternatives which might have been selected to
make its meanings in the situation and culture of which it is part.
Hence one's reading position needs to be factored in to any
analysis of a text's message, which speaks to my earlier contention
that an ethnographic perspective, or participant-observer status is
important in dealing with texts taken from a specific community of
practice. There may be 'resistant' or 'compliant' reading positions,
for example, and these may even produce different 'statuses'
(Hunston 2000) for the evaluation in texts, which in turn would
constrain evaluation as either Judgement or Appreciation. To make
a complete Appraisal analysis of any text, it would not only need to
be seen logogenetically as I am concentrating on here, but also
from the perspective of the analyst's reading position
(ontogenetically) and from the perspective of the development of
various local genres (phylogenetically) as well. In order to look at
these types of patterns which might substantiate various reading
positions within a cultural genre, the use of large corpora and
studies of phrases in context to reveal the nature of semantic
prosodies (e.g. Louw 1993) appears promising, as mentioned above
(1.2).

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This is not to say that any reading of a text is possible, or that


texts are subject to a radical polysemy, as Simpkins (1996)
suggests. Certain attitudinal lexis, such as the item corrupt, no
matter what the co-text, entails either negative or positive
evaluation - unless the positioning strategies in the same co-text
have worked very hard to introduce a socially marked value for this
term. Other expressions of evaluative attitude may be less strictly
negative or positive, and depend on co-textual signals to set up
particular readings. While there may be multiple possible readings
of stretches of text, these will therefore be constrained in
systematic ways - which may need to make reference to factors
outside the text itself, in what Thibault (1999: 561) refers to as
global intertextual resources. Nevertheless, accounting for the
potential interpretations of texts via their meaning-making
resources in the co-text is regarded as the goal for discourse
analysis of this kind:
"we will never understand the function of evaluation in a
culture if our studies are based, however quantitatively, on the
analysis of deco-textualized examples. It is texts that mean,
through their sentences and the complex of logogenetic
contingencies among them they do not mean as a selection
from, or a sum of, or worse, an average of, the meanings within
the clause." (Martin 2003: 177)
In terms of how Appraisal views the text as instantiation of sets of
possible meanings, Macken-Horarik observes:
"If we are to understand how evaluation works for a given set of
readers/listeners/viewers, we need to develop an analytical
framework which is sensitive to the formation and the practices
employed by these stakeholders. " (2003: 315)
As has already been stated, this thesis adopts the view presented
above through a focus on texts produced in a written community of
practice, as a means of tracing the 'mechanisms' through which
possible meanings are made.
3.4.1.2 Appreciation or Judgement: comment on some examples
In the examples of Table 3.3 above, the fine line between the
categories Appreciation and Judgement is evident in some of the
examples. As an example, the difference between disrupted and
dysfunctional in relation to the target family may seem very slim,
but in this case is linked to the generalised, unmarked types of
targets for the evaluative adjectives involved, in which
dysfunctional evaluates the behaviour of the family members as an
inter-relating group in process, and disrupted evaluates the overall
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composition of the group in toto, as a product of past behaviour. In


general, a local grammar, or probe, will help to distinguish values of
Appreciation from values of Judgement when the lexical item in
question is adjectival: 'It was adjective of you + to (non finite
clause with material, or mental process)'. So that, 'it was
dysfunctional of you to do that', sounds possible in the grammar;
whereas, 'it was disrupted of you to do that,' does not.
Another example in this vein (1:12) highlights the uses of the
lexical item 'plan' which generally functions as either a process or
as a nominal head, thus lending to its Thing function a connotation
of having been produced by human activity. The evaluative
attribute teamed with plan is again more significant here, such
that, using the example cited above, fluid is normally used to make
assessments and evaluations of objects, events or the finished
product of human behaviour; whereas, in the counter-example,
caring refers to an affectual response in which human agents are
implicated: 'plans', having no subjectivity, may not be attributed
with Affect. The very metaphoricity of this relationship signals a
type of markedness useful in assigning category membership, as
well as the local grammar-as-test-probe cited in the previous
section. The choice of lexical item, especially evaluative adjective,
thus has rhetorical significance in that such values of Appreciation
may often be used to provoke 'implicit' Judgements, and so help to
'distance' the evaluator, usually the Addresser, from the
Judgements of behaviour they may wish to imply1.
Sentence 1:11 is also interesting for similar reasons, and
points to a tendency on the part of this writer to make Judgements
which are not explicitly inscribed. Here, 'day' is given a value of
Appreciation (pleasant and delightful), while the Addresser claims
only that his goal is to have the day he describes. The grammatical
identifying relationship is between my goal and to have +
[appreciation: positive] day. In the counter example given, the
actual positive Judgement of Tenacity implied, is brought to the
surface: the identifying relationship in this case is between my goal
and to be, thereby locating more closely his goal as part of his own
inclination. These distinctions are useful in analysis of textual
identity and ideological stance, since preferences for evaluating
phenomena in terms of either behaviour or as object are one
means of accounting for stylistic differences by different writers.
In order to trace patterns of both the sources and targets of
Attitudinal value, and the Addresser's preferred orientation to such
targets, this distinction between Appreciation and Judgement
1

This also relates to what Quirk et al (1972: 265) distinguish as dynamic and stative
adjectives:"Forexample,astativeadjectivesuchastallcannotbeusedwiththeprogressive
aspectorwiththeimperative:*He'sbeingtall ;*Betall.Ontheotherhand,wecanuse
carefulasadynamicadjective:He'sbeingcareful,Becareful."

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values needs to be made. Within Appraisal, the rhetorical


functionality of the resources and options of the lexicogrammar in
their relation to discourse semantic positionings are the focus of
analysis. As in the case of values of Judgement, with Appreciation,
an Appraiser need not be specifically mentioned, as the values of
the Appraisal are located in the thing or person evaluated. This is in
contrast with values of Affect which are located in the subjective
experience of either an Appraiser, or 'emoter' (c.f. 3.2.1).
3.5 Comparison of attitudinal values favoured by each writer
My comparison of the two texts starts by observing the amount and
type of attitudinal values used by each writer, which gives a gross
indication of the types of Attitude favoured by each. In order to
trace the actual stance of the writer in the message, these values
also need to be seen in relation to the sources and the targets of
the Attitudes identified, as well as the 'loading' given to different
categories. A writer's argument, as a function of rhetorical staging,
can also be usefully traced using such an analysis, by noting what
targets are appraised in what order, and how these targets fall into
semantically-aligned classes, as well as how they have been
appraised in sets of contrasting negative and positive values. It
seems that quite often an argument or 'position statement' in these
types of (email discussion) texts is built up via linked evaluative
positions vis-a-vis their targets. The targets of appraisal in this
case, can also be regarded as operating textually via signals of
lexical cohesion. Conclusions of an explicit nature are not always
made in these texts, but implied via stretches of text which are
then linked via both semantic and syntactic cohesion (repetition
and conjunction) to other stretches of text, and over the text as a
whole. This type of dependence on cohesive ties is evident in the
provocation of appraisal in both texts, but appears more evident in
text2, whose encapsulation of the values of the whole text, for
example, is concentrated in its last rhetorical unit, or closing
sequence (see section 4.2.2.1).
Analysis of clusterings of Appraisal or attitudinal values in a
text has proved to be a useful method of determining the nature
and boundaries of the rhetorical staging or phases in the sample
texts, and hence they represent useful indicators of norms of
"exchange structure", or what I am calling the rhetorical structure
potential operating in texts of this kind1.

