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The evaluative function of cohesive devices in three political texts
... Previous studies (Cabrejas-Peñuelas & Díez-Prados, 2013, 2014Díez-Prados, 2016;Oktar, 2001) analyzing the lexicogrammar of political texts uncover a wide range of linguistic strategies used by politicians to legitimize their actions (e.g. political implicatures, rhetorical figures, lexical choice, among others). ...
The present study explores the interplay of evaluation and transitivity in an American and Spanish parliamentary debate by President Obama and PM Rajoy aiming at legitimizing their actions and at convincing candidates to vote for them in the upcoming elections. A further objective is to investigate whether the transitivity and appraisal analyses illustrate the politicians’ ideological positions. Within the general framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), we use the results obtained for Appraisal following Martin and White’s appraisal scheme [Cabrejas-Peñuelas, A. B. (2020). Metaphor, metonymy and evaluation as political devices in American and Spanish parliamentary political discourse. Ibérica, 40, 75–99] and add a study of the interplay with transitivity [Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2014). Halliday’s introduction to functional grammar. Routledge]. The results reveal that both politicians used transitivity differently: Obama used mental desiderative processes for expressing desires and showed the active role of ‘us’ to bring about positive changes. In contrast, Rajoy preferred relational, verbal and existential processes. These contribute to his particular picture of reality, which is ideological in nature. Also, the results show that evaluation and transitivity were used as an ideological tool for persuasion and legitimization of the politicians’ economic decisions.
... Considerable research has been conducted using Appraisal Theory to examine evaluation in different discourses. These include narrative discourse (Cortazzi & Jin, 2000;Goodwin, 1997;Gwyn, 2000;Macken-Horarik, 2003;Martin, 1996;Page, 2002Page, , 2003Painter, 2003), academic discourse (Chusna & Wahyudi, 2015;Hood, 2004Hood, , 2010Liu, 2010Liu, , 2013Mei & Allison, 2003;Pascual & Unger, 2010;Xinghua & Thompson, 2009), legal discourse (Bock, 2011;Miller, 2002), journalistic discourse (Arrese & Perucha, 2006;Hadidi & Mohammadbagheri-Parvin, 2015;Khoo, Nourbakhsh & Na, 2012;Pounds, 2010;White 1998White , 2004White , 2006White , 2009Wang, 2004;Zhang & Liu, 2015) and political discourse in which the focus has been mainly on interviews (Becker, 2011;Tilakaratna & Mahboob, 2013), speeches (Cabrejas-Penuelas & Diez-Prados, 2013;Miller, 2004b;Simon-Vandenbergen, 2008) and debates (Cabrejas-Penuelas & Diez-Prados, 2014;Miller, 2004aMiller, , 2007. As shown in the aforementioned literature, previous research has employed a genre-based approach to study evaluation using Appraisal Theory. ...
... The concept of cohesion that Halliday and Hasan (1976) Abstract nouns as metadiscursive shells in academic discourse reference); thus, exophoric reference is not cohesive. Although this is the approach adopted in previous studies (Díez Prados 2001, 2003Díez, Halbach & Rivas 2002;Díez Prados & Cabrejas Peñuelas 2012;Cabrejas Peñuelas & Díez Prados 2013), the present one does not constrain cohesion to the relations within the textual world, like other scholars do (Brown & Yule 1983;Christiansen 2011). Jiang and Hyland (2016: 5) believe that «in all cases the metadiscursive noun provides a link with additional information, whether inside or outside the text [which] helps writers move ideas along cohesively and to assist readers to gain a better comprehension of the connected information». ...
El discurs acadèmic es caracteritza per l’abundància de noms abstractes, com ara anàlisi, recerca, procés, concepte, aproximació o rol. Considerats mecanismes cohesius, atès que el seu significat discursiu es determina per referència al context en què apareixen, han rebut denominacions diverses en la bibliografia anglosaxona (anaphoric, signaling, carrier, shell o metadiscursive nouns). A partir de les propostes de Schmid (2000) i Jiang i Hyland (2016, 2017), aquest article explora la funció metadiscursiva d’aquests noms com a encapsuladors d’informacions complexes en un corpus de resums acadèmics elaborats per estudiants universitaris per als seus Treballs de Final de Grau. El treball aborda també el potencial retòric i persuasiu d’aquests noms abstractes en aquest gènere acadèmic. Els resultats palesen que els estudiants de nivell avançat d’anglès com a llengua estrangera utilitzen una àmplia gamma de substantius abstractes i segueixen patrons d’ús que s’assemblen als dels experts acadèmics (Jiang i Hyland 2017). Les diferents parts l’estructura textual semblen condicionar el tipus de nom emprat. En definitiva, tot i que els estudiants quasigraduats d’Estudis Anglesos mostren que coneixen les convencions del gènere, els resultats millorarien si, durant el desenvolupament del grau, s’incidís en l’elaboració de resums de treballs acadèmics (abstracts), sobretot pel que fa a l’organització de la informació.
