Appraisal Analysis

Appraisal Analysis BAEBPC Fundamentals of Media Communication Week 8 Carol Yu

How are 'objectivity' and 'subjectivity' construed in media texts? Consider the set of meanings which relate to what are commonly termed "subjectivity" and "objectivity". - "hard" news is "factual", "objective" and "impersonal" news reporting - argumentative texts are necessarily "subjective", "evaluative" and "personalised". Commonsense notions of 'subjectivity' and 'objectivity' "objectivity' implies that there is only one valid way of looking at and talking about the world. An alternative view of reality adopts a more "relativist" position, in which certain people are recognised as having their own way of observing and describing reality.

Any interpretation of reality is then seen as a "social construct", because observation is constrained or determined by cultural preconceptions and traditions. The observer uses a socially determined way of talking about the world, rather than simply or directly reflecting or replicating reality. This view of perception and communication makes the notions of "objectivity", "factuality" and "impartiality" problematic. The way events are observed, interpreted and reported will always be conditioned by the social background and ideological perspective of journalists, editors and management. "factual" report will be the product of numerous value judgements.

These will have determined, for example, that this event, rather than some other, - why it was deserved to be covered, - how prominently it was to be featured, - the way in which the event was to be described, - which part of the event received primary focus, - which experts, eye witnesses or participants were called upon for comment, - which viewpoints were regarded as authoritative, - and so on. As in the letter to the editor from the foreign student, a subjective text, the author's value judgements are explicitly revealed in the language. Compare this with a strictly "objective" text is constructed in such a way that there is no explicit linguistic evidence of the author's value judgements.

Objectivity All value judgements are backgrounded or "naturalised" in the sense that the way the event is construed is presented as the only way of talking about it. In this context, therefore, the "impartiality" or the "factuality" of a text are not measures of the degree to which it accurately reflects reality as human subjects we use language to construct rather than reflect reality the success of the text in presenting its underlying set of value judgements and ideologically informed responses as "natural" and "normal", as fact rather than opinion, as knowledge rather than belief.

"Objectivity" is an effect created through language (a "rhetorical" effect) rather than a question of being "true to nature". In journalism the use of the first person pronoun 'I' by a text's author is always associated with "subjectivity", with a weakening of the text's status as "hard news". Yet the use of certain words and phrases which intensify the emotional impact of a description - the use, for example, of "plummeted" and "feverish" in descriptions such as "the value of the Australian dollar plummeted yesterday in feverish late-afternoon trading" - are felt to be entirely "objective".

We can summarise these resources for making language subjective as follows. The resources here are ordered in terms of increasing "subjective" impact: These resources may occur (or "be realised") in different grammatical forms whose "truth value" (if not their meaning) remains similar. For example "It is vital, not just in fairness to Mr Pickering, that the strength of his allegations be fully tested", may be transformed into "Pickering's allegations should be (or must be) fully tested." Not all these resources play an equally important role in making "subjective" meanings. In "hard news" for example, "..more than 100,000 Victorians spilled into the streets.." is accepted as describing an event that occurred in the "real world", and therefore expressions of Measure are not generally seen as compromising "objectivity".

For many journalists, the "hard news", "factual" report is a benchmark, a textual base level which may be transformed into "commentary" or "opinion" by the addition of subjective elements.

So we are asking: Is the "voice" constructed: - as personal or impersonal, as "objective" or "subjective", - as having knowledge only of material events that occur in the real world, as having knowledge of the inner world of human emotions and thought processes as well? Does the author simply "observe" or does he or she appraise and evaluate? What do you think?

Modelling appraisal resources • ‘…is concerned with the interpersonal in language, with the subjective presence of writers/speakers in texts as they adopt stances towards both the material they present and those with whom they communicate. It is concerned with how writers/speakers approve and disapprove, enthuse and abhor, applaud and criticise, and with how they position their readers/listeners to do likewise. It is concerned with the construction by texts of communities of shared feelings and values, and with the linguistic mechanisms for the sharing of emotions, tastes and normative assessments. (Martin & White 2005:1)

Figure 1: Appraisal systems – an overview monogloss projection… engagement modality… heterogloss concession… negation… if… then.. affect… appraisal attitude judgement… appreciation… raise force… graduation lower focus… sharpen soften (Martin & Rose 2003)

Attitudinal positioning We are concerned with which might be thought of as praising and blaming, with meanings by which writers/speakers indicate either a positive or negative assessment of people, places, things, happenings and state of affairs. Attitude - is concerned with our feelings, including emotional reactions, judgements of behaviour and evaluation of things.