See Appendix D for the sequence of appraisal values, and appendix B1 for a visual
representationoftheclusteringofthesevaluesineachtext.

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3.5.1 Preliminary comparison of the two texts


A preliminary comparison of the texts shows a difference in wordlength, with text1 totalling 595, and text2, 885. In Table 3.4 below,
a comparison is made of the two texts in terms of the main
differences in word and clause counts. Some of the textual
differences tabulated below are discussed in more detail in Module
1. In the analysis conducted for that module, however, the number
of sentences of text2 was limited to 28 to make comparison easier
to perform. In this module, the whole texts were used, since values
of Appraisal were being counted for statistical purposes, as well as
being used to trace the development of the text organisation which
depends on the whole body of the text being used as the main unit
of analysis.

Clause complexes
words
clauses
Embedded
clauses
Lexical densityclauses
Lexical densitywords

Text1 SIMON Text2 SARAH


30
34
595
885
64
94
21
20
3.5

3.9

38

39

Table 3.4
In Table 3.5 (following page), only a gross comparison of attitudinal
values is shown. This was achieved via a calculation of the
percentage of attitude values identified for each category, as a
function of the total number of attitudinal values identified for each
text. A comparison of values as a function of word and clause count
is also discussed below, as well as an extended discussion of the
patterning of sources and targets of appraisal evident in the two
texts. In future research, cross comparisons will involve a larger
sample of texts. This would then form some basis for a cross
comparison in terms of marked and unmarked structures and
evaluative moves within and between the selected texts. In
conducting this research, Appraisal analysis will be teamed with
other means of investigating stylistic and discoursal patterning in
the texts (cf. Module 1).

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Text1
APPRECIATION
TOTAL VALUES
composition

37%

Text2
15
3

12%

12
5

valuation

reaction

JUDGEMENT
TOTAL VALUES

59%

24

53%

51

propriety
veracity
normality

8
3

23
2
4

tenacity

11

capacity
AFFECT
TOTAL VALUES

2
5%

18
2

35%

34

happiness

unhappiness

1
1

1
12
8

disinclination

satisfaction

security
insecurity
inclination

dissatisfaction

TOTAL overall

41

97

Table 3.5: text1 and text2: comparison of values of Attitude


3.5.2 Comparison of values of Attitude in the texts
Table 3.5 shows that in text1 a total of 41 values of ATTITUDE were
identified, compared with text2 in which a total of 97 were
identified. This tally includes those which are interpreted as
showing values of [judgement: provoked/evoked] which rely on an
assumed shared value system, or on other values in co-text, as
discussed earlier (3.3.3). The number of attitudinal values in text1
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expressed as a percentage of the word count is 6.8%. This allows a


rough comparison with text2 in which 97 attitudinal values were
identified, with a percentage of 11% as a function the word count.
On the other hand, if the number of attitudinal values identified is
expressed as a function of the number of clauses in each sample,
text1 shows a ratio of 64%, while text2's is 103%: in other words
there is an average of at least one attitudinal value for each clause
in text2, compared to just over one for every second clause in
text1. In such a small sample, such a difference may or may not be
considered significant, but a closer look at the ratio of types of
attitudinal values used in each text might be more illuminating.
3.5.3 Ratio of types of Attitude
In text1 (Table 3.5 above) there are 15 instances of Appreciation, 24
instances of Judgement, but only 2 of Affect. So that, it might
appear that this writer was concerned to evaluate behaviour more
than the objective world. Values of Affect are almost non-existent,
with one value of INCLINATION - which is generally low in intensity
on the emotional scale, as it usually expresses volition toward some
goal, rather than emotional reaction - and one value of INSECURITY
whose source was extra-vocalised, i.e. not sourced in the Addresser
(1:20).
A comparison with text2 in the same area, begins to show
some differences in orientation. In this text there are 12 instances
of Appreciation, 51 of Judgement and 35 of Affect. It is obvious
here, especially with respect to the category of Affect, that there
are different relative weightings of attitudinal values expressed in
these two texts, with [affect: insecurity] accounting for 12 of the 34
identified attitudes of Affect in text2 (or 35% of its values of Affect),
and 12.3% of the total values of Attitude identified in text2 overall 1.
This compares with 2.5% for [affect: insecurity] expressed as a
function of all values identified in text1. Other comparisons can be
made by reference to Table 3.5 which summarises the main
attitudinal values identified in the two texts. It should be noted that
analysed values of Affect were further subdivided into negative and
positive Affect, which was not done with categories of Judgement
and Appreciation.
In order to get a clearer idea of the relative weightings given
to each Attitude category in each text, the number of values
identified for each category was also normalised to 1,000 words and
charted below (Chart 3.1).

Percentagesareroundedouttothenearestwholenumberinthetables

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47

3.5.4 Comparison of values of Affect


As noted above, Table 3.5 shows that the greatest overall difference
in weighting in the two texts is given to values of Affect, with text1
according only 5% of its evaluative categories to that of Affect,
compared to text2's 35%. This may be coincidental to the main
topics of the post which comprises text2, but it also seems related
to aspects of the writer's argument centred around her conviction
that thoughts and feelings should be honestly revealed in
discussion groups. This makes it somewhat strange, however, to
note that Judgements of Veracity, although present in text2 - as
distinct from text1 in which such Attitudes did not appear at all are still scarce at only 2 instances, or 4% of all its Judgement
values, and 2% overall. Within Affect, however, the most prevalent
value in text2 is that of Insecurity, and this seems to point quite
clearly to the overall theme of the text, even if this is not explicitly
stated. The next highest weighting in Affect for text2 is given to
values of Inclination - 23.5% of all values of Affect, and 8.2% of all
the attitudinal values identified in this text overall. In contrast,
text1 shows only 2 values of Affect (similarly, Insecurity and
Inclination as discussed above) which represents only 5% of all
identified values of attitude in text1. For these reasons, these two
values of Affect will be discussed in more detail below, both in
terms of the nature of the targets and their sources in these texts,
as well as the apparent orientation in text2 towards a theme of
'insecurity'. Differences in relative weighting between the texts can
also be seen in Chart 3.1 above.
3.5.5 Ratios of values of Judgement versus Appreciation
For both texts, values of Judgement, and therefore evaluation of
human behaviour, seem of more interest than values of
Appreciation or Affect, but I suggest that these relative weightings
would be found in almost any text taken from this context of
interaction.1 As was pointed out earlier, for the writer of text1, the
relative weighting of values of Judgement intra-textually is higher
than that found in text2, at 59% and 53% respectively, although in
terms of [judgement: propriety], text2 uses a higher proportion
than text1 does. Further research in this area of interaction and the
texts produced in this medium might reveal more precisely whether
such patternings of evaluative orientation are indeed fairly typical
and thus 'unmarked' for these contexts. As for Appreciation, text2
1

For a different genre, that of teacher anecdotes, McCabe found that 30% of the total
AttitudetokensbelongedtoAffect,32%toAppreciation,and38%toJudgementinacorpus
of12texts(personalcommunication).

