A Study of Appraisal System and Its Texture/Textuality Mechanisms

Mingyue Sun

doi:doi:10.11648/j.ijll.20241203.12

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A Study of Appraisal System and Its Texture/Textuality Mechanisms

Mingyue Sun^*

Published in International Journal of Language and Linguistics (Volume 12, Issue 3)

Received: 19 April 2024 Accepted: 8 May 2024 Published: 24 May 2024

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Abstract

Language, as a social symbol, functions to express world experiences, construct social role relationships, and choose words and sentences to organize discourse. The interaction between language meta-functions is a problem deserved studying. From the perspective of textual meta-function, this paper tries to discuss the mechanisms of organizing Appraisal system as a texture, and construct a rather comprehensive analysis framework of the textual devices for evaluation meaning as a whole text. The framework built consists of three strata (contextual, discourse-semantic, and lexico-grammatical), two dimensions (micro and macro), and an intermediary variable (rhetorical strategies). At the contextual stratum, the generic structure of genre and mode of register, through rhetorical strategies, determine the distribution and combination patterns of evaluative meaning at the discourse-semantic stratum. In micro dimension, cohesion, information distribution pattern, and evaluative prosody, together with theme, new information and logical semantic relations in macro dimension, are combined to organize evaluation meaning at the discourse-semantic stratum. At the lexico-grammatical stratum, Appraisal meaning is thus embodied and realized by the evaluative lexical chains, thematic structures, new information structures, connectives and meta-discourse markers at the discourse-semantic level of a text. This framework reflects the interactions between the interpersonal meta-function and textual meta-function of Appraisal system and provides insights for the development of Appraisal Theory.

Published in	International Journal of Language and Linguistics (Volume 12, Issue 3)
DOI	10.11648/j.ijll.20241203.12
Page(s)	111-120
Creative Commons	This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright	Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Appraisal, Textual Metafunction, Evaluative Lexical Chains, Theme-New Information Structure

1. Introduction

As a social symbol, language use meets the needs of users to express subjective and objective world experiences, construct social role relationships, and choose words and sentences to organize discourse. In the process of communication, the three meta-functions of language: ideational, interpersonal and textual metafunction, as a complementary unity, realize meaning potentials at all levels

[9]

The interaction between language meta-functions is thus a problem deserved studying. From the perspective of philosophy of language, the meta-theoretical study of discourse function provides a philosophical basis for the study of language meta-functional interactions

[18]

. From the perspective of discourse semantics, the interactive relations of language meta-functions provide a perspective and approach to discourse analysis

[15]

. This paper aims to study the interactions between the interpersonal and textual metafunctions of Appraisal system, and the organizational mechanisms or device of Appraisal meaning in discourse as a texture.

2. The Studies of Appraisal Theory and Textual Metafunction

2.1. The Studies of Appraisal Theory

Appraisal Theory (AT) is an interpersonal metafunction system that incorporates the study of evaluative lexis or vocabularies into the discourse-semantic stratum in Systemic- Functional Linguistics (SFL), including three subsystems: Attitude, Engagement and Graduation

[17]

. Attitude includes Affect, Judgement and Appreciation. Bednarek analyzed attitudinal prosody and periodicity patterns in academic discourse

[2]

. Don and Maxim et al. discussed the devices for the extended implicit and explicit emotive-evaluative lexis to construct persona in the Twitter conflict situations

[4, 19]

. Engagement is the source of Attitude, which is divided into monogloss and heterogloss. Hamby & Jones, Miller et al., and White applied some extended frameworks of Engagement as dialogic bonding, negotiation, alignment or affiliation, to studying the strategies in advertising narration genre, argumentative history writing, or mass media persuasion

[10, 20, 28, 29]

. Graduation is strength of attitude and degree of commitment in dialogue. Hood & Martin and Jalilifar & Moradi illustrated the mechanisms of Force and Focus to modulate attitude varieties in research article introductions of academic writing and tourist brochures of tourism discourse

[11, 13]

. Bednarek summarized and integrated the patterns of three subsystems in the news corpus

[1]

. Liu Shizhu and Wu Ting introduced research achievements by Chinese scholars, including the development, questioning and revision of AT

[14, 30]

The characteristics of AT studies related to date are as follows: In terms of research paradigm, researchers take Appraisal system as the starting point to analyze evaluation resources realized in instantiated discourse, which is a specific application research rather than a systematic theoretical study. In terms of research perspective, most researches focus on interpersonal meaning, but do not pay attention to the interaction between the Appraisal system, ideational meaning and textual meaning, and so do not deeply explore in the textual metafunction of the evaluative lexico-grammars. In terms of research space, as important semantic resource, it is worthwhile to study the way Appraisal semantics is related to coherence in different genre types

[24]

As for the question whether Appraisal system has textual metafunction or not, Martin & White and Wang Zhenhua proposed that “Appraisal theory is only the development of interpersonal meta-function at the lexical level among three meta-functions. We can only use it to study language with interpersonal significance. If we use it to study ideational meaning or textual texture, first of all, it is not practical. Secondly, it is unfair to a theory itself, which can open itself up to certain misunderstanding and criticism because it does not solve all problems

[17, 26]

.” There is an unambiguous problem involved here: Appraisal system is a subsystem of interpersonal meaning, not ideational meaning and textual meaning. However, from another point of view, it is necessary to study how the evaluation system is organized in the context of discourse function, that is, what kinds of textual organization mechanisms organize the evaluation meaning. This paper focuses on the mechanisms of discourse organization to organize the meaning of evaluation in text.