Attitude Affect (emotion) Judgement (character/behaviour) Appreciation (value things) Martin & White 2005. The Language of evaluation: Appraisal In English. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

The three sub-types of Attitude: Affect, Judgement and Appreciation Affect (emotion): evaluation by means of the writer/speaker indicating how they are emotionally disposed to the person, thing, happening or state of affairs. For example, `I love jazz'; `This new proposal by the government terrifies me'. Judgement (ethics): normative assessments of human behaviour typically making reference to rules or conventions of behaviour . For example, `He corruptly agreed to accept money from those bidding for the contract'; `Our new classmate seems rather cool'. Appreciation (aesthetics): assessments of the form, appearance, composition, impact, significance etc of human artefacts, natural objects as well as human individuals (but not of human behaviour) by reference to aesthetics and other systems of social value. ‘Inception is a great movie’

Affect is to do with emotion, peoples feelings Affect can be positive (happy/confident/interested) or negative (unhappy/anxious/bored). There are four semantic areas of emotion – inclination/ disinclination (I love/hate that) happiness/ unhappiness (makes me cry/laugh) satisfaction/ dissatisfaction (I am content/bored) security/insecurity (I am confident/ afraid)

What resources can you use to code Affect? Through adjective of emotion, (happy/sad; worried/confident) e.g. he is proud of his achievements Through verbs of emotion, e.g. he laughed; the class bores me; your offer pleases me; he shook uncontrollably Through adverbs (happily/sadly) e.g. Sadly the government has decided to abandon its commitment to the comprehensive school system through nominalisation (the turning of verbs and adjectives into nouns) joy/despair, confidence/insecurity ( His fear was obvious to all, I was overcome with joy) use of metaphor, e.g. He was feeling on top of the world

Inscribed Attitude and token of Attitude: Expressed explicitly: That is if we are happy, we can say ‘I am happy’. = explicit about the Affect. expressed implicitly: by saying something that suggests the emotion E.g. see above ‘he was feeling on top of the world’ Prosody - the spreading of values across a phase of text: We can set up a particular Attitude by coding it strongly in one part of the text. value - tends to spread across subsequent text to add value to other words, that we might not otherwise see as having that value. spreading pattern called: Prosody or prosodic patterning

Example of Types of Prosody: Saturating prosody - Bloody Hell man, who the hell told you I liked doing this kind of shit. Intensifying prosody It is a dirty rotten stinking lousy bloody low filthy two-faced lie. Dominating prosody - Are you absolutely sure that Miss Foley couldn’t have replaced the keys in the box without your seeing her?

Underline the Affect in the following examples: “Children’s poverty is most serious in the district. We want to broaden the children’s circle, help them learn concern for society and gain contact with the community so they don’t feel isolated” (SCMP, 21 Oct 06:C1). Some private “tutorial heavenly kings” have acquired a celebrity status far more elevated than mere local film celebrities… Mr Ko is not shy about the HK$20 million he made by selling to joined houses for more than HK$50 million earlier this year, while Mr Li is distinguished if not by his command of English, then at least by his fashion sense… (SCMP, 21 Oct 06:C2)

Judgement of character/ behaviour Under JUDGEMENT, we're concerned with language which criticises or praises, which condemns or applauds the behaviour - the actions, deeds, sayings, beliefs, motivations etc - of human individuals and groups. There are two areas of judgement: Social esteem: good and bad in terms of someone’s capacity (ability: she is clever/ silly) tenacity (resolve: she is brave/coward) normality (she is lucky/ strange) Social sanction: good and bad in terms of ‘truth’, e.g. someone behaving dishonestly or ‘ethics’, e.g. someone behaving immorally. As with Affect, expressed directly - inscribed or expressed indirectly token of Judgement.