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uses less than half the values of Appreciation as does text1 (12.3%
against 36.5%) when calculated as a function of all values used in
each text. If this is normalised to values per 1,000 words however
(c.f. Chart 3.1), it appears that text2 uses a higher proportion of
values Judgement: Capacity and Propriety, whereas text1 uses a
higher proportion of values of Judgement: Tenacity. In comparison,
the writer of text1 appears more concerned to evaluate using
values of Appreciation: Valuation, and Reaction than does text2.
3.5.6 Ratios of values of Judgement
Within Judgement, the best basis for comparison between texts is
that between values of Capacity and Tenacity. Text1 uses Tenacity
as the highest percentage of any single attitudinal value identified
(26.8% of all values in text1, or 18.5 per 1,000 words), and text2
accords a similarly high ratio to values of [judgement: capacity]
(18.5% of all values, or 20.3 per 1,000 words). This tends to
indicate that the writer of text2 is concerned to evaluate human
capability, whether negative or positive, while text1 is concerned to
evaluate the nature of human reliability and dependability. A similar
comparison of Judgement weightings given to the values of
Propriety identified in the texts reveals that the writer of text2
seems much more concerned with correctness and morality than
the writer of text1. Text2 makes judgements of Propriety in 23.7%
of all its value statements (or 26 per 1,000 words), whereas
Propriety represents 19.5% (or 13.4 per 1,000 words: cf. Chart 3.1)
of text1's overall identified values. It needs to be stressed once
more, that these weightings take into account those attitudinal
values which were evoked, or provoked by co-textual signals, and
so some of these evaluations are not inscribed or made overtly in
the texts. This was felt to represent a clearer demonstration of the
possible attitudinal values interpretable in the texts, and it also
highlights one of the areas in which differences in textual persona
can be examined: text2 is rich in attitudinal positioning, but these
are not generally explicitly inscribed. The writer uses a series of
moves in order to effect her evaluative positions, and these
rhetorical strategies which depend on ambiguity of source, target,
or attitudinal value seem to be characteristic of this writer's 'style'.
3.6 Sources and Targets of Attitude in the texts
While the weightings of attitudinal values favoured by each of the
writers might be somewhat indicative of their respective
interpersonal positionings, a closer look at the identified values of
Judgement: Capacity, Tenacity, and Propriety, along with the targets

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and sources of the evaluative positions shows the orientations of


the writers more clearly. Accordingly, this, as well as a discussion of
the targets of the Affect realised in text2 will be undertaken below,
based on the data in appendices B1 and D.
3.6.1 Comparison of favoured sources of Attitude
One interesting dimension regarding the two sets of analyses is
that relating to the source of the appraisal values. Approximately
28% of text2's sources of attitudinal values can be traced to the
writer herself, when this is confined to those sources which are
overtly identified in the text as specifically located in the "I" of the
Addresser. In addition, there are several other instances of hidden
or implied attributions to the self, as well as a fair number of
'averred: non-sourced' (after Hunston 2000) statements which
leave the nature of the source of the attitudes in the text unnamed,
as general knowledge or accepted states: as monologistic
statements. If these are also taken into account as instances of
'self' as source, then the proportion of appraisers linked to the
writer is closer to 86% in text2. In text1 there is a similar large
proportion of "I" as appraiser, with 23% of all overt or 'emphasised'
sources located there. If other instances of hidden, or averred nonsourced appraising are counted as well, then this proportion climbs
to 49% - still a great deal less than in text2, however. The
remainder of sources of attitude in text1 is indexed as outside the
text - 4 attributions to authorities, 3 to general knowledge and
common sense, 4 to the context of the email list itself including a
reference to inclusive-we, and 4 to the writer's company
management. Such extra-vocalisations tend to make for a less selfcentred text, or, in other words, the heteroglossic positioning in the
text seems to be more open.
The tracing of sources of Appraisal, especially in terms of the
sources of attitude as either intra- or extra-vocalised, addresses the
nature of authorial persona obliquely, as a by-product of the
strategies for the evaluative co-positioning of interlocutors, and the
construction of a dialogic space in the text. As Martin & White
observe:
the typology is concerned with prospective positioning, with
the way the text positions itself with respect to potential
responses from some actual or imagined interlocutor.
Accordingly, then, from the perspective which informs the
typology, the issue of internal-sourcing versus external-sourcing
is secondary, is only relevant to the degree that the nature of the
sourcing affects whether the utterance is dialogistically
expansive or contractive. (in preparation)

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With these texts, sources of appraisal are felt to be one of the


means for characterising the actual 'voice' of the Addressers,
especially when they take up Speaker roles1. This is related to what
Goffman (1974, 1981) differentiates as principal and animator, or in
Genette's (1980) terms, intradiegetic narrators. However, the terms
are not exactly the same: the principal identifies the self as the
source of the proposition, the creator or responsible one, whereas
the animator is only the vehicle for the statement, and may
distance the self from responsibility for it. Principals and animators
may be one and the same Addresser. In this sense, the Addresser is
always an animator, but may not always be a principal. On the
other hand, if an Addresser takes up a Speaker role, then they are
animator only, with the principal explicitly located elsewhere. The
Speaker role occurs most obviously, when for example, writers
relinquish the Addresser role, and introduce quotations or the ideas
of another writer, or when they change from the usual registers
common in this context to write poetry or engage in performances
of interdiscursivity.
At times less obviously, each evaluative proposition can be
more or less traced to an internal or external voice. As described
above (2.3), under Engagement, three voicings are possible for
statements: monologistic, intra-vocalised, and extra-vocalised 2.
While monologistic statements are those which do not indicate any
source for the statement, intra-vocalised statements do indicate
some trace of the writer-voice, especially when these are framed
by, for example, interpersonal adjuncts, or projecting clauses. This
has some rhetorical significance if, for example, the analysis wishes
to differentiate between the voicing as reflected in the sources of
appraisal in the following two statements:
Ex.3.1:
Newmembersinanygrouparethelifebloodofthegroup(2:8)
Ex.3.2:
Iknowtherearepeopleherewhofearme(2:33)
1

Inthisthesis,adistinctionisalsosometimesmadebetweenthe Addresserandthewriter.
TheAddresserinthissenseissimilartotheimpliedauthorwhereas'writer'referstothereal
author thosematerialentitieswhichmustbethesourceofallwritingnotcomposedby
machine,butwhoarenotactually'present'intheirtextsasanentity.
2
Asdiscussedpreviously,monologisticisusedinsteadofmonologicinordertodifferentiate
monologistic statementsfromwhatmightbeconfusedwiththecommonunderstandingof
theterm monologue. Whilethesetextsareinfact monologues inonesense,oneoftheir
valuesforresearchintotextualinteractionisthat projectionintodialogue(Hoey,2001)is
indicatedinthesetextsbythemodebleedingandotherstrategiesforsignallinginvolvement,
asoutlinedinPartIofthismodule.