2.2. Appraisal and Its Coherent Mechanisms

Textual metafunction is embodied and realized in three aspects: cohesion, thematic structure and information structure. Cohesion and coherence are very important topics in discourse analysis. Halliday & Hasan expounded the relationship between cohesion and coherence, focusing on cohesive devices for ideational meaning and its arrangement in a text

[7]

, while the organizational devices for interpersonal meaning and its coherence have not received due attention. Zhang Delu & Liu Rushan proposed mood structure, modality components, evaluative vocabulary, address, and intonation, as lexico-grammatical features, act to realize interpersonal meaning, and thus have textual cohesion functions

[31]

, but did not specify what they are.

Cohesive harmony and Appraisal coherence, that is, appraisal key or tone keeps consistent, developed the cohesive devices based on ideational meaning and promoted the study on the cohesion mechanism of evaluation meaning

[8, 11]

. Thompson & Zhou claim commentary Adjuncts are effective textual mechanisms to realize concession, expectation, hypothesis-reality and other cohesive relationships while simultaneously realizing interpersonal function

[25]

. However, the study is limited to explicit evaluation cohesive resources and thus neglects the textual function of implicit evaluation. Cheng Wei presents three attitudinal prosodies in the forms of flow charts of wave, divergent and gradient prosodies, to achieve the prosodic cohesion of interpersonal meaning

[3]

. Halliday & Hasan and Martin & Rose studied the composing functions of the connectives and the logical semantic relation system of discourse from the perspectives of lexico-grammar and discourse semantics respectively

[7, 16]

Studies on the cohesion harmony, evaluation coherence, comment adjuncts, attitude prosody and logical connectives thus have inspired the research on cohesion mechanisms of evaluation resources. The coherence of Appraisal meaning is the result of the synergistic effect of discourse organization at the micro and macro levels. Appraisal vocabulary chains realize cohesion at micro dimension, and Appraisal prosody and logical semantic relations realize coherence at macro one

[15]

2.3. Appraisal and Its Theme Structures

THEME study is mainly concerned with its definitions and identifications, types and textual functions

[9]

. The classifications of Thematic types include textual or clausal theme, interactive or informative theme, and hyper or macro theme. Textual functions of theme are thus embodied and realized in three major aspects: Thematic Progression, Method of Development, and Periodicity. Thematic progression studies the relationship between the progressive patterns of the ideational meaning in themes and the patterns of discourse development of genres. Method of development represents and realizes the relationship between discourse development patterns and logical semantics by a linear manner. Appraisal periodicity constructs three levels of Theme-New information structure in three-layered clause-paragraph-text, corresponding to theme-hyper-macro themes, and new-hyper-macro new information, thus predicting discourse development patterns or Method of Development, and indicating discourse new Point

[16, 17]

MULTIPLE THEME is the arrangement and combination of Textual theme, Interpersonal theme and Ideational theme in thematic areas, focusing on the organizational function of Topical theme on ideational meaning of text. Thompson argued that the interpersonal elements of Interpersonal themes, such as address, modal Adjuncts and wh-question words, also play a role in organizing discourse

[23]

. Interpersonal THEME appears before Textual THEME, emphasizing the prosodic direction of interpersonal meaning and the textual organization function of interpersonal theme. Ideational THEME can also carry some interpersonal meaning. Take a clause, for example, “Well but then surely Jean wouldn't the best idea be to join in.”, Appraisal constituent of “best” thus expresses both the interpersonal meaning of evaluation and the textual reference cohesion function within the Ideational thematic area

[9]

Appraisal THEME is the allocation of evaluative resources such as comment Adjunct located in the scope of Interpersonal THEME, which has the functions of both expressing evaluative meaning and organizing discourse function. This term thus enriches and develops the definition and identification, the types and the textual function of THEME. Within a theme scope, a hierarchical progression model of Appraisal theme functions to organize evaluative meaning in text

[6]

2.4. Appraisal and Its Information Structures

Information Structure, together with Thematic Structure represents a CLAUSE as information. THEME is oriented towards the speaker and is “the starting point where I begin” or the starting point of the message. NEW information is listener-oriented, the focal point of “what I want you to pay attention to”, and information FOCUS. Theme and New information depend on the context and communicative purpose of the text

[9]

Thematic structure and New information structure are interwoven and complementary, and so cooperate to push discourse from the first peak (thematic) to the second peak (information focus) in the periodic waves. Textual coherence is therefore not a simple connection in thematic forms and mechanically following several thematic progression modes, but in an information field, themes are given information parameters such as known or new information. Information Distribution is integrated into Theme Progression, and Information structure interacts with Thematic structure.

