Appunti di Linguistica inglese 2 (secondo anno), 2023/2024

EXPRESSING JUDGEMENT

Classifiers (e.g. proper, fair)

Things (e.g. integrity, bigotry, racism, terrorism)

Processes (e.g. look after)

Circumstances (e.g. rightly, wrongly, fairly)

Example AFFECT and JUDGEMENT:

I am disappointed [AFFECT] and ashamed [AFFECT] that two of our most admired and respected [JUDGEMENT] sportsmen could behave in such a manner. To play for your country is an honour and a privilege, not a right. Those who are chosen to represent Australia should not only be talented [JUDGEMENT] but they should be above reproach [JUDGEMENT]. Sport is supposed to teach honour, fair play, teamwork, leadership and social skills. It is not supposed to "create" or support greed and egos. Gambling is not what we want our children to be learning from their heroes and mentors. [JUDGEMENT]

Appreciation

the system of evaluation of products and processes

it encompasses values which fall under the general heading of aesthetics,

as well as a non-aesthetic category

1. social valuation (which includes meanings such as significant and harmful) while JUDGEMENT evaluates human behaviours,
2. APPRECIATION evaluates natural objects, manufactured objects, texts as well as more abstract constructs such as plans and policies,
3. humans may also be evaluated by means of APPRECIATION, rather than JUDGEMENT, when viewed more as entities than as participants,
4. with APPRECIATION we provide evaluation of things and natural phenomena: what such things are worth, i.e. how we value them,
5. APPRECIATION can be divided into the following values:
1. reaction to things (do things catch our attention?)
2. aesthetic impact composition of things (i.e. balance and complexity)
3. compositional value of things (i.e. how innovative, timely, authentic, etc.)
4. valuation
6. like both AFFECT and JUDGEMENT, values of APPRECIATION have either positive or negative status
7. (*) these sub-categories are not tested in the quiz
8. EXPLICIT (or INSCRIBED) APPRAISAL vs

IMPLICIT (or EVOKED) APPRAISAL

Examples:

• My classmates helped me to revise for my exams
• My classmates generously helped me to revise for my exams

Explicit (inscribed) appraisal needs the appraiser and appraisee to be expressed overtly and/or appraisal to be recovered in the text. However, propositions as a whole can have an implicit (evoked) emotional/evaluative impact without an explicit appraiser or appraisee, or even without an explicit marker of appraisal. In this case, the context of culture is of key importance to understand what kind of evaluation has been made.

There are instances of overlapping between JUDGEMENT and APPRECIATION, e.g.: "These hotels were excellent" = on the surface, "excellent" refers to "hotels" as things (APPRECIATION), but what implicitly makes hotels excellent is people's behaviour, their hard work (JUDGEMENT). This is an example of inscribed (explicit) positive APPRECIATION-Quality and also implicit.

+ive JUDGEMENT socialesteem + capacity + tenacity
Graduation - Forcewithin GRADUATION, we are concerned with values which scale other meanings
GRADUATION is connected to evaluations = evaluations are often a matter of degree, this means that they can be gradable.
the most common type of GRADUATION is GRADUATION – FORCE it consists of a set of resources used for the strengthening or weakening of:
feelings
people's behaviour
worth of things
AFFECT, JUDGEMENT and APPRECIATION are all gradable resources we can grade them up or down:
Extremely intelligent
Really intelligent
Quite intelligent
Fairly intelligent
Somewhat intelligent
Attitudinal lexis She is very generous AMPLIFICATION →
It is merely sufficient MINIMIZATION →
examples:
The essay was good very good, excellent
My new cardigan is gorgeous beautiful, nice
TRANSITIVITY
Processes * to prepare for the quiz you have to know all the main types of processes and the

sub-types enclosed in the blue square

Checklist for processes

Transitivity is concerned with the semantic structure of clauses and refers to who does what to whom, and in what kind of circumstances. An analysis of Transitivity concerns actions in relation to participants.

A Transitivity analysis aims at analysing the choice of types of Processes and participants involved. Certain process types are better used in certain text types. When you write a procedural and/or instructional text, use whenever possible MATERIAL and RELATIONAL processes.

Example:

• Don't touch or pull at it especially in public
• Don't borrow one from your mate or lend yours to them
• Make sure it is nice and tight but comfortable
• Make sure it is the right way round
• If it is stained or dirty, throw it in the bin
• If it is damp and mouldy, change it
• Don't go commando!