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In contrast to that in example 3.1, the statement in 3.2 can be seen


as two separate propositions:
I know [s.t.] and
There are people here who fear me
Each of these propositions derived from example 3.2 could be
classed as "averred: non-sourced", or as bare assertions attributed
to no-one. On the other hand, the projected clause containing the
evaluation and framed by I know, can be classed as sourced to the
Addresser 'I'.
This means that, in the case of example 3.1, the statement is
unsourced and therefore monologistic: the Addresser does not
appear as the principal, but only as the animator of ideas or
propositions which do not need to be argued, and which are
represented as not contingent on any specific subjectivity. These
types of monologistic statement thus have a high degree of
rhetorical significance in terms of the evaluative positioning of
interlocutors, who are positioned as in agreement, or as sharing the
evaluation. Whereas, in the case of example 3.2, rhetorical
significance of another kind operates on this statement: here the
writer acknowledges the contestability of claiming to know the
condition of others' affective states, by, in effect, indexing her own
subjectivity.
3.6.2 Comparison of Attitudinal targets, and textual cohesion
The targets of Appraisal, those objects or causes of attitudinal
values, function as a tracking device for the unfolding of the
discourse and its arguments. Targets appear to be grouped in
'clumps' of semantically-related collocates, and it is possible to
trace the development of the argument by following the targets
through the text. It also helps in tracking the strategies the writer
uses for making the larger points of evaluative positioning in terms
of contrasts and parallels, and is related to the interpersonal
metafunctional values in texts said to be prosodic or field-like in
nature (as contrasted with the ideational: particulate, and the
textual: wavelike - c.f. Young et al, 1970). In tandem with other
types of analysis, such groupings of targets of Appraisal are useful
in characterising register, interactional moves or move complexes
(strategies), and the larger rhetorical units within texts - all of which
could be grouped under Gregory's (op cit) collective heading of
'phase', as discussed above (section 1.3.1), or Cloran's (1993)
notion of rhetorical unit (see for example Hasan 1996: 117) which
suggests that texts are composed of one or more rhetorical units
and these in turn are composed of one or more messages. This
thesis suggests that rhetorical units within and between larger text
units can be identified using Appraisal analysis as one of the means
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of highlighting such rhetorical staging. In the following section, I


examine the two example texts by discussing some of the ways in
which this might be achieved.

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4. Appraisal and discourse organisation


4.0 Overview
In this section my aim is to demonstrate by means of a close
analysis of the two posts in this study, how Appraisal analysis can
be used in order to trace the discourse organisation of any text, and
in particular, those texts which are persuasive, argumentative, or
expository such as the two used here. To do this, I look at the
realisations of semantically-related targets of Appraisal in the texts.
These are generally arranged in sets or clusters which are
significant in identifying the stages of text development. In the
following discussion, most of the values taken into account are
those of Attitude, but values of Graduation and Engagement also
interact with these in order to determine many of the invoked
(provoked and evoked) values of Attitude, which I proposed earlier
may act to signal transitional junctures in rhetorical text
organisation.
Thus, one of the features of text organisation in these texts
that I wish to suggest, and which was introduced in section 1 above
(c.f. also Appendix B1), is related to the clustering of Appraisal
values themselves, and their cumulative or prosodic nature. This
means that in places where the writer makes evaluations which are
in any way ambiguous (able to be double-coded), reliant on shared
values (evoked), or provoked via cohesive strategies in the local cotext, some sort of boundary condition is signalled. In terms of
Bolivar's (2001) triadic unit of discourse structure, which comprises
a Lead, a Follow and a Valuate structure, this phase would realise
the Valuate turn.
4.1 Attitude and the discourse organisation of text1
In text1, the first string of semantically-related targets of attitudinal
values relate to the main topic of the post which was introduced in
a previous post. This appears as a quoted, framing opening move
for the text: the nature of 'task' (see below section 5 for further
discussion). In this first passage alone, there are 5 targets of
attitudinal values that specifically mention or relate to the nature of
'task', and then this is followed by an Attitude directed at the notion
of 'being in a workgroup'. A type of 'boundary target' is introduced
at this point with a comment on the difficulty of 'meshing all this': a
task in itself (1:5). Because the source of this statement is not
specified, it is also difficult to assign an attitudinal value for this
'difficulty': if it is difficult for the Addresser 'to mesh all this', the
evaluation may be a token of his own negative Capacity (cf.
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sections 1.3.1 & 3.3.3 above). The target, however, is not human
behaviour in itself, but a 'task'. The lexical item difficult also has a
difference in meaning when applied to a human target: It was
difficult of him to do that. Therefore, this utterance has been
double-coded as both Judgement and Appreciation.
As noted earlier (3.3.3), instances of ambiguous attitude are
regarded as relevant for the marking of boundaries between phases
or rhetorical stages. In appendix B1, these doubly-coded attitudes
are grouped with those of invoked appraisal (in purple) since they
seem to have similar rhetorical functions in context. When
calculating type-token ratios for any text (as was done in Table 3.5)
each identified instance of Attitude is taken into account as if it
were a discrete item: any ambiguity in construal of attitudinal value
is not regarded in this sense as merely summative (in which case
such double-coding would give a halved value for statistical
purposes) but multiplicative. This is because sites of
textual/semantic ambiguity and contradiction are assumed to occur
in textually strategic locations - and thus to have significance for
the rhetorical staging at the discourse semantic level of text
organisation.
4.1.1 'Work' as target of appraisal in text1
In the section which follows sentence 1:5, the writer deals with
being in a work group/working in a group. In this section, targets of
Attitude relate to the writer's workday and the demands it makes of
him. Here he appraises the nature of going to work, or doing a job which, in the larger scheme of his text, he compares to the nature
of 'being in a workgroup or performing a task', which in turn is the
theme or topic of the text as a whole. The last larger section of the
text switches to discussing and evaluating the email list as a group
and the nature of its task as he sees it. What appears as a small
side-track in his discussion - in the form of appraisal sourced to his
company, and targeted at 'attending a seminar' versus 'discussing
work in a diner' - is actually apropos the discussion of the list as a
work group, especially since the metaphor of the diner to describe
list activity is common on this list, and was mentioned in the
quoted material to which the writer is ostensibly responding (c.f.
section 5). In this sense, the reference to the diner is intra-textual,
as well as inter-textual (within the list as community) and extratextual (makes reference to the material world of the writer, not
shared by his present interlocutors). These references to entities
both inside and outside the text, I contend are of great significance
in the construction of textual identity and its relationship to
Addressees, especially within these types of communities of

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practice. The means by which such entities are positively or


negatively evaluated is of fundamental importance in the construal
of contact, solidarity and dis/affiliation with both members of the
group and those who are constructed thereby as 'outsiders'.
One of the role relationships characterising the tenor
constructed in text1 for example, is that of unequal Status, with the
Addressee cast as 'welcome outsider'. The writer positions himself
as having Authority in the context of the mailing list: he speaks to
the Addressee on behalf of other listmembers, and takes the overall
position of Primary Knower (Berry 1981), using what could be
construed as an extended K1 move in the post as a series of
exchange complexes, or a transaction as suggested by Hoey
(1993). His positioning strategies, and this overall role relationship
are exemplified by such things as use of references only available
to long-time listmembers such as the metaphor of the diner
mentioned above, the reference to valued texts such as Bion, a
proliferation of 'inclusive-we' in subject position which also tends to
mark involved Contact, the explicit naming of other listmembers,
and the opening move which refers to the "rich history here". In
particular, the use of extra-textual material world exemplars
appears to be a strategy for making the argument less abstract and
more 'world-reflecting', and thus more authoritative in terms of the
expertise the writer claims via his experience of the 'real'
workplace, or the field of the argument.
4.1.2 Appraisal and signals of closing 'phase shift' in text1
The function of ambiguity of attitude in text organisation, and the
use of strategies of ambiguity in realising positioning moves is
illustrated in the final statement of the pre-closing sequence. The
text's overall argument is encapsulated by the final evaluation
made in the argument itself: thereby suggesting discussion of
task can never be on task (1:27). The actual form of this evaluative
move signals that a boundary condition is enacted: its position at
the end of an orthographically-signalled paragraph may also have
some function in this respect, but the nature of its attitudinal form
enhances the status of the move on the interactive plane, as giving
a final value to what appears to be the entity 'discussion of task'.
The phrase '[being] on task' is seen as inscribing positive attitudinal
value, but in the context of this text, being on task has also been
construed as a positively evaluated condition. Because the target of
the Appraisal is an entity, as a nominalisation in the abstract:
discussion of task; the attitude is construed as Appreciation, rather
than Judgement, but it seems to function as a positive Judgement of
the group's behaviour nevertheless. This seems to be related to the

