corpus-based analyses of english evaluative adjectives xiao jun, yang ( 杨晓军） /max...

Corpus-Based Analyses of English Evaluative Adjectives

XIAO JUN, YANG (杨晓军） /Max (e-mail:[email protected])浙江外国语学院英文学院

Zhejiang International Studies University (www.zisu.edu.cn)

1Yang Xiao Jun's presentation in ISFC39

Outline

• 1. Definition and functions of evaluation• 2. Classifications of evaluative devices• 3. Definition and Classification of evaluative adjectives• 4. Achievements of Previous studies on evaluative adjectives• 5. Our corpus findings• 6. Conclusion


1.1 Definition of Evaluation

• “Evaluation is the broad cover term for the expression of the speaker or writer’s (better to add ‘the translator’s or to use “the language user’s”) attitude or stance towards, viewpoint on, or feelings about the entities or propositions that he or she is talking about. ”

(Hunston & Thompson 2005: 5)


1.2 Functions of Evaluation

• It reflects the speaker’s opinion and the system of values of the community to which s/he belongs.

• It construes relations between speaker and audience.• It organizes discourse. • (Thompson & Hunston, 2003: 6)


2. Classifications of Evaluative Devices• 1) four types of evaluative devices:• Phonological devices;• Lexical devices: nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs;• Grammatical devices• Textual devices.• 2. Biber (2004) distinguished three major structural types

of stance marking:• modal verbs, stance adverbials, and complement clause

constructions.5Yang Xiao Jun's presentation in ISFC39

3.1 Definition of Evaluative Adjectives

• An evaluative adjective is an adjective that has an inscribed or invoked evaluative meaning. (my definition)

• It is better to combine semantic, pragmatic and functional criteria to define the notion of evaluative adjectives , which refer to those adjectival instances combining “attitudinal epithets” and subjective adjectives (including emotional and non-axiological and axiological evaluative instances).


3.2 Adjectival Evaluative Act vsEvaluated Entity• An “adjectival evaluative act” is an instance of an entity

evaluated by an evaluative adjective so as to highlight that what is “done” is an act of evaluation, whereas the thing that is evaluated by an evaluative adjective in an adjectival evaluative act is an “evaluated entity”.

• In the following examples of adjectival evaluative acts, evaluated entities will be underlined and evaluative adjectives italicized:

• (1) The writer has a tendency to state truisms, make unsupported assertions and unwarranted prescriptions.

• (2) The introduction is rather disjointed and vague…


3.3 Classification of Evaluative Adjectives (1)

• Swales and Burke’s (2003) seven categories: adjectives of acuity, aesthetic appeal, assessment, deviance,

relevance, size, and strength.• Marzá’s (2011) five main categories: aesthetic appeal, general appraisal, deviance,

emotional/sensory appeal (not aesthetic) and size/strength-related adjectives.


3.3 Classification of Evaluative Adjectives (2)• Aesthetic appeal adjectives would include instances based on visual

appeal, appearance, image and beauty. • General appraisal adjectives evaluate things more generally from a

personal, overall perspective, always insisting on extraordinariness and excellence in a kind of miscellaneous general category.

• Deviance adjectives denote how closely related something is to what one would expect it to be.

• Emotional/sensory appeal adjectives include adjectives appealing to the reader’s emotions and senses.

• Size/strength-related adjectives are the ones that subjectively qualify acts and entities in terms of intensity and scope (Marzá, 2011) .


3.3 Classification of Evaluative Adjectives (3)• Hewings’ classification of Adjectives (2004): • Qualitative adjectives: to identify the quality of an

entity; • Classifying adjectives: to identify the class to which an

entity belongs. Evaluative adjectives, which denote judgement of an entity, are a subclass of qualitative adjectives, can be further divided into 8 categories:

• interest, suitability, comprehensibility, accuracy, importance, sufficiency, praiseworthiness, and perspectiveness.


3.3 Classification of evaluative adjectives (4)

• (Ruth) divided relative adjectives into dimensional and evaluative adjectives have different gradability.

• Dimensional adjectives are to be interpreted according to external properties of the nominal and a metric scale of comparison.

• Evaluative adjectives are subjective and unmeasurable, referring to internal and typical properties, and must be interpreted according to an unpredictable and subjective scale of measure related to its class of comparison.



• These features make up what is to be known to reconstruct their quality parameter. The properties which evaluative adjectives denote are considered to be prototypical, with no

inherent scales or norms for interpreting their dimensions. Their interpretation must be done relative to an ideal for the class of comparison. Recoverability of the class of comparison therefore plays a crucial role in the interpretation of evaluative adjectives. Dimensional adjectives denote attributes with physical properties. Evaluative adjectives denote attributes without physical measures, and are the expression of subjective assessments, and therefore they cannot have any established mean value or standard.