... To do so, they have analysed oral (Grimes, 1975;Labov, 1972;Sinclair and Coulthard, 1975) and written (Hoey, 1983;Hunston and Thompson, 2000;Martin and White, 2005) discourses in an attempt to provide further insights integrating both perspectives into the evaluative uses of language. Current studies of evaluation have used appraisal theory in academic, journalistic, legal and political discourses (Cabrejas-Peñuelas and Díez-Prados, 2013;González Rodríguez, 2011;Hood, 2004;Martin, 2000Martin, , 2003Martin and White, 2005;Miller, 2004;White, 2002White, , 2003White and Verbosity Enterprises, 2005) to find out how evaluative items may change depending on genre, register or individual styles. ...
The present study explores the language of evaluation in a sub-genre of political discourse, pre-electoral debates, and its potential persuasive function for gaining voters via a contraposition of positive self-evaluation and negative evaluation of the other candidate. A further aim of this research is to check whether the candidate’s ideology has a bearing on the entities that get evaluated. After a brief examination of the characteristics of the sub-genre at hand, specifically in the Spanish context, we present the results of an evaluation analysis carried out in a corpus of 19,849 words, which is the extension of the most recent pre-electoral debate held in Spain between the candidates of the two main political parties. Taking into account Van Dijk’s CDA framework (2005) for parliamentary debates as global semantic strategies of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation, Martin and White’s (2005) method was adopted as an analytical tool. The results showed that, although each candidate had different preferences in the choice of evaluative devices, they both used them as a strategy to win electoral votes while deprecating the opposing party and, therefore, minimizing their opponents’ chances of winning the elections. On the other hand, and despite their opposing ideology, they both seem to defend those policies that are more widely accepted in order not to risk losing voters: public services and egalitarian social policies.
Keywords: political discourse, political rhetoric, persuasion, evaluation, Critical Discourse Analysis, pre-electoral debates.
... To do so, they have analysed oral (Grimes, 1975; Labov, 1972; Sinclair and Coulthard, 1975) and written (Hoey, 1983; Hunston and Thompson, 2000; Martin and White, 2005) discourses in an attempt to provide further insights integrating both perspectives into the evaluative uses of language. Current studies of evaluation have used appraisal theory in academic, journalistic, legal and political discourses (Peñuelas and Díez-Prados, 2013; González Rodríguez, 2011; Hood, 2004; Martin, 2000 Martin, , 2003 Martin and White, 2005; Miller, 2004; White, 2002 White, , 2003 White and Verbosity Enterprises, 2005) to find out how evaluative items may change depending on genre, register or individual styles. Both political discourse and political language seem well suited to express evaluation, as politicians need to sketch a positive image of themselves so as to persuade people to vote for them, while at the same time portraying the opponent in a negative light by reacting against his/her comments and by being ironic, in such a way that they discredit them (and the opposing party that they represent). ...
The present study explores the language of evaluation in a sub-genre of political discourse, preelectoral
debates, and its potential persuasive function for gaining voters via a contraposition
of positive self-evaluation and negative evaluation of the other candidate. A further aim of this
research is to check whether the candidate’s ideology has a bearing on the entities that get
evaluated. After a brief examination of the characteristics of the sub-genre at hand, specifically
in the Spanish context, we present the results of an evaluation analysis carried out in a corpus
of 19,849 words, which is the extension of the most recent pre-electoral debate held in Spain
between the candidates of the two main political parties. Taking into account Van Dijk’s critical
discourse analysis (CDA) framework for parliamentary debates as global semantic strategies
of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation, Martin and White’s method was
adopted as an analytical tool. The results showed that, although each candidate had different
preferences in the choice of evaluative devices, they both used them as a strategy to win electoral
votes while deprecating the opposing party and, therefore, minimizing their opponents’ chances
of winning the elections. On the other hand, and despite their opposing ideology, they both seem
to defend those policies that are more widely accepted in order not to risk losing voters: public
services and egalitarian social policies.
The focus of this article is the deictic evaluative construction that’s, as used by Barack Obama and Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential debates. A summative clause, often toward the end of a discourse turn, opened by the distal demonstrative pronoun that, has a persuasive function, evaluating the immediately preceding discourse content. This construction allows the speaker to evaluate his own message positively and the opponent’s message negatively; it also structures the content clearly and concisely, helping to portray the speaker as one with a strong and clear agenda. A quantitative comparison of the usage of the that’s construction with regard to Obama and Romney shows that both used it equally during the first debate; however, in the second debate, Obama doubled its use. This chapter brings together a concept from narrative theory (evaluation) and a concept from rhetoric (the persuasive function of language), as these two concepts intersect within the persuasive genre of presidential debates.
The present study explores the language of evaluation in a sub-genre of political discourse, pre-electoral debates, and its potential persuasive function for gaining voters via a contraposition of positive self-evaluation and negative evaluation of the other candidate. A further aim of this research is to check whether the candidate's ideology has a bearing on the entities that get evaluated. After a brief examination of the characteristics of the sub-genre at hand, specifically in the Spanish context, we present the results of an evaluation analysis carried out in a corpus of 19,849 words, which is the extension of the most recent pre-electoral debate held in Spain between the candidates of the two main political parties. Taking into account Van Dijk's CDA framework (2005) for parliamentary debates as global semantic strategies of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation, Martin and White's (2005) method was adopted as an analytical tool. The results showed that, although each candidate had different preferences in the choice of evaluative devices, they both used them as a strategy to win electoral votes while deprecating the opposing party and, therefore, minimizing their opponents' chances of winning the elections. On the other hand, and despite their opposing ideology, they both seem to defend those policies