Underline the Judgement in the following examples: Three men – Liu Siu-Kei, Chow Chi-yung and Lee Chi on – were found guilty of one count of conspiracy to defraud and were each jailed for four years (SCMP, 21 Oct 06:C3). Deputy Judge Dufton said it was a well-planned fraud that demonstrated persistent dishonesty and required deterrent sentences (SCMP, 21 Oct 06:C3). Personal attacks are unknown inside the august Legco chamber, but some lawmakers, have been hitting below the belt, or at least around the waist (SCMP, 21 Oct 06:C2).

It is vital to stress JUDGEMENT, as a system of attitudinal positioning, is, by definition, shaped by the particular cultural and ideological situation in which it operates. The way people make Judgements about morality, legality, capacity, normality etc will always be determined by the culture in which they live and by their own individual experiences, expectations, assumptions and beliefs. So there's always the possibility that the same event will receive different JUDGEMENTS, according to the ideological position of the person making those JUDGEMENTS. (Are strikes necessary, sometimes heroic bids by workers to protect their rights and their families' standard of living, or irresponsible, bloody-minded attempts by workers to get more than they deserve? Was the Gulf War an entirely moral exercises in defending a weak nation (Kuwait) against the avarice of a tyrannical regime, or a cynical exercise in protecting US economic interests in the oil- rich Middle East?)

To summarise then, JUDGEMENT involves positive or negative assessments of human behaviour by reference to a system of social norms. Thus for an utterance to act to indicate a JUDGEMENT value it must, either directly or indirectly, reflect on the behaviour or performance of some human individual or grouping.

Appreciation (valuing things, places, events scenes, etc) APPRECIATION. As indicate previously, we categorise as APPRECIATION those evaluations which are concerned with positive and negative assessments of objects, artefacts1, processes and states of affairs rather than with human behaviour to express evaluations about things such as TV shows, films, books, as well as art and scenery, etc. values can be positive or negative. As with Affect and Judgement expressed directly - inscribed or expressed indirectly token of Judgement.

Underline the Appreciation in the following examples: Speaking avidly about how China should learn from mistakes in history – a balanced account not distorted by the authorities – Sun Yat-sen University Professor Yuan Wishi may sound like and idealist.But the controversial philosophy professor also knows how to stay clear of potholes on the path to free speech on the mainland. “We better not discuss this question, because this is a taboo… I would like to maintain like to maintain my right of speech on the mainland ... Some people criticise the Communist Party in overseas publications. That's much easier [than what I'm doing], but I would rather publish essays on the mainland,' Professor Yuan said when asked a sensitive question yesterday while in Hong Kong to promote a new book on Sun Yat-sen (SCMP, 17 Oct 06:C3).

areas of borderline differences in meaning between Appreciation and Judgement, e.g. evaluating the product of someone’s work- difficult to say when we talk about a performance as brilliant, are we Appreciating the produce or Judging the actor?

Appraisal systems – an overview monogloss projection… engagement heterogloss modality… concession… affect… appraisal attitude judgement… appreciation… raise force… graduation lower focus… sharpen soften (Martin & Rose 2003)

Graduation -Another major sub-system of meanings -Concerned with up-scaling and down-scaling -All attitudinal meanings (Affect, Judgement, Appreciation) are gradable i.e. do they construe greater or lesser degrees of positivity or negativity?

Graduation operates across two axes of scalability –that of grading according to intensity or amount (Force) and that of grading according to the preciseness by which category boundaries are drawn (Focus) • Force: grading up and down in terms of intensity e.g.: • extremely handsome • really handsome • quite handsome • fairly handsome • somewhat handsome • Focus: blurring or sharpening the focus of the semantic categorisations • via locutions such as true, real, genuine, kind of, sort of, effectively etc. • e.g. He is a true friend; We will be there at 5 o’clock-ish

Notes taken from Martin, J.R. 2004. Mourning: How We Get Aligned. In Discourse and Society. Vol 15(2–3): 321–344

TASK 1 Analyse the way in which solidarity and alignment are realised in the Mourning text in the first 2 paragraphs How is the text trying to align the reader to think about the terrible event of 9/11? What language resources are used to persuade the reader to align with the writer’s viewpoint?