• I classify evaluative adjectives into three kinds:• 1) pure evaluative adjectives (all meanings of these adjectives

are evaluative: good, bad,...);• 2) non-pure evaluative adjectives (not all meanings of these

adjectives are evaluative: common, broad,...);• 3) potential evaluative adjectives (these adjectives can be

invoked evaluative meaning: American, major...);

Yang Xiao Jun's presentation in ISFC39 13

3.4 The role of Evaluative Adjectives (1)

• While evaluation can be achieved by a wide variety of linguistic means, a very important and frequent way of evaluating is through the use of evaluative adjectives.

• Evaluative adjectives, being one of the most prototypical and canonical exponents of evaluation, are especially significant in certain types of genres(Swales and Burke 2003: 2).


3.4 The role of Evaluative adjectives (2)

• Evaluative adjectives are ideology markers but, in Shaw’s words (2006: 8), “when one reads an interested text one knows that the writer is an advocate for a case, not a judge. Hence, one will not be impressed by pure statements of quality. In fact, the way in which interested texts are read is the key to understanding their evaluation systems”.


3.4 The role of Evaluative adjectives (3)

• Evaluative adjectives typically characterize a person's behavior or attitude in terms of the speaker’s subjective judgment". Their class is quite large and includes, for example, adjectives such as rude, mean, clever, smart, nice, kind, silly, imprudent, generous, courteous, cruel, mad, mischievous, considerate, humane, pretentious, modest, charming, masochistic, intelligent, stupid, dumb, noble, cunning, far-sighted, skillful, selfish, crazy, foolish (total: 25)(Landau, 2006).


4. Achievements of Previous studies on evaluative adjectives (1)• According to Barbieri (2008: 104), most common

evaluative adjectives in conversations are: able, sure, nice, true, wrong, bad, fine, funny, good, difficult, different, afraid, dead, happy, full, glad, big, little, long, best, same, whole, right, hard (total:24).

• According to Precht (2000: 74), examples of certainty/ doubt adjectives with high frequencies include: absolute, alleged, ambiguous, apparent, certain, clear, definite, evident, expected, impossible, obvious, possible (total:12).


4. Achievements of Previous studies on evaluative adjectives (2)• Tutin ‘s study of evaluative adjectives in relation to scientific nouns in

French linguistics and economics shows that:• 1) purely axiological adjectives are not very common. Authors prefer

more subtle and less subjective evaluative devices like adjectives pertaining to time, novelty, importance.

• 2) recurrent associations are often cross-disciplinary and exhibit strong selectional restrictions between nouns and evaluative adjectives. Evaluative adjectives are more numerous in economics than in linguistics unexpectedly.

• 3)The use of evaluative adjectives seems closely linked to rhetorical strategies.


4. Achievements of Previous studies on evaluative adjectives (3)• Biber (2004) states: English has a rich supply of grammatical devices

used to express “stance”, epistemic or attitudinal comments on propositional information.

• Speakers and writers are simply more willing to express stance in recent periods than in earlier historical periods. It would be interesting to correlate these developments with the attitudes expressed in style guides, editorial policies, and other overt discussions of proper speech and writing.

• There seems to be an increasing register diversification in the marking of stance. First, the popular registers (drama and personal letters) are clearly leading the way in the increased use of stance markers.


4. Achievements of Previous studies on evaluative adjectives (4)• News reportage uses these stance devices to a lesser extent, while

medical prose infrequently uses most of these devices. There is evidence that particular devices are becoming increasingly favored in particular registers.

• There is an increasing semantic specialization. In particular, epistemic stance seems to have been the primary focus of the increased use over these periods, while the expression of affect and attitudinal stance has remained more constant.

• It’s important to study stance as a complex system: consisting of several interacting grammatical and semantic types, and functioning in register-specific ways.


4. Achievements of Previous studies on evaluative adjectives (5)• A. That clauses controlled by an adjective (e.g., it is strange that he

went there)• – attitudinal adjectives (e.g., good, crazy, brave: total: 107)• – likelihood adjectives (doubtful, likely, possible: total: 24)• B. To-clauses controlled by an adjective• -evaluative adjectives (e.g., convenient, smart, good: total: 48)• – ease/difficulty adjectives (difficult, easier, easy: total: 8)• – personal affect adjectives (afraid, amazed, angry: total: 19)• -ability/willingness adjectives (able, anxious, careful: total: 29)• – certainty adjectives (apt, certain, likely: total: 9)


4. Achievements of Previous studies on evaluative adjectives (6)• Precht (2003) states that the stance moods were related to

larger cultural norms for the expression of evidentiality and affect and stance use is socialized, and different dialects could end up using different stance markers to express the same stance mood.