Appraisal information structure is as such the distribution, deployment or configuration of evaluation resources in the information structure. In spoken language, information FOCUS is achieved by stress or prosody. In writing, the distributive combinations of evaluation resources help to identify semantic density, intensity and redundancy of Appraisal information. In the information field, the Appraisal themes are loaded with Appraisal information parameters, and Method of Development of appraisal information structure and thematic progression is established

[5]

2.5. The Studies of Appraisal and Its Texture Mechanisms

Appraisal as such and by its nature functions (1) to express the speaker’s or writer’s opinion; (2) to construct and maintain relations; (3) to organize the discourse

[12]

Current evaluation studies focus on the first two functions. The textual function of evaluation is how the textual mechanisms organize the meaning of evaluation, which should be studied from the perspective of textual metafunction rather than interpersonal one. Studies on the mechanisms of Appraisal are divided into two stages: Appraisal as a specific part of the discourse and Appraisal permeating the whole discourse

[16]

. In the first stage, from the 1970’s to 1980’s, such as, Labov’s narrative discourse model, Sinclair’s classroom conversation model and Hoey’s Problem-Solution model represent distributive principles of evaluation at the macro level, without involving the textual function of composition devices or texture mechanisms at the micro level.

In the second stage, from the 1990’s to now, the textual mechanisms of Appraisal composition are mainly realized by evaluation meaning in Prosody, Periodicity and Genre structure. Language has three modes of meaning structures: the particle structure of ideational meaning, prosodic structure of interpersonal meaning, periodic structure of textual meaning

[22]

. Prosodic structure organizes the coherence and the resonance of evaluation meaning in the permeating, reinforcing and dominating ways. Periodic structure, by contrast, organizes information flows, pulses or waves to achieve Appraisal coherence by hierarchically Theme-New information

[17]

The communicative purpose and genre structure type of a text, as macro-level constraints, dominate and govern evaluation resources at the lexico-grammatical level

[8]

. In each component stage of a generic structure, the distribution and combination mode of evaluation resources not only expresses the fluctuation and gradual changes of attitude, stance and positioning of communicators, but also reflects text style and discourse strategies. A rhetorical strategy of Appraisal is the strategic selection, allocation and deployment of evaluation resources by a speaker according to ideology, axiology, cultural context, situational context, cognitive psychology and other factors to achieve the specific communicative purposes and rhetorical effects

[27]

Download: Download full-size image

Figure 1. An analytical framework of the texture mechanisms of Appraisal.

3. An Analytical Framework of Appraisal Texture Mechanisms

Based on three concepts of Fabric, Texture and Textuality in Systemic-Functional Linguistics (SFL), and drawing on the State Transition Methodology of computational linguistics, the concept of foregrounding in stylistics, the concept of narrator and author in narratology, and the concept of motivation in cognitive science, Peng Xuanwei has constructed a three-level theoretical framework of the Appraisal Textuality from the two perspectives of surface foregrounding and bottom motivation from both discrete and holistic aspects

[21]

. The first level is discrete evaluation components at the micro surface, which form the interactions of evaluation lexis chains and the transitions of phased evaluation states, and build the foregrounded longitude and latitude texture of Appraisal. The second level is the overall evaluation trends and evaluation development stages at the macro surface, representing narrator’s voice; Level 3 is the overall evaluation motivations and evaluation communicative purposes at the macro deep, and represents the author’s voice. From the perspective of interpersonal metafunction, White proposed that the Textuality of evaluative meaning involves three dimensions, that is, evaluative style, genre structure and rhetorical potential, which are realized as the voice of evaluation, the orbital structure and prosodic mode of evaluation, and the objective rhetorical strategy of evaluation

[27]

Drawing on above studies, this study attempts to construct a relatively comprehensive, and cross-interface framework for analyzing the texture mechanisms of the evaluation textuality. From the perspective of the textual meta-function, we mainly study textual devices for organizational evaluation meaning, and explore the interactive relationship between interpersonal and textual metafunctions of the Appraisal system. The constructed analysis framework of texture mechanisms or textual devices of Appraisal textuality (see Figure 1) includes three strata, two dimensions and an intermediate layer. The three strata are contextual, discourse-semantic, lexico-grammatical stratum. The two dimensions are micro or macro perspective. One intermediate layer is the rhetorical strategy level.

At the contextual stratum, the communicative purpose of the discourse prompts the selection of appropriate genre types from cultural context to achieve it. The genre of discourse determines distribution pattern of overall evaluation meaning in a generic structure. The mode of register variables in situational context, including the role of discourse in context, the degree of contextual dependence, and the communicative mediums or channels, also determines the distribution pattern of evaluation in a text. At the discourse-semantic stratum, the evaluation meaning of a text, which is dominated by a genre type and mode of register, mainly has recourse to cohesion, informational organization structure, and attitudinal prosody to realize Appraisal texture/textuality. At lexico-grammatical stratum, lexical and grammatical resources that act to embody and realize evaluation meaning as Appraisal texture or textuality are organized by virtue of theme structure, information structure, and cohesive devices

[8]

From the micro perspective, evaluation resources in text, interacting with the prosodic structure, determine evaluative vocabulary chains as the cohesion devices to organize and realize Appraisal coherence, texture and textuality. Interact with thematic structure to determine evaluative themes as the textual devices to organize and realize Appraisal textuality. Interact with new information structure and determine evaluative information structure as the texture mechanisms to organize and realize Appraisal textuality. From the macro perspective, the generic structure determines the distribution and combination of evaluation resources in a whole text, through the macro theme, macro new information, and macro logical semantic relations, as shown in Figure 1. This model adds an interlayer of Appraisal rhetorical strategy and emphasizes the role of individuality or subjectivity of the communicators in context. Communicative subjects not only choose the appropriate mode of communication in register according to cultural context and situational context, but also choose the appropriate mode of rhetorical strategy according to subjective purposes or own preferences.