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reference to we in the same clause complex, as well as to the


accumulated positive values implied by the phrase being on task in
the whole of the previous discussion. Therefore the target of this
evaluation may be our discussion of task, and thus function as a
Judgement of what we do.
The counter-expectationality of this clause is set up via a long
paragraph in which few values of inscribed Attitude are evident,
and in which the writer reports, via a number of extra-vocalised
notions, various possibilities as to the nature of task. This
engenders a provoked Judgement of [normality: positive] of the
discussion of task as being 'never on task', via the variety of
somewhat conflicting opinions on the matter that he has just
brought to notice, and setting-up in the text as a whole, positive
values of [judgement: tenacity] accorded to those who undertake
tasks - those who are on task. The use of suggests here serves to
modalize and intra-vocalise the asserted negative conclusion of the
last statement, which, at the same time functions dialogically to
open the negotiatory space regarding the discussion of task,
producing a type of contradictory frisson. Teasing apart the
contradictory and paradoxical nature of this statement is further
complicated by noting that the actual target of evaluation here is
not discussion of task per se, but that of being on task itself. This
meta-appraisal strategy allows the writer to make statements
about norms on the list, to even evoke Judgements of propriety
regarding list members' behaviour without making them explicit.
This underlines for me, the Addresser's self-positioning in this text
as Authority via expertise.
The rhetorical functionality of this statement in co-text may be
illustrated by considering that, if it had appeared at the beginning
of the text, the reader would have expected a persuasive argument
to follow, giving reasons for the assertion that discussion of task
can never be on task. Furthermore, if it had appeared at the
beginning of the text's development, it would have been impossible
to frame the assertion with thereby suggesting, which signals that
the statement which follows is a concluding one, an encapsulation
of an argument, in which the positive value of being on task has
already been established, or at least, needs no more defending.
The 'non-conclusion' coming after the long consideration on
the nature of task, is summed up for readers in the following "Oh
well" (1:28), which effectively marks a phase boundary, underlined,
of course, by the previous carriage return. The use of this discourse
particle is interesting In its own right, contributing to the degree of
relative interactivity constructed in these written texts, and here it
involves use of one of the strategies of what I call "mode bleeding"
(see Module 2, Part I, section 3.5). The function of such
grammatically moodless comments at the end or beginning of
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paragraphs is both interpersonally and textually motivated (c.f.


Module 2, Part I, section 2.2). In one sense it functions
interpersonally to construe a relationship with the audience in
relation to his argument, and thus could be seen as a form of
Engagement, while its main function here is also textorganisational, signalling a phase shift. Again, this serves as an
example of what I see as the inter-relationship of the textual and
interpersonal meanings of a text.

4.1.3 Closing sequence, provoked appraisal and signals of


interactivity in text1
At the close of the previous, pre-closing sequence which was
discussed above, phase shift was signalled in several ways.
Subjects of the clauses had all been third parties (apart from one
we), mostly references to 'task', with the use of 'universal present
tense'. In the final closing paragraph, however, modal responsibility
shifts to "I" and involves one of the only two expressions of Affect in
the text. Here the writer orients to the future: given what has been
discussed, 'what he can do' is to continue with everyday life with
Appreciation, and Tenacity. The value of Affect is one of Inclination,
again, orienting to the future.
The last target of evaluation of text1, concerned with 'what I
can do', relates again to the writer's intention of carrying out his
work with the 'right attitude'. This is not stated explicitly, however,
and appears as a type of coda for the rest of the post, signalled by
the interpersonal comment and reframe "Oh well"(1:28), as
discussed above, after which the final evaluation and positioning of
himself occurs:
Ex.4.1:
I can still resolve to enjoy the day and squeeze the most out of the hours
providence has provided. (1:29).
The intention to 'carry on' is encoded via the process 'resolve [to do
s.t.]', which indicates an attitude of [affect: inclination], but in the
context of this utterance, I have also interpreted it as a token of
Judgement [tenacity: positive], which is 'provoked' by the scattered
values of modality and Appreciation evident in this phase,
especially since the emotional value of resolve is extremely low
compared with its associated values of stick-to-it-ivity (c.f. above
section 3.4.1).

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4.1.4 Values of Judgement: tenacity and propriety in text1


Because, as pointed out earlier, text1 seems concerned with
matters of Tenacity as well as those of Propriety, I now take a brief
look at those values in the text before discussing similar attitudinal
orientations evident in text2.
Firstly, at least one of the values of Propriety in text1 is
ambiguous, and perhaps an instance of evoked appraisal, and thus
of interest to the rhetorical organisation as I see it: Maybe it is our
job to survive (1:15). The actual value of the proposition negative or positive - is unclear due to the use of modality which
distances the writer from the statement, especially in the light of
the following counter, diminishing its 'importance': ...but it is hard
to see why that would be all-important (1:15). Instances of
[engagement: entertain] exemplified by the first modalized
statement of sentence 1:15 sometimes appear to signal a counter
to come, as in this case. These tend to function both at the level of
tenor as a strategy of concession which acknowledge the views of
an unstated other before offering the writer's own view on such an
attitude 'out there', and at the same time as a type of textual frame
in the unfolding of the discourse argument. It remains to be
investigated in detail whether these strategies are prevalent in the
discourse of the wider corpus.
Of the rest of the identified values of Propriety in text1, 3 are
made through extra-vocalised sources of authority (1:4, 1:27) and
another as a generalisation (1:24). Those in 1:27 are conditional
Judgements, - in this case, they are framed by 'if' - which signals
that these are forms of what I am calling 'veiled directive': negative
or positive appraisal of human behaviour which has not yet actually
occurred. The behaviour will be judged according to the conditions
specified. Another two Judgements of propriety are apparently
sourced to the writer (1:9, 1:11), since he appears to take
responsibility for the arguability of the clause:
Ex.4.2:
Imustaidthecompanyinanylegitwaytohelpitmakeaprofit(1:9)
Ex.4.3:
Mygoalforthisdayistotellnolies,hurtnooneonpurpose,andbeagood
citizen...(1:11)
but even here the values of Propriety are either evoked by an
assumed value system - even though the tokens legit and good
could be said to inscribe positive Judgement - or provoked through
their association with modality and other associated positive
values. This narrows the responsibility the writer takes for the
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values of [judgement: propriety] he expresses in the text, and


indicates that the writer in this text at least, has adopted a strategy
of judging human morality in a circumspect manner.
4.1.4.1 Judgement : tenacity in text1
Values of [judgement: tenacity] identified in the text fall naturally
into a pattern: the first (1:11) is a provoked value of tenacity made
through a description of the way he spends his workdays,
construed via a means of graduation in the way his goals for a
workday are listed. The next two are the evaluations made by his
company management concerning the appropriate way to spend
company time productively (1:20) - this involves a contrast
between the negative attitude it holds for the attending of
seminars, versus the positive attitude it holds for talking in the
diner across the street. Because the email list activities have often
been likened to talking in a diner, and because this metaphor has
been activated by the quotation as frame to this text, such an
expression of positive attitude linked to list activities as task,
functions as a bridging phase for the sustained series of
[judgement: tenacity] values which follow. The targets and sources
of the Appraisal are in contrast to the rest of the text, and so this
section could be seen as a phase which uses real-world, extratextual examples to make the evaluation, especially in the light of
the boundary or transitional phase realised by the moodless clause
1:18a. In the section which follows sentence 1:20, targets of
Appraisal change to that of the group list activities, all construed as
positive. The one negative value in this section is targeted at other
similar groups who 'do not achieve as much as our group does'.
And, as pointed out above, the final stage, or rhetorical unit of the
text, summarises this orientation to the nature of task as a function
of values of tenacity, by resolving to make the most of the day
(1:29), and closing with a future action which takes him to work
(1:30).
4.2 Attitude and the discourse organisation of text2
In text2, the main topic identified by the targets of Appraisal, is
similarly focussed on the nature of groups, and by implication, the
nature of the email list group in which the writer participates. This
group is specifically referred to in several places, but some of the
attitudinal values towards the actions of this group are expressed
via identifying it with 'disrupted families', and the negative values
implied in relation to their actions. Despite there being a relatively
large proportion of values of Affect identified in this text, still the

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highest proportion of attitudinal values overall is that of Judgement.


