First steps with semantic prosody using appraisal analysis and the

UAM corpus tool

Xu Xiaoyu 许肖瑜 xux13@coventry.ac.uk Supervisor: Hilary Nesi Department of English and Language Coventry University

CONTENT

Brief introduction of my research topic and aim

Brief introduction of appraisal and the part which is relevant to semantic prosody.

Brief introduction of UAM Corpustool

Issues arose in identifying attitudinal markers

Future: corpus-attested categories?

Evaluation of language

Thompson & Hunston, 2000 (1) Expressing the speaker’s or writer’s opinion or

attitude in ways that reflect the value system of the person as well as the community he is affiliated with.

(2) Developing, construing and adjusting interpersonal relations, namely, relations between interlocutors or between the writer and the reader.

(3) Structuring or organizing the discourse.

Academic discourse

Traditional expectation of academic writings as

objective and factive

Underlying rhetorical purpose as persuasive

Contradiction

English RAs written by Chinese

Primary purpose: to characterize the differences between the evaluations in the research articles written in the medium of English by British and Chinese authors.

Corpus:

Chinese British

Applied 20 20

Linguistics 20 20

Appraisal Theory

Appraisal theory is concerned with “how writers/speakers approve and disapprove, enthuse and abhor, applaud and criticize, and with how they position their readers/listeners to do likewise” (Martin & White, 2005: 1)

Appraisal as an analytic tool

Martin & White (2005)

• Attitude

feelings, judgments of behavior and evaluation of things

• Engagement

sourcing attitudes and space for alternative voices

• Graduation

grading phenomena whereby feelings are amplified and categories blurred

Semantic prosody

The aura of meaning surrounding a word or phrase. (Louw, 1993: 157) Contextual Prosodic Theory A form of meaning which is established through the proximity of a consistent series of collocates, often characterisable as positive or negative, and whose primary function is the expression of the attitude of the speaker or writer towards some pragmatic situation. (Louw, 2000: 56)

Semantic prosody in Appraisal

• Attitude feelings, judgments of behavior and evaluation of

things Semantic prosody: negative or positive attitude? • More attitude markers in attribution or averal? Chinese use more attitude but less expansion in averal • Word class of attitudinal markers. Chinese use more adj, adv • Any inappropriate use? E.g., too polarized and too

strongly graded in Chinese writing • More negative evaluations in averal or attribution?

UAM Corpustool (Mick O’Donnell, 2011)

What can it do? • Design your own marking scheme.

• It allows multiple-layer annotation by assigning feature to the document as a whole, segments within the text or lexis

• Production of statistical reports

• Visualization of the tagged corpus

Issues arose when identifying attitudinal markers

Situations

1. The SP of the surroundings = the common SP of the word or phrase

2. The SP of the surroundings the SP of the word or phrase

3. The SP of the surroundings the common SP of the word or phrase

4. The SP of the surroundings ≠ the common SP of the word or phrase

1. The SP of the surroundings = the common SP of the word or phrase

2. The SP of the surroudings the SP of the word or phrase

Louw’s idea of delexicalization: Words can gradually lose their full lexical meaning, and become available for use in contexts where some of that full meaning would be inappropriate; this is the so-called figurative extension. (Sinclair, 2004:198) Louw’s idea of relexicalization: It comes about when a delexicalized word finds itself in the vicinity of collocate which, purposefully or inadvertently, brings to mind the delexicalized word’s literal meaning. (Milojkovic, 2011:50)

3. The SP of the surroudings the common SP of the word or phrase

4. The SP of the surroundings ≠ the common SP of the word or phrase

Louw’s fractured prosody (1993) – discrepancy between the writer’s use and the context of situation Milojkovic’s prosodic clash (2011) – discrepancy between the writer’s use and general usage

An indication of irony, insincerity, or collocational mismatch?

5. Knowledge of the genre the SP of the word or phrase

6. Up to the reader?

Positive: where there is a controversy, there is a point to do the current research Negative: dismiss the previous research

7. Attitudinal meaning in participants?

Is the participant open up to discussion? Why did the writer choose "command" rather than "use"? Do different choices affect the evaluation of anything in the sentence?

Future: corpus-attested categories?

Semantic prosody: yes? Evaluation of language in general: not yet?

Future: corpus-attested categories?

We only have a very vague awareness of evaluative meanings in the texts we read and write; we have even greater difficulty in describing which linguistic means are employed to indicate our evaluations (Hoey, 2000). Evaluation in discourse is an elusive concept – it’s difficult to produce a thorough analysis of all evaluation-related phenomena.

Future: corpus-attested categories?

Most of the annotation decisions could only be made by a human researcher, as the process depended to a large extent on understanding of the discourse community, genre, and purpose of the writer.

Questions?