At lexico-grammatical stratum, the mechanism of evaluation cohesion chains combines or aggregates explicit or implicit evaluation resources and their configurations to produce evaluation vocabulary clustering, triggered and evoked effects, and thus the evaluation meaning is consistent, cohesion and coherence. At a micro level, evaluation word chains present linear, spiral, zigzagging, netted or other coherent models. At a macro level, evaluation word cohesion network is organized, fabricated or inter-textured by logical semantic relations and discourse markers, which can predict, provoke, indicate and highlight the transition of discourse, like the four steps in the composition of an essay in Chinese: Opening, Developing, Changing and Concluding. Appraisal coherence is a dynamic process of the interactive harmony and interweaving of lexical cohesion chains.

Within the theme position and thematic area, the mechanism of Appraisal theme provides a frame or guidepost for the organizational development of the evaluation meaning, lays evaluation tone or key, and predicts the development direction of the evaluation. Method of Development of themes is the driving force to promote the thematic progression and textual development, and to realize the gradual accumulation, radiation and saturation of evaluation Prosody, gradual advancement, specification and clarification of textual Point, and the gradual step-by-step development of Genre structure, highlighting hierarchical organization, periodic progression, and navigated orientation of evaluation meaning and its coherence, texture or textuality within the scope of themes in a text.

The mechanism of Appraisal information structure works to organize a synergistic adaptation of evaluation information, highlighting the implicit, presupposition reasoning, the characterization of evaluation information density, intensity and redundancy. The distribution and disposition of evaluation resources in information structure help to identify and foreground focus, point and prominence of written information. In evaluative information field, Appraisal theme and Appraisal information structure are two threads side by side that work to organize information flow and focus change, and construct the interactions of Prosody, Periodicity, and Method of Development of a genre.

The mechanisms of metadiscourse markers and logical connectives at a lexico-grammatical stratum, mark the transition, cohesion or coherence of evaluation meaning, the logical semantic relations, and the structural components of a genre at a macro dimension, which macroscopically dominates, predicts or dispatches evaluation resources. Choices of Appraisal meaning potentials are systematic, non-arbitrary and so have stylistic significance and rhetorical effect. In addition to the contingency and dependence on cultural context, situational context, genre type and other factors, communicative subjects use rhetorical strategies to choose Appraisal in a skillful or artful manner.

Appraisal texture and textuality framework constructed in this paper is complementary to and different from the other two frameworks (see Table 1). All of them are based on the theoretical assumptions of SFL, with stratification, systemic and functional characteristics, but they construct their theoretical frameworks from different research perspectives. Peng Xuanwei from the perspective of motivation or foregrounding, explored the way Appraisal Textuality produces the stylistic effect of foregrounding, and analyzed how the overall trends of evaluation, the stages of evaluation (genre structure components), and the author’s voice are realized in terms of evaluation vocabulary Chain, overall evaluation Orientation, and transition of evaluation State

[21]

. From the perspective of interpersonal metafunction, White discussed the way of orbitality structure to realize rhetorical potentials of evaluative prosody and organize evaluative style, key and voice of discourse

[27]

. This paper focuses on the textual devices or organizational mechanisms for Appraisal meanings in a text as texture or textuality from the perspective of textual metafunction. Appraisal texture/textuality represents the way that evaluative resources, evaluative Prosody and Periodicity are organized in the structure of genre through evaluative strategies, and is realized by evaluative coherence chain, evaluative theme, information structure, discourse markers and logical connectives at the lexico-grammatical stratum.

Table 1. Three theoretical frameworks of Appraisal texture and textuality.

Theoretical Frameworks

Research Perspectives

Appraisal Texture/Textuality

Peng Xuanwei

[21]

Foregrounding, Motivation

Level 1: Lexical chain, State transition,

Longitude and latitude structure

Level 2: Orientation, Stage, Narrator’s voice

Level 3: Motivation, Purpose, Author’s voice

White

[27]

Interpersonal metafunction

Dimension 1: Style, Voice

Dimension 2: Orbitality, Prosody

Dimension 3: Rhetorical potential

Appraisal Texture/Textuality Framework

Textual metafunction

Lexico-grammar Stratum: Coherence chain, Evaluative theme,

Information structure, Discourse markers, Logical connectives

Discourse-semantic Stratum:

Prosody, Periodicity

Rhetorical strategy Stratum:

Evaluative strategy

4. Text Analysis of Enacting Appraisal Texture/Textuality

Martin & White demonstrated the applicability of the Appraisal Theory framework in the practice of discourse analysis through two examples of instantiated texts

[17]

. We illustrate the application of the constructed analytical framework of the Appraisal textuality or texture mechanisms, drawing on the second case text “Mourning”, as in Appendix. The sampled text is the news editorial of the Hong Kong Weekly on September 21th, 2001 about September 11th terrorist attacks. We adopt a bottom-up approach to analyze the functions of lexical chain, thematic and information structure as the mechanisms of discourse composition as evaluative Texture/Textuality. An analysis of genre structure in macro dimension helps organize, represent, and realize Appraisal meaning by virtue of evaluative discourse markers and logical connectives. Finally, it is explained that the organization and allocation of the Appraisal resources serve the evaluative rhetoric strategies of genre.