As was commented upon earlier, many values of Judgement are
implied (evoked or provoked) rather than inscribed in any text, via
values of Appreciation, or more commonly, Affect. An implied
Judgement of negative capacity was identified in 2:18 for example,
in which the writer expresses surprise that no one identified a new
member as a possible source of list activity. Commonly, values of
Affect may act to concurrently invoke values of Judgement.
4.2.1 Targets of evaluation organising text2
In the first half of the text the argument is dependent on a series of
attitudes negatively evaluating the actions of the email group. The
first part of this argument relates the targets of evaluation to
groups in general, and the nature of communication within groups.
In this section, the theme of 'honest communication' is explicitly
valorised, and it becomes a recurrent theme throughout the text.
For example, at the end of the first section/beginning of the second
(2:8) the target of Appraisal which is introduced is the 'new group
member' to any group, which is then likened to a new baby in a
family. The theme of families and their reactions to new babies is
then taken up as a target for evaluative statements in this phase of
the text, which coincides with the second paragraph/passage of the
post. Near the end of this passage the writer declares that she does
not evaluate this email list as a 'dysfunctional family', although, via
this form of Engagement [disclaim: deny], the suggestion that it
might be seen as such is made explicitly for the first time (2:14).
The use of negatives to imply the positive, and to construct the
audience as having such a shared view is well-documented (e.g.
Pagano 1994), and in this case it is used to construct the audience
as entertaining such a proposition. In Module Three, it is intended
that a chapter surveying the function of negatives in these texts to
construe audience attitudes is included (see also 4.2.2.1 below).
In this last section of the second paragraph/passage in text2
an overall negative assessment is made of the actions of members
of the email list who have treated the writer, a new member, as an
intruder. Certain members are singled out for positive evaluation
however, and these are members who engage in 'honest
communication'. In this manner, her earlier affectual declaration
(2:5) that she "values honesty in communication" is underlined and
exemplified. It also works towards a provoked Judgement of
veracity here, both negative and positive depending on who has
displayed this honesty in the context of the interaction.

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4.2.2 Affect: insecurity and text2


As was done with text1, the nature of the targets and sources of
the most favoured attitudinal values employed in text2 will be
briefly commented upon in order to demonstrate the differences in
strategies adopted by each writer in constructing their positions,
and hence their arguments.
Earlier it was noted that values of [affect: insecurity] were
prevalent in this text, as well as those of [judgement: capacity]. In
the first two expressions of [affect: insecurity] noted in the text,
both the group and the writer are assessed as the target of the
Insecurity of the other, after which the group is evaluated as
insecure about honest communication (2:5). This becomes a trope
of the rest of the text, and is only brought out again in the final
closing sequence where those who are willing to be honest are
positively evaluated in a complicated rhetorical move complex
(2:30 - 2:34) which is dependent on the previous values set up
during the development of the text overall.
The next instance of a value of [affect: insecurity] is said to be
directed towards the new baby by 'disrupted family' members
(2:12). Group members in general are then evaluated as insecure
about the group's stability (2:16), and the writer then claims
insecurity about the group's non-actions (2:18). Lastly there is a
declared insecurity about the self in relation to the writer's lack of
knowledge about the workings of the net (2:23). In terms of list
jargon, these targets would seem to show a textual persona
suffering from 'projection' of her own negative Affect (insecurity)
towards the group in which she is participating. Already this in
contrast to the attitudes towards the group as represented in text1.
4.2.2.1 Values of Judgement organising and constructing the
audience of text2
Values of [judgement: capacity: negative] in the text are related in
some degree to this insecurity linked to the writer's declarations of
ignorance about the net and email groups. One of the consistent
attitudinal stances throughout this text is the attempt to valorise
'honesty' in communication via a series of attitudinal statements
about those who she sees as having been 'honest' and those who
are appraised as insecure in this regard. The writer's argument
centres on the valorisation of honesty over capacity, and such
capacity as linked with 'innocence' rather than 'skill'.
For example, one of the writer's opening moves in this post is
to declare that she 'obviously needs information' (2:2), in effect
setting herself up as ignorant of protocol and knowledge. A value of
[judgement: capacity: positive] is then targeted at new members
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who are capable of refreshing the group (2:9): obviously those


ignorant of list protocol as well. New babies follow, evaluated
positively by no traceable source, due to their ability to force
changes. The last positive evaluation of capacity in this section is
targeted at those families who 'feel mutual love' in their ability to
change without negative consequences when a new baby arrives.
This is linked to the final negative evaluation of the email group in
this section (2:14) which is done via [capacity: negative: denied] the writer sets up a negative assessment which is denied, thus
claiming, not that she positively evaluates the list-as-group's
capacity to function, but that she does not say that it isn't capable!.
As noted above, the use of negation, what Tottie (cited in Pagano
1994) calls implicit denial, is significant in determining attitude and
stance in these texts. Under Engagement, negation falls into the
category [disclaim: deny], and often serves to close down or
contract the negotiatory space by implying that what is held as true
or as consensual knowledge on the part of hearers and Addressees,
is not the case. In one sense, this could be construed as the
Addresser appearing to claim that s/he can read the interlocutor's
mind. In another sense, and in the view which is being adopted
here, the Addresser is able to position the Addressee(s) as having
the opinion or viewpoint which is negated. In the example
presented
above,
the
Addresser
constructs
the
Addressees/Overhearers as viewing her as making a negative
assessment of them: the group. She implies that they have this
idea about her attitude, by denying that she has such an attitude or at least, she denies 'stating or implying' such a thing. The actual
value of [judgement: negative propriety] is not fully realised until
the end of the paragraph when it is provoked through a series of
descriptive and evaluative contrasts (2:15). By this means, she is
able to construct a negative attitude on the part of the audience without explicitly saying so. One of the main uses for the Appraisal
framework is in revealing ways in which the Addressees and/or
Overhearers are constructed in texts, especially in the context of
this type of interactive mode. In this text the collectivised group
members are negatively evaluated in this way. In contrast, the
actual nominated Addressees are generally positively evaluated.
The final closing move complex concentrates these values:
Ex.4.4:
Iknowtherearepeopleherewhofearme,theyhavereasonto,Iamnotsafe.I
amasdangerousasanyoneherewhoiswillingtobehonest.(2:332:34)
As with text1, all three attitudinal categories, Affect,
Appreciation, and Judgement are represented here, as well as a

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final provoked (and possibly evoked) negative appraisal of the