TEXT: Mourning(Published on HK magazine, 21st September, 2001 -10 days after 9/11) 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 the 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”.

Analysing the meaning of a text First discuss the text as a whole and analyse both of its register variables (field, mode & tenor) as well as it’s context of culture (genre). Discuss these features of the text and justify your choices why? Focusing on interpersonal meaning: Read the text again this time focus on what’s emerging in the interpersonal choices in the text. Discuss some of the choices made in the text and why the editor has chosen the language? What kind of meaning is the writer trying to construct? How is the writer associating what is written with the audience? What kinds of emotions, feelings or attitudes does the image give rise to? Does the viewer feel a close personal contact or a more distanced one? Why?

Highlighting affect 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 the 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”.

Affect • Dealing with emotional reactions to the events to 9/11 • Then reactions to those reactions • Initially positioned to sympathize with their loss • This soon gives way to negative judgement

Through looking at affect we can see that a text ‘may reposition us as the text unfolds – for example from a rather universal communiality invoking our humanity (sorrow for another’s loss) to a much more specific alignment playing on our moral and political response to American rhetoric (castigation of their overreaction)” (Martin 2004:327) • Judgement and appreciation are not as dominant.

Highlighting judgment 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 the 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”.

Judgment • Sympathy wanes as disapproval swells • Shift signalled by concessive clause while that grief is deeply understood… • Affect inviting sympathy vs. judgement prescribing disapproval • Appraisal may reposition the reader as the text unfolds, e.g. sorrow for America’s loss to stating overreaction of Americans • Unlike affect and judgement, appreciation is not a dominant motif

Highlighting appreciation 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 the 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”.

Appreciation • Limited appreciation Packaging events as things and appreciating them = distancing effect This text forms more of ‘a community commenting observers than reacting participants’ (Martin, 2004: 328) from afar on what has happened – introducing local HK response to the 9/11 E.g. some unfortunate cases of backlash unfortunate = inappropriate, embarrassing, awkward, undesirable incidents

This text forms more of a community commenting from afar on what has happened – introducing local HK response to the 9/11 • E.g. some unfortunate cases of backlash unfortunate = inappropriate, embarrassing, awkward, undesirable incidents

Graduation The first half of the text is much louder than the second half, drawing on a range of resources to amply the effect of affect and to some extent judgement. deeply understood overly sincere enough (to make…) diametrically opposed precious little terrible– meaning very serious, or very unpleasant

Triplets also add to the amplification: horror, worry, anger overly-sincere, maudlin, righteous-indignation appalled, perplexed and repulsed Graduation using measures also add to the amplification of meaning both, some, 89 percent, all, every, all, one, permanently, from now until doomsday, any time soon

Prosody The purpose of this use of graduation is to add strength and persuasiveness in the first half of the editorial. The volume is turned up loud – to encourage empathy and alignment The second half of the editorial is much quieter. Rather than being saturated with attitude, the key features the writer wants to emphasise are placed in textually dominant positions, where they preview and review incidents of discrimination (some unfortunate cases, a Keystone Cops episode and such is the logic of xenophobia) Prosodically speaking ‘the editorial seems to be suggesting that events in America have been deeply moving and utterly appalling, the regional response has been humorously remiss’ (Martin, 2004: 330)

Engagement: Modality Modality is used throughout both subjective and objective: explicit subjective we suppose implicit subjective might, would implicit objective perhaps, often explicit objective little chance, no hope modalized clause if Modality – develops the heteroglossia of a text by implicitly acknowledging alternative voices. Writers modalize not because they are unsure of what they are saying but to acknowledge alternative points of view (see Martin and White, 2005)

Projection Projection is used throughout the editorial The Macau police found themselves in a Keystone Cops episode, arresting and detaining seven “seven suspected Pakistani terrorists”. 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. Meanwhile (and we’re not making this up), two Indian national on a flight from Singapore to Hong Kong were detained at Changi Airport an American passenger said he heard one of the men calling himself a “Bosnian terrorist” Similarly, there have already been reports of taxis putting up “out of service” signs

Appraisal Analysis