First, each group of three-rated explicit word chains: horror, worry, anger; overly-sincere, maudlin, righteous-indignation; appalled, perplexed, repulsed, as the Rhetorical Triplets can produce lexical clusters and evoked effects, construct a key line of evaluation, lay a keynote of evaluation, and form a spiraling development model of Appraisal vocabulary chain pattern. These triplets and the evaluative chains highlight the development of Attitude towards the event from horror then to indignation and to repulse. The dominant explicit evaluation vocabulary chain and implicit evaluation are from synergistic, then to convergent and interactive, then to harmonious and coherent. The implicit evaluation strategies mainly include Provoke, Flag and Afford

[17]

. The experiential contents of the American talk show “Letterman”, the movie “Doomsday”, and the movie “God Bless America”, plus the conceptual vocabularies with Ideational Metafunction and Metaphor meanings like stamp out terrorism, pause and reflect on some of the grievances, they function to stimulate and invite, Provoke and Afford the implicit evaluation meaning, expressing the attitude towards the event is to mourn the dead, condemn the killers, reflect on a tough foreign policy, eradicate terrorism, and restore normal social order.

The interactive relationship between explicit and implicit evaluation is as follows: the former provides contextualization cues to help anticipate, dominate, and induce the latter; while the latter helps echo, strengthen and sublimate the former. Implicit evaluation, combined with explicit evaluation cues and indirect speech acts, deduce the evaluative implicatures from the metaphorical meanings of words and the conceptual, experiential or ideational meanings of propositions.

Secondly, according to the concept of Appraisal THEME in this paper, although there is no comment Adjunct in the text that plays the role of thematic prominence at the beginning of a clause, evaluative component or element is configured in the thematic area, and evaluation THEME serves as the starting point of a clause and plays the textual functions of framing, signposting and prominence. Three evaluative themes: The terrible events of the past week, The problem with tragedies like this one, The jingoistic, flag waving, ‘my way or the highway’ rhetoric, with the three dominant evaluation words: terrible, problem, jingoistic, are used as the organizational mechanism to construct the line of evaluation Prosody, highlight the trend of evaluation Key, and provide the frame of evaluation Stage of a whole text. The text moves from describing the horror of the event, to commenting on the social problems it has raised, to reflecting on a tough foreign policy.

The THEME of each clause in a text is divided into three groups from semantic contents: describing the terrible events of the past week, assessing the reaction of the people of America, and those who have the good fortune to live in the international world, persuasion to solve social problems of it, there. These three groups of Appraisal THEME in clauses not only form the main lines of appraisal Prosody, but also construct three peaks of appraisal Periodicity, corresponding to the three stages of description, evaluation and persuasion in the generic structure of an editorial. The interactive relationship between appraisal Prosody and Periodicity is as follows: Saturated, intensified and dominated structures of an evaluation Prosody, while is appearing, allocated and configured in the thematic prominence positions or areas, form a Method of Development of evaluative themes in a structure of an evaluation Periodicity

[17]

In addition, Appraisal information structure, as a kind of the textual, texture, and textuality mechanism, relies on the End-Weighting Principle to identify the new evaluative information in written language. Appraisal components or elements which express attitude, stance, positioning, or subjective engagement, are related to the main thrust or Point of the discourse, tending to the end position of the clause, forming the Minimal Domain of new information

[16]

. In addition to the clause: That said, the polls aren’t going our way, each clause in the text of Appendix ends with an evaluative adjective, noun, and verb, forming the minimal Domain and Focus of new information, which is marked or foregrounded by the prominence of an accent or a stress in spoken language.

The interactive relationship between Appraisal new information and Appraisal theme is as follows: the discourse advances from the peak of the thematic position and area to the peak of the minimal new information domain to realize the information pulse flow and focus prominence. A hyper THEME: The terrible events of the past week have left us with feelings, predicts the themes of each clause in a paragraph or whole text, and provides both the Perspective and Orientation of evaluation progression or Development Method: Horrific events and People’s emotional responses. A hyper NEW information: And while it is commendable to want to stamp out terrorism, it might be a good idea to pause and reflect on some of the grievances, summarizes the new information in each clause and condenses both the Point and the Focus of evaluation information distribution and organization: Eradicating terrorism and Rethinking hatred. So, hyper THEME and hyper NEW information echo and correspond each other to form an appraisal Periodicity

[15]

From the macro dimension or perspective, abstract words events, feelings, the problem, The rhetoric, the polls, and personal pronouns The people of America, We, 89 percent of Americans, Those who, work to mark the descriptive Stage of the terrorist event in the genre structure and the evaluative Stage of comparing people’s emotional responses or attitudinal stances. Two concessive conjunctions or logical connectives While that grief is deeply understood, while it is commendable to want to stamp out terrorism., and two meta-discourse markers That said, Of course, indicate the persuasive Stage of tackle terrorism in the genre structure.

By reporting, describing, evaluating, and commenting on news events, editorial genre achieves communicative purpose and textual function of persuading readers. Rhetorical strategy of Appraisal is a parameter to study context, genre and mode of register, and it is a strategic choice of evaluation resources by communicative subjects or agents in order to achieve the communicative purposes of dialogue, negotiation, argumentation and persuasion. Appraisal strategies as variables at the intermediate level so correspond to the editorial genre structure at the macro level, including Description, Commentary and Persuasion strategies, which dominated the selection of evaluation resources at the lexico-grammatical level.