'people here who fear me'. Those who fear her are represented as
in fact fearing to be honest. The final sentence here sets up a
double value of provoked propriety, both positive and negative
directed respectively at two different groups (those willing to be
honest and those who are not), as well as setting up a condition. It
is thus a fitting closing move in that it marks an intense clustering
of interpersonal positioning dependent on the encapsulation of a
string of co-textual referents, and the use of indirect ambiguously
construed appraisal.
4.2.3 Values of Judgement constructing the self in text2
The rest of the Judgement values of capacity in text2 deal with the
writer's own assessment of herself. For the most part they are
positive assessments and evaluations. One exception is when she
claims an inability to follow up her inclinations to talk about many
subjects because she must finish her work, so that the negative
capacity is construed positively through a parallel value of positive
Tenacity (2:20). This statement occurs at the beginning of a
passage at the point where the writer changes her orientation from
a discussion of theoretical issues - families, systems theory, group
dynamics - to the topic of her own impressions. This evaluation is
analysed as provoked [judgement: capacity: negative] via a token
of (evoked) [judgement: tenacity: positive], which once more serves
to demonstrate the discourse organisational significance of these
types of implicit and double-coded values of Attitude.
One other exception to her overall assessment of her own
positive capacity, is the occasion where she repeats in explicit
terms or inscribed [judgement: capacity: negative] her 'ignorance'
of email and net matters: I am ignorant of the Bionic approach to
group dynamic and I am ignorant of List operations and jargon
(2:22). On the other hand, seen in the context of the writer's
following counter but, these two initial clause groups in the
utterance may be said to serve as [engagement: disclaim] (via
experiential negation) to set up the context for the alternative
positive self evaluation: but [counter-expect]I am not ignorant to
life (2:22). In the proposed report devoted to the use of the
negative in texts in my corpus - and perhaps in general - I hope to
demonstrate that the negative most often appears within 2 clause
complexes of what Engagement terms Counter and Entertain.

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5. The construction of an interactive


context: The texts as replies to selected
initiations.
5.1 Goffman's notion of 'response' and 'reply'
Goffman (1981) in Chapter One of his Forms of Talk outlines the
differences between what he sees as significant for the
characterisation of conversation: the differentiation of Responses
and Replies. His interest is directed towards outlining what
constitutes the units or moves in any conversation and how these
can determine the meaning of what is going on in any interactive
situation. In Goffman's model, Responses may occur in any form as
a reaction to a prior communicative act, whereas Replies are
subcategories of Response ..in which the alignment implied and the object to which reference is
made are both conveyed through words and their substitutes;
furthermore, this matter is addressed by the response is itself
something that a prior speaker had referred to through words. (op cit:
35)

Furthermore, while Replies address themselves to the reference


matter of the prior contribution in any conversational series, a
Response may
..break frame and reflexively address aspects of a statement which
would ordinarily be 'out of frame', ordinarily part of transmission, not
content - for example, the statement's duration, tactfulness, style,
origin, accent, vocabulary, and so forth. (op cit: 43)

Goffman in this chapter is concerned to be able to specify the basic


conversational unit, and how such units may be structurally linked
in interactional situations. If his fundamental distinction between
Response and Reply is taken into account, then links between posts
in a thread and their relevance to prior contributions should be able
to be more precisely traced using linguistic means. In the following
sections, some implications of considering texts from the
perspective of their response status in the context of an on-going
conversation, will be briefly discussed in terms of their relationship
to the notion of Appraisal.

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5.2 Reference to prior contributions and extra-vocalised quotations


in determining the nature of the response
The two texts used in this module as examples have been taken out
of their interactional context for the purposes of analysis in order to
make a comparison of discourse semantic features. For this reason,
the parts of the original posts which were not written by the
Addressers have not been considered for appraisal analysis.
However, the construction of certain evaluative positionings in
these texts has not been made without reference to prior
statements, and as such they actually form long turns or
(sometimes series of) exchange complexes in the context of a
longer thread, or conversation (cf Part 1: section 3.6: dimension II).
The bounds of these threads are usually determined by subject line,
but sometimes the ideational relevance to the original topic may
eventually shift in referential orientation, while the same subject
line is nevertheless maintained. This happens as contributions, or
posts in response to prior contributions, move away in a variety of
directions (cf. Part I, Figure 3.1). Theoretically, such thematic and
topical shifts in referential orientation could be mapped by 'content'
analysis of sequences of posts in a so-called thread (see for
example Ekeblad 1998, 1999).
In Part 1 of this module, discussion was made regarding the
features of this mode of interaction and the strategies commonly
employed by email listmembers in compensating for the lack of
what Halliday (1985 & 1994) terms the 'fluidity' of phonic channel
interaction. It was pointed out (c.f. Part I, section 3.6) that
contributors may choose to simulate the turn-taking of phonic
channel interaction by means of inserting stretches of text from (a)
prior contribution(s) into the post they write. In this manner, such
overt extra-vocalising quotations serve as reframing moves,
indicating to the audience what it is they are responding to. If a
Response is to be classed as a Reply, however, some type of
relevance needs to be indicated, and these insertions are one of
the means of overtly indicating relevance which email listmembers
have generally employed.
In the context of this study, the construction of relevance, via
the quoting of a selected stretch of prior text as a framing move,
and as an indicator of 'relative interactivity' as was contended
above in Part 1, will be briefly illustrated. This is in order to more
coherently account for the field or ideational orientation of the two
texts in question, since it was earlier pointed out (1.3.1) that
attitudinal values seemed to be related to the field or topic of the
arguments presented in each text. This may in turn have something
to do with ideological implications attaching to orientation to field,
and thus use of specialist terminology relating to the valorisation of

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66

certain institutions, and institutional norms, and their 'orders of


discourse' for example. Topic maintenance may also be used as a
means of enhancing, or keeping certain ideological positions in
play. Similar observations have been made by Martin & Rose (2003:
64 interalia).
5.3 Framing quotation in text1
Text1 opens with the following sequence:
Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 08:04:22 +0000
From: "Simon" <email>
Subject: Re: "Just Say Delete" (Was: Re: a last bouquet)
John:
> The analogies of "diner/coffeehouse" and "informal seminar" are both
>ways of representing the importance of informality and a social side as
>opposed to a complete task focus.
>
>Some years ago I did some research for a minor thesis looking at the
>effectiveness of task groups within three organizations. Two of the >factors
influencing the effectiveness of the groups were Task Leadership
>and Socio-emotional Leadership.

The post opens with a [naming: addressing] move, designating John


as both the ideal Addressee, as well as the Addresser of the part of
the prior post quoted here, and to which Simon is responding. This
quotation, as an [extra-voc: quoting: framing]1 move completes the
opening sequence and serves to frame what is to come. What is
noteworthy in this context is the relevance and referentiality which
is maintained throughout the response constructed by the
Addresser in the body of the post which follows it. The obvious
lexical items which are taken up and used by the writer in the rest
of the post have been underlined above. This would demonstrate
that this post, as response in context, can be classed as a Reply in
a Goffmanian sense, since it directs itself to elaborating on the
comments quoted in the framing sequence, and extending and
enhancing the ideas presented there (c.f. Halliday 1994: 220). For
example, in sentence 1:3, the writer first acknowledges his own
view of 'task as analogy', then elaborates by giving further detail harking back to its roots in tax or an onerous duty to be paid. He
then goes on to make an extension for this analogy, by giving its
'definition' an additional element - an alternative view of 'task': In
Bion it has more positive connotations (1:4). The theme of 'task as
1

Thetypologyforlabellingunitsofdiscourseorganisation,ormoves ofthiskind,isstill
underconstruction,anditsstatewillbedescribedinmoredetailinModule3.Anearly
versionmaybeseeninDon1997

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analogy' is continued throughout the text, and an analogy of


seminars held in diners in the clause complexes 1:18 -1:20 again
makes explicit reference to the propositional content of the quoted
material.
5.4 Determination of reply related to the opening quotation in text2
In looking at text2 in context, it too uses the device of quoted
material from a previous post (the relevance in style) in order to
make relevant the observations that follow:
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 16:13:46 -0500
From: Sarah<email address>
Subject: Baby Talk or So Happy Together
1Susan, and (Roy - I just got your post)
Susan's:
1a"Sarah, I'm sorry if these musings of mine make you feel at all
targeted. 1bI thought about not sending them, but as it is a question
that has been brought out into the open, then I think I will."