5. Our Corpus Findings (1)

• Distribution of evaluative adjectives of negative expressions in three genres in BROWN displays a rather obvious stylistic variation. Evaluative adjectives in news (the top five: good, bad, worried, fit, different) are mainly for judgment, in fiction (the top five: sure, afraid, angry, wrong, surprised) for affect, in academic texts (the top five: possible, able, enough, clear, surprising) for judgment.

• Some evaluative adjectives in repetitive expressions with high frequencies : happy, dangerous, free, great, open, safe, able, bad, best, better, common, different, essential, fair, friendly, good, important, necessary, new, old, possible, reasonable, ready, right, wrong, strong, weak, full, little, and vital .


5. Our Corpus Findings (2)Evaluative collocations: adj. + noun • Top evaluative adjectives co-occur with evaluative nouns in

BNC (See Table 5.9 )• Fact: sad, mere, plain, curious, undeniable• Problem: serious, big, biggest, difficult• Thought: careful, serious, conscious, positive, rational, mere• Statement: serious, separate, unsuccessful, vain, deliberate,

conscious, successful, genuine,


Evaluative collocations: adj. + noun

• question: important, interesting, difficult, big;• Success: great, outstanding, reproductive, huge, considerable;• Task: daunting, impossible, important, difficult.• The frequency of evaluative adjectives co-occurrence with

evaluative nouns rank first in all types of adjectives.


6. Conclusion (1)

• (1) Different evaluative adjectives have different evaluative functions.

• (2) The same adjective may have a different evaluative meaning in a different context.

• E.g• 1) I’m happy to…(affect)• 2) You’re happy to…(judgment)• 3) He’s happy to…(appreciation)


6. Conclusion (2)

• (3) There are some variations in the usage of the frequency of some evaluative adjectives in different genres, and across different corpora.

• (4) There’re more evaluative devices in translated Chinese texts than original Chinese ones by Chinese translators.

• (5) There’re more evaluative devices in translated English texts than original English ones by Chinese translators.


An Example

• A. It’s a great pity that Mary has had a sad marriage.• B. Why did you say so?• A. Because she married a bad man.• A. 很遗憾，玛丽的婚姻很不幸。• B. 你为什么这么说呀？• A. 因为她嫁错了人。


A local grammar of evaluation

• Evaluative patterns with adjectives

Pattern 1: Evaluative category Thing evaluated

it It It

link verb was seemed

adjective group certain important

finite or non-finite clause that he was much to blame. to trust her judgement.

Bibliography （ 1 ）

• Bednarek, M (2006) Evaluation in Media Discourse. Analysis of a Newspaper Corpus. London/New York: Continuum.

• Bednarek, M (2007) Local Grammar and Register Variation: Explorations in Broadsheet and Tabloid Newspaper Discourse, ELR Journal, 1 (1).

• Bednarek, M (2008) Emotion Talk across Corpora. Palgrave Macmillan.

• Biber, D. (2004) Historical patterns for the grammatical marking of stance: A cross-register comparison. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 5:1:107–136.


Bibliography （ 2）

• Hunston, S. & Sinclair, J. (2000) A local grammar of evaluation. in Hunston, S. and Thompson, G. (eds) Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse. Oxford: OUP: 74-101.

• Hunston, S. & Thompson, G. (eds) (2000) Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse. Oxford: OUP.

• Hyland, K. & Tse, P. (2005) Evaluative ‘that’ constructions. Signalling stance in research abstracts. Functions of Language 12(1): 39-63.



• Landau, I.(2006) Ways of Being Rude. Ben Gurion University, Israel, July.

• Martin, J R; White, P R R (2005) The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. London/New York: Palgrave/Macmillan.

• Marzá,N.E.(2011) A Comprehensive Corpus-based Study of the use of Evaluative Adjectives in Promotional Hotel Websites. Odisea, No 12: 97-123.

• Precht, K (2003) Stance moods in spoken English: evidentiality and affect in British and American conversation. Text 23: 239-257.



• Swales, J. M. and Burke, A.(2003) “‘It’s really fascinating work’: Differences in evaluative adjectives across academic registers”. Corpus Analysis: Language Structure and Language Use. Eds. P. Leistyna and C. F. Meyer. Amsterdam: Rodopi,1-18.

• Tucker, G. H. 1997 . “A functional lexicogrammar of adjectives”. Functions of Language 42 , 215-50.

• ---. 1998 . The Lexicogrammar of Adjectives: A Systemic Functional Approach To Lexis. Continuum Publishing Company.



• Tutin, A. Evaluative adjectives in academic writing in the humanities and social sciences (Ms).

• 王振华 . 评价系统及其运作—系统功能语言学的新发展 . 外国语 , 2001(6): 14-20.

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