In the reporting or describing Phase, the overt subjective emotional response grieving gives way to the appreciation of the attack, emotional state, and life style, such as, The terrible events, the tragedy, feelings, the loss of a trouble-free way of life. The transfer of Affect to Appreciation, together with the transformation of evaluative adjectives or verbs into abstract noun phrases, is a Grammatical Metaphor process of nominalization, materialization, information compression, and the packaging and bonding of Ideational meaning and Interpersonal meaning. The enhanced lexical density and simplified grammatical construction of clauses convey rich information quantity and conform to the style of editorial news as Genre or Register. The transition of subjective Affect to Appreciation of objective things, with the role of Appraisal subject or agent from the participant to sympathizer to observer, resulting in a distance effect, is the Objectification and Depersonalization Strategy of news discourse. Likewise, the allocations of Appreciation resources in hyper THEME positions set evaluative tone or Key

[17]

, and predict, dominate or induce the subsequent evaluation, which is the Contextualization and Prominence Strategy.

In the evaluation and argumentation Stage, concessive conjunctions While that grief is deeply understood, Social Esteem or Social Sanction in Appraisal subsystems sincere, maudlin, righteous, intensified saturation of affective Graduation like appalled, perplexed and repulsed, and non-core Attitude words jingoistic retch, express the subjective Attitude of author’s explicit, single-voiced Monoglossia. Factual Statement Strategy eases and dissolves the subjectivity of the text, improves the reliability and persuasiveness of the author, and realizes the Solidarity Strategy with the reader. The concessive conjunctive While, the discourse marker That said, and the negative particle the polls aren’t going our way, as texturing mechanisms, express the logical meanings of concession, anti-expectation and negation, and mark the transition of the evaluation stage and the evaluation direction: from the self-asserted Monoglossic evaluation to dissenting Heteroglossic argument, from the unquestionable objectified Fact statement to the controversial subjective Opinion negotiation. Abstract Referential Nouns the polls, Attribution as Engagement 89 percent of Americans surveyed, and Subjective-Explicit modalized grammatical structure We suppose that, create a dialogue space to expand Heteroglossia negotiation and accommodate the prediction of multiple possible opposing views. With help of Concessive Dialectic Strategy, Alignment Strategy in heterogeneous and dialogistic negotiation, seeking common ground while reserving differences, or both heteroglossic diversity and alignment unity is realized in the argumentative Stage

[17]

In the persuasive phase and appeal Stage of editorial news genre, the personal pronoun Those who, the world, We, and the cognitive or epistemic projection verb know that, are used to indicate putative readers’ Sociality and Affiliation Strategy and Factual Statement Strategy, which persuade the readers to accept group consensus or unquestionable objective facts. The concessional conjunctive while marks a Concessive Dialectic Strategy to ease the compulsion of persuasion and appeal and enhances the rhetorical effect of persuasiveness and acceptability. Objective-Explicit modality/modulation grammatical structure it is commendable to, it might also be a good idea to, there’s precious little chance of, and meta-discourse marker Of course, hide subjective suggestions and modalized judgments in objectified grammatical metaphor structures

[9]

, the subjective intervention or Engagement of appraisal subject is concealed and dissolved by the formal subject it, there, and the appeal to readers with objective facts and logical common sense is a Strategy of Appeals to Ethos and Logos in rhetoric.

5. Conclusion

This paper has studied the textual, texturing and textuality mechanisms of evaluation meaning in a text, and discussed the interactive relationship between interpersonal and textual Metafunctions of the Appraisal system. A genre types of discourse is enriched in the Mode of register, which shows the specific degrees of context dependence and the choices of communication medium. Motivated by Context, the communicators use rhetorical strategies according to communicative purpose to organize the evaluative meaning of the text from both macro and micro dimensions. In the micro dimension, the evaluative Coherence, informational Periodicity structure and attitudinal Prosody are realized by the Appraisal vocabulary chain, theme-new information structure and connective particles. In the macro dimension, hyper Theme, hyper New information and macro logical semantic relations, which are realized by discourse markers, connectives, thematic structure and information structure, strengthen the genre structure and form discourse structure with specific evaluative meaning as a text, texture and textuality. The analytical framework of Appraisal texture/textuality mechanisms constructed in the paper so includes three strata (contextual, discourse-semantic and lexico-grammatical level), two dimensions (micro and macro perspective) and one intermediate variable (rhetorical strategy level), which provides new research perspective for the development of Appraisal Theory (AT). This theoretical framework needs to be validated by subsequent corpus study and discourse analysis practice.

Abbreviations

AT	Appraisal Theory
SFL	Systemic-Functional Linguistics

Author Contributions

Mingyue Sun is the sole author. The author read and approved the final manuscript.

Funding

This work is supported by the Shandong Province Social Science Planning Research Project of China (Grant No. 20CYYJ09).

Data Availability Statement

No data was used.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Appendix

Mourning

The terrible events of the past week have left us with feelings-in order of occurrence-of horror, worry, anger, and now, just a general gloom. The people of America are grieving both over the tragedy itself and over the loss-perhaps permanently-of a trouble-free way of life.

While that grief is deeply understood, the problem with tragedies like this one is that they become a heyday for the overly-sincere, maudlin, righteous-indignation crowd. We’ve been appalled, perplexed and repulsed by some of the things we’ve heard said in the media this week. The jingoistic, flag-waving, ‘my way or the highway’ rhetoric is enough to make thinking people retch. That said, the polls aren’t going our way. 89 percent of Americans surveyed are thrilled and delighted by all the tub-thumping. We suppose that every episode of ‘Letterman’ from now until doomsday is going to open with another weepy rendition of ‘God Bless America.’

