1,301 research outputs found
'Getting engaged: dialogistic positioning in novice academic discussion writing'
No full textThis chapter builds on a proposal put forward in Swain (2007a), that in effective academic argumentation, a very important role is played by the ENGAGEMENT system (White, 1998, 2003; Martin & White, 2005) of appraisal theory (Feez et al, 2008; Martin, 2000; White, 2005; Martin & White, 2005). The analysis for engagement of a corpus of non-native speaker undergraduate discussion writing in English showed that engagement resources are key to successful writing. Engagement resources are implicated in evaluative coherence; the degree to which the writer engages with the referenced arguments, coherently with the authorial position adopted; the inclusion of other viewpoints, and the mediation of attitude. From this it follows that the engagement framework has implications for EAP course content and methodology. The framework includes expressions and structures either ignored in traditional EAP programmes or taught with little attention to their dialogic, rhetorical functionality. Focus on engagement enables awareness of a fuller range of resources for persuasion and of their dialogic functions than is traditionally envisaged, providing help with perhaps one of the most challenging forms of academic writing for students
Hate speech or legitimate satire? Drawing the line in cartoons.
No full textControversial cartoons appearing in contemporary news and social media are periodically denounced by consumers for hate speech, and argued over in blogs, reader comments and news articles. Visual and verbal discourse analysts could contribute useful insights to such debates and to awareness raising programmes for addressing hate speech issues in cartoons, but to date have produced little work on the topic. This paper addresses the difficult question of how we distinguish between legitimate satire and hate speech in controversial cartoons about real events featuring public figures belonging to groups with a history of discrimination. The paper proposes that key considerations in this endeavour are the distinction between conceptual and narrative representations and the relevant participant role(s) assigned to the public figure in question (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006). The latter’s construal as being, doing or undergoing in the visual structure constrains the options for their evaluation. The evaluations are analysed using visual analogues of the verbal appraisal framework (Martin & White, 2005; Economou, 2009; Swain 2012; White, 2014). It is argued that negative evaluations based on representations of the public figure’s real-life behaviour may more plausibly pass for legitimate satire, whereas those based on the public figure’s appearance alone may be more susceptible to a hate speech interpretation
‘Sizing up the enemies and allies: evaluation in British foreign policy documents 1938-39’
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‘When a rose by any other name might not smell so sweet: names and their informativity in translation’
No full textThresholds and Potentialities of Systemic Functional Linguistics: Multilingual, Multimodal and other Specialised Discourses
No full textThe chapters in this volume discuss and apply both well-established descriptive tools and new developments in systemic functional linguistic (SFL) theory to a wide range of contexts, confirming the theory's versatility, adaptability and potential for growth. The section on languages other than English is representative of the ever-widening appeal of SFL for functional grammatical description across the world, and focuses on aspects of the grammatical description of French, German, Spanish and Slovenian, also in a contrastive perspective. The section on multimodality confirms and extends the applicability of SFL to image, film and music as well as verbal text, in advertising contexts. The section on specialized discourses contains a chapter arguing for the integration of SFL grammar with theories of time from physics; another chapter uses the SFL grammar of transitivity to test the validity of evaluative models of speech in psychotherapy. One applies SFL theory on language and context in stylistics to literary text analysis, and one other uses recent developments in appraisal theory or the language of evaluation to analyse academic writing in higher educational contexts for the purpose of proposing new priorities in university writing pedagogy programmes
Analysing evaluation in political cartoons
No full textThe paper uses appraisal theory to map some of the richly complex visual and verbal resources for making evaluative meanings in political cartoons, and to capture how distinctive patterns of those resources create different interpersonal styles, or evaluative keys. In this it addresses a gap in the cartoon literature, where claims about point of view, persuasive effects and style are often intuitive, rather than based on systematic analysis. The tools of verbal and visual appraisal and the concept of evaluative key are explained. Some proposals are offered concerning visual-verbal interaction. In-depth appraisal analyses and discussion of three cartoons illustrate the different configurations of appraisal resources realising the evaluative key of each, and how evaluative meanings and viewer alignment depend on multiple interactions between visual and verbal appraisal and ideation. Three types of evaluative key are proposed: observer voice, jester voice and indicter voice
Interpersonal style(s) in diplomatic argumentation online: A study of argument schemes and evaluation in press releases of UNSC permanent members
No full textThis chapter contributes to a growing body of research on diplomatic argumentation with a corpus study of variation in interpersonal style, conducted from an integrated perspective of argument schemes and appraisal theory. Based on 50 press releases taken from the foreign ministry websites of five prominent countries, the study aimed to ascertain whether internationally shared conventions of the kind regulating subjectivity in traditional argumentation settings still operate in the contemporary global, online context. Scheme types (Walton et al, 2008), directives, and the appraisal categories of authorial attitude and graduation (Martin and White, 2005) were taken as markers of interpersonal style and their frequencies calculated for the whole corpus and the five component sub-corpora. The results showed a relatively small range of argument schemes, free use of authorial attitude overall, and considerable variation between the five sub-corpora. Discussion of the different configurations of schemes and appraisal resources focuses on their construction of interpersonal style and government identity. It is suggested that rather than shape a global, homogeneous style of online diplomatic argumentation, global audiences and enhanced visibility on the web have led foreign ministries to adapt their argumentation styles in ways that reflect different identities, foreign policy priorities and goals and conceptualisations of audience
‘Translating metaphor in literary texts: an intertextual approach’
No full textThe paper approaches the translation of metaphor in literature from an intertextual perspective not widely used in literary or translation studies. The paper argues for the value of Lemke's semantically-based theory of intertextuality (1995) as a framework for the analysis of metaphor for literary translation purposes and for orienting metaphor translation choices. The value of the Lemkean framework lies in its focus on meaning and the intertextual environment: the meaning potential of metaphor can be systematised in three functionally-based categories (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004), each with an intertextual dimension. Adopting a broad view of metaphor, and illustrated with reference to English language versions of the metaphorically challenging short stories by Italian writer Giovanni Verga (1880; 1884), the analysis points out the advantages of considering metaphors as part of a shared intertextual environment and of describing their connotational meanings or entailments as a function of different types of relationship with that environment. The discussion highlights the potential of metaphors for establishing thematic, interpersonal and textual links within and across texts, and the important implications which these have for the stories' coherence and for their translation
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