Given this framing context, we can interpret text2 in a slightly


different light, since it is in some sense actually addressed to Roy
(whose 'honesty in communication' is used as a reference point in
the text), as well as to the 'you' (Susan) who appears in the first
sentence (2:1). In the quoted excerpt from a prior post, this
contributor explicitly apologises for perhaps 'targeting' one of the
Addressee(s) of that post, Sarah, who has here picked up the notion
of being 'targeted', and uses this as the topic on which she bases
the rest of her message.
In terms of evaluative positioning being more likely to
engender a response, sentence 1a uses a [naming: addressing]
move to first establish Sarah as the Addressee, which in itself is
notable for email interaction, in that such [naming: addressing]
moves overtly construct an ideal recipient, and thus function at the
level of interactive prospection. This refers to the received function
of these classes of move which tend to prospect for a response,
especially when, as in this case, the original Addresser quoted
clearly refers to a self as source of evaluations which are also linked
in some way to the Addressee's status in the group. Sentence 1a
clearly falls into this category. In other words, the proposition in 1a
could be rendered as: I think that these musings of mine might
make you feel targeted, in which Sarah is the target of an Appraisal
(albeit highly modalized) in which she is characterised as suffering
from negative [affect: insecurity]. It might not be so surprising,
then, to read Sarah's response as a Reply which directly addresses

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68

this appraisal of her Attitude. In other words, the prevalence of


values of [affect: insecurity] in the text can be viewed as entirely
relevant to the context realised by the framing quotation.
5.4.1 Indicators of relative interactivity and engagement in text2
In terms of Engagement, this (quoted, framing) utterance is clearly
dialogistically expansive. A more or less heteroglossic (or rather,
'intertextual' - referring to former texts from the list as community)
space is achieved through reference to voices such as the self
(these musings of mine) and the Addressee (you feel) - as well as in
the sentence which follows, alluding to the group as also being
responsible for these musings of mine, when she says that it is a
question that has been brought out into the open . It also functions
dialogistically to the extent that it leaves open the negotiatory
space by apologising (I'm sorry) for something she imagines might
or might not be acceptable on the part of her ideal recipient (if
these musings...make you feel ). In this way, the quoted excerpt
can be classed, in hindsight at least, as a good example of what I
have been calling an interactive move, likely to engender a
response from the Addressee, or audience member.
5.5 Text as post: one contribution to an ongoing context of
interaction
Both texts were once part of a dynamic interactive context, and the
posts which realised these texts can be seen as the product of a
series of contributions which preceded them, and the initiation of
other responses which followed. Both posts were chosen for their
formatting in the 'relevance-in' style outlined in section 3.3 of Part I
of this module, a style in which parts of a previous post are selected
as the relevant chunks which need addressing, or which motivate
the response. This module has argued that texts, and perhaps
specifically email-list generated texts, can be analysed as series of
evaluative positioning moves, or strategies which articulate, or
develop the coherence of the message overall, as a function of the
interrelationship of its rhetorical units.
Given this perspective, the next step is to work 'outwards' so
to speak: to look at the previous contribution(s) which the nodepost quotes, or to which it refers, and to look at contributions which
later make reference to this post. Those sections quoted from a
previous contribution need to be examined within their original cotext, in order to discover what, if any, indicators there are in these
specific quoted sections which set them apart from the rest of the
parent text. While Goffman (op cit) maintains that the respondee
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69

must indicate the relevance they found in any previous


contribution, my interest is in finding any recurrent features of
these sections of 'relevant chunks' which either mark them as, for
example, 'highly involved', or which correlate with other aspects of
the interaction, such as personal poster preferences or styles, or
especially, local use of Appraisal. It is intended that Module Three
will report on the findings of a study focussed on these areas of
investigation, one which attempts to address some wider aspects of
the context of interaction of mailing list communities of practice.
An idea of some of the problems and interest areas involved in
such a study may be gained in Appendix E, which shows the edited
transcripts of 2 series of posts which formed the original context for
the two texts examined in this module. In the case of text1, tracing
the origin of the conversation was complicated by the fact that
each contribution to the thread quoted an earlier contribution, and
this also broke subject line boundaries. In other words, the original
post using the thread's subject line ("a last bouquet") also quoted
earlier posts without that subject line. Another problem associated
with this thread, as can be seen by the amended list activity in
Appendix E, was that there were a number of other threads
occurring at the same time, which also resulted in the conversation
stretching over several days. Furthermore, text1 was the final post
in a sub-thread: the subject line was sub-headed "Just Say Delete",
after which the main thread continued for several days. It was
therefore decided to count posts starting from that with the original
subject line, and make a sub-count of those which maintained that
subject line. This style of tagging posts in a thread has been used
throughout the thesis, in order to be able to maintain some aspects
of the 'flow' of the original list activity. Basic headers of intervening
posts were not removed in order to represent the type of activity
sequence in which the thread was embedded.
In the case of text2, the thread in which it appeared ("So
Happy Together") was also sub-headed "Baby Talk", but, seen as a
function of co-quoting and response, this thread was short. In this
case, only those posts relevant to each other have been reproduced
in order to show the development of the conversation, those
chunks which were deemed relevant by respondees, and their
placement in the original post. For both threads, those parts quoted
in later posts have been colour highlighted
The next step here would be to analyse whole posts which
have been quoted, noting what features are evident or marked in
those segments or chunks selected as relevant and quoted in later
posts.

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6. Conclusion
This short exercise in analysis using the system of Attitude, was
made in order to demonstrate some of the ways that this type of
analysis can be used to characterise the unfolding of the text, the
evaluative positioning which the Addresser favours, and the interrelated nature of field (and hence, experiential and ideational
values) and evaluative stances. It was also presented as a way in
which such values may be investigated as contributing to further
understanding of the workings and basis for rhetorical structure
potential in this mode of interaction. This was linked to the need to
look at indicators of relative interactivity and the construction of
tenor in texts created in this context of interaction, as was
discussed in Part I of this module.
In Module Three, this framework, in conjunction with a number
of other approaches, will be used to investigate and comment on
the analyses of a corpus of texts from a particular written-speech
community of practice in order to characterise its conventional
patterns of exchange and negotiation, and within this, present a
means for investigating the nature of textual persona, or identity,
as the creative use of such conventions in making contextdependent meanings. It is envisaged that the framework presented
here, together with that presented in Module One, will prove a
useful means for describing expository texts in general,
characterising the context of interaction of other CMC text-based
interfaces, and extend the Appraisal framework to take into
account written interactive texts, and the means they provide of
checking Appraisal values against the nature of responses made.
=====

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