Those who have the good fortune to live in the international world-that is, the world outside the U.S.-know that we are not all of one religion, one language or one political system. We live in a big world where people have diverse, and often, diametrically opposed views. And while it is commendable to want to stamp out terrorism, it might also be a good idea to pause and reflect on some of the grievances that people in the rest of the world have towards the U.S. Of course, there’s precious little chance of that happening in America any time soon.

On a smaller and closer scale, we have already begun to see some unfortunnate cases locally of backlash against members of the Muslim community (or even just people who look like they might be Muslim).

The Macau police found themselves in a Keystone Cops episode, arresting and detaining seven ‘suspected Pakistani terrorists.’ The scare was enough to close the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong for a day, though the men turned out to be tourists, a word which is spelled somewhat like terrorists, and we suppose to some people, just as frightening. One of the arrested people in fact was a Hindu, a chef from Hong Kong, who had been cleverly tracked down by undercover cops sitting peacefully at the Hotel Lisboa bar.

Meanwhile (and we’re not making this up), two Indian nationals on a flight from Singapore to Hong Kong were detained at Changi Airport after an American passenger said he heard one of the men calling himself a ‘Bosnian terrorist.’ (The man in fact said he was a ‘bass guitarist.’).

Similarly, there have already been reports of taxis putting up ‘out of service’ signs and people changing seats on buses when confronted by dark-skinned people-as if changing your seat would save you if a bomb went off, anyway. But such is the logic of xenophobia.

If, as all the pundits are saying, there is no hope of normalcy returning soon, let’s at least hope that sanity does.

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Sun, M. (2024). A Study of Appraisal System and Its Texture/Textuality Mechanisms. International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 12(3), 111-120. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20241203.12

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Sun, M. A Study of Appraisal System and Its Texture/Textuality Mechanisms. Int. J. Lang. Linguist. 2024, 12(3), 111-120. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20241203.12

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Sun M. A Study of Appraisal System and Its Texture/Textuality Mechanisms. Int J Lang Linguist. 2024;12(3):111-120. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20241203.12

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@article{10.11648/j.ijll.20241203.12,
  author = {Mingyue Sun},
  title = {A Study of Appraisal System and Its Texture/Textuality Mechanisms
},
  journal = {International Journal of Language and Linguistics},
  volume = {12},
  number = {3},
  pages = {111-120},
  doi = {10.11648/j.ijll.20241203.12},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20241203.12},
  eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijll.20241203.12},
  abstract = {Language, as a social symbol, functions to express world experiences, construct social role relationships, and choose words and sentences to organize discourse. The interaction between language meta-functions is a problem deserved studying. From the perspective of textual meta-function, this paper tries to discuss the mechanisms of organizing Appraisal system as a texture, and construct a rather comprehensive analysis framework of the textual devices for evaluation meaning as a whole text. The framework built consists of three strata (contextual, discourse-semantic, and lexico-grammatical), two dimensions (micro and macro), and an intermediary variable (rhetorical strategies). At the contextual stratum, the generic structure of genre and mode of register, through rhetorical strategies, determine the distribution and combination patterns of evaluative meaning at the discourse-semantic stratum. In micro dimension, cohesion, information distribution pattern, and evaluative prosody, together with theme, new information and logical semantic relations in macro dimension, are combined to organize evaluation meaning at the discourse-semantic stratum. At the lexico-grammatical stratum, Appraisal meaning is thus embodied and realized by the evaluative lexical chains, thematic structures, new information structures, connectives and meta-discourse markers at the discourse-semantic level of a text. This framework reflects the interactions between the interpersonal meta-function and textual meta-function of Appraisal system and provides insights for the development of Appraisal Theory.
},
 year = {2024}
}

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TY  - JOUR
T1  - A Study of Appraisal System and Its Texture/Textuality Mechanisms

AU  - Mingyue Sun
Y1  - 2024/05/24
PY  - 2024
N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20241203.12
DO  - 10.11648/j.ijll.20241203.12
T2  - International Journal of Language and Linguistics
JF  - International Journal of Language and Linguistics
JO  - International Journal of Language and Linguistics
SP  - 111
EP  - 120
PB  - Science Publishing Group
SN  - 2330-0221
UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20241203.12
AB  - Language, as a social symbol, functions to express world experiences, construct social role relationships, and choose words and sentences to organize discourse. The interaction between language meta-functions is a problem deserved studying. From the perspective of textual meta-function, this paper tries to discuss the mechanisms of organizing Appraisal system as a texture, and construct a rather comprehensive analysis framework of the textual devices for evaluation meaning as a whole text. The framework built consists of three strata (contextual, discourse-semantic, and lexico-grammatical), two dimensions (micro and macro), and an intermediary variable (rhetorical strategies). At the contextual stratum, the generic structure of genre and mode of register, through rhetorical strategies, determine the distribution and combination patterns of evaluative meaning at the discourse-semantic stratum. In micro dimension, cohesion, information distribution pattern, and evaluative prosody, together with theme, new information and logical semantic relations in macro dimension, are combined to organize evaluation meaning at the discourse-semantic stratum. At the lexico-grammatical stratum, Appraisal meaning is thus embodied and realized by the evaluative lexical chains, thematic structures, new information structures, connectives and meta-discourse markers at the discourse-semantic level of a text. This framework reflects the interactions between the interpersonal meta-function and textual meta-function of Appraisal system and provides insights for the development of Appraisal Theory.