When writing an academic essay, the most frequently used processes are: RELATIONAL processes to represent knowledge; MENTAL cognitive processes.

Processes to represent thoughts; VERBAL processes to introduce locutions/ to represent dialogic actions and dialectic; MATERIAL processes representing actions leading to the construction of knowledge example:

○ From long before World War Two until the early◆ 1970s, the main tradition of comparative literature studies in Europe and the United States was heavily dominated by a style of scholarship that has now almost disappeared

What partly animated my study of Orientalism was◆ my critique of the way in which the alleged universalism of fields such as the classics was Eurocentric in the extreme

Rushdie noted that the nostalgia…◆

Participants participants are not meaningless grammatical labels that you have to memorize on→➔ the contrary, as with Processes, the choice of participants is meaningful because participants are linguistic realizations of social entities

The cline of dynamism or a cline of power

Note: being an Actor is not sufficient to define the degree of dynamism, and

The social role of a participant is focused on in this text, particularly in relation to the use of -er and -ed roles. Here are some examples:

i. Israeli attack kills 10 Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli forces have killed at least ten Palestinians, most of them children, after firing on a crowd of demonstrators in Gaza Strip today. In this example, the author of the article portrays the Israeli army as having the active -er role, while the Palestinians are depicted in the passive -ed role. The Israeli forces are portrayed as powerful and aggressive, acting against weak and passive Palestinian victims.

ii. Rafah incident: Today's incident in Rafah is a very grave incident and the Israeli Foreign Office expresses deep sorrow over the loss of civilian lives. In this example, the author of the article uses two types of processes: a relational-attributive process and a verbal process. The text does not construct a narrative, but rather provides a description. The -er role in the verbal process is taken on by the Israeli Foreign Office, while the Palestinians do not feature in this particular example.

either -er or -ed roles

The cline of dynamism

Verbal Group Complex - Causative

CAUSATIVES introduce a new participant that is relevant to understand power-relations when the verbal group is made up by the verb that expresses the event (= the Process) preceded by another verb whose function is to modify the Process we have a VERBAL GROUP COMPLEX examples:

Verbal Group Complexes as Causatives

The VGC has an explicit causative structure expressed by the verb MAKE, or its variants it introduces an additional Participant in the Transitivity structure: this is called INITIATOR, s/he/it is the Participant who brings about the action concretely performed by another Participant

CAUSATIVE WITH MATERIAL PROCESS

here there are two active Participants this is an example of causative construction in which a Participant called Initiator-Agent brings about the action performed by the Actor

CAUSATIVE WITH RELATIONAL ATTRIBUTIVE

PROCESSES

Causative constructions

can also be found with relational processes: in the case of attributive relational processes, the Initiator-Agent is called Attributor because it causes the Carrier to have a quality (= Attribute) ascribed to him/her/it. Causative with relational identifying processes: in the case of identifying relational processes, the Initiator-Agent is called Assigner and it gives an identity to somebody or something - and this becomes the Participant that is Identified. A lexical bank for causatives expressing different degrees of agency. The cline of dynamism or a cline of power. Lexical metaphor example: My lawyer is a shark = Identifying process My lawyer = a shark → Lexical metaphors exploit simultaneously similarity and difference with the correspondent literal expressions. The metaphorical expression has some elements of similarity with the literal expression, but also some elements of difference. It is thanks to this "clash" that we actually perceive its.‘metaphoricity’

My lawyer is a shark

• element of similarity : aggressive, ruthless
• element of difference : lawyer = human; shark = animal

Metaphors are a question of word choice: to express a meaning we have a choice between a more congruent and a more metaphorical wording. We should make this choice consciously because if we choose one instead of the other, the effect produced is different. Compare:

• My lawyer is a shark
• My lawyer is ruthless

Etymology of “Fall in love”

• fall (v. ) To fall in love is attested from 1520s

Meaning

• fall = pass suddenly and passively into a state of body or mind; fall into a trap; she fell ill; They fell out of favor; fall in love; fall asleep; fall prey to an imposter; fall into a strange way of thinking; she fell to pieces after she lost her job

Connect metaphor and culture: a very old lexical metaphor in the English language

Some common lexical metaphors in English:

• he has no direction in life; he is

lost; we are at the crossroads; she will certainly go places; don't let anyone stand in your way = LIFE IS A JOURNEY

I can't digest the entire book; those ideas are half-baked; that's food for thought; let me stew over that one; this is my bread and butter; a piece a cake = IDEAS ARE