VL  - 12
IS  - 3
ER  -

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Author Information

Mingyue Sun

Department of Public Foreign Language Teaching, Qufu Normal University, Qufu, China

Biography: Mingyue Sun is an associate professor at Qufu Normal University, Public Foreign Language Teaching Department. She acquired her PhD in Foreign Language and Literature from Shandong University in 2018, and her Master of Foreign Linguistics and Applied Lin-guistics from Qufu Normal University in 2008. She has participated in multiple international research collaboration projects in recent years. She currently serves on the Director of the International Halliday Language Society.

Research Fields: Research field 1-1 systemic-functional linguistics, 1-2 discourse analysis, 1-3 multimodal semiotics, 1-4 ecolinguistics, 1-5 cognitive linguistics, 1-6 foreign language teaching.

Contact Email

http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5184-3356

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Figure 1

Figure 1. An analytical framework of the texture mechanisms of Appraisal.

Table 1

Table 1. Three theoretical frameworks of Appraisal texture and textuality.

Plain Text BibTeX RIS

APA Style

Sun, M. (2024). A Study of Appraisal System and Its Texture/Textuality Mechanisms. International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 12(3), 111-120. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20241203.12

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ACS Style

Sun, M. A Study of Appraisal System and Its Texture/Textuality Mechanisms. Int. J. Lang. Linguist. 2024, 12(3), 111-120. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20241203.12

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AMA Style

Sun M. A Study of Appraisal System and Its Texture/Textuality Mechanisms. Int J Lang Linguist. 2024;12(3):111-120. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20241203.12

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@article{10.11648/j.ijll.20241203.12,
  author = {Mingyue Sun},
  title = {A Study of Appraisal System and Its Texture/Textuality Mechanisms
},
  journal = {International Journal of Language and Linguistics},
  volume = {12},
  number = {3},
  pages = {111-120},
  doi = {10.11648/j.ijll.20241203.12},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20241203.12},
  eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijll.20241203.12},
  abstract = {Language, as a social symbol, functions to express world experiences, construct social role relationships, and choose words and sentences to organize discourse. The interaction between language meta-functions is a problem deserved studying. From the perspective of textual meta-function, this paper tries to discuss the mechanisms of organizing Appraisal system as a texture, and construct a rather comprehensive analysis framework of the textual devices for evaluation meaning as a whole text. The framework built consists of three strata (contextual, discourse-semantic, and lexico-grammatical), two dimensions (micro and macro), and an intermediary variable (rhetorical strategies). At the contextual stratum, the generic structure of genre and mode of register, through rhetorical strategies, determine the distribution and combination patterns of evaluative meaning at the discourse-semantic stratum. In micro dimension, cohesion, information distribution pattern, and evaluative prosody, together with theme, new information and logical semantic relations in macro dimension, are combined to organize evaluation meaning at the discourse-semantic stratum. At the lexico-grammatical stratum, Appraisal meaning is thus embodied and realized by the evaluative lexical chains, thematic structures, new information structures, connectives and meta-discourse markers at the discourse-semantic level of a text. This framework reflects the interactions between the interpersonal meta-function and textual meta-function of Appraisal system and provides insights for the development of Appraisal Theory.
},
 year = {2024}
}

Copy | Download

TY  - JOUR
T1  - A Study of Appraisal System and Its Texture/Textuality Mechanisms

AU  - Mingyue Sun
Y1  - 2024/05/24
PY  - 2024
N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20241203.12
DO  - 10.11648/j.ijll.20241203.12
T2  - International Journal of Language and Linguistics
JF  - International Journal of Language and Linguistics
JO  - International Journal of Language and Linguistics
SP  - 111
EP  - 120
PB  - Science Publishing Group
SN  - 2330-0221
UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20241203.12
AB  - Language, as a social symbol, functions to express world experiences, construct social role relationships, and choose words and sentences to organize discourse. The interaction between language meta-functions is a problem deserved studying. From the perspective of textual meta-function, this paper tries to discuss the mechanisms of organizing Appraisal system as a texture, and construct a rather comprehensive analysis framework of the textual devices for evaluation meaning as a whole text. The framework built consists of three strata (contextual, discourse-semantic, and lexico-grammatical), two dimensions (micro and macro), and an intermediary variable (rhetorical strategies). At the contextual stratum, the generic structure of genre and mode of register, through rhetorical strategies, determine the distribution and combination patterns of evaluative meaning at the discourse-semantic stratum. In micro dimension, cohesion, information distribution pattern, and evaluative prosody, together with theme, new information and logical semantic relations in macro dimension, are combined to organize evaluation meaning at the discourse-semantic stratum. At the lexico-grammatical stratum, Appraisal meaning is thus embodied and realized by the evaluative lexical chains, thematic structures, new information structures, connectives and meta-discourse markers at the discourse-semantic level of a text. This framework reflects the interactions between the interpersonal meta-function and textual meta-function of Appraisal system and provides insights for the development of Appraisal Theory.

VL  - 12
IS  - 3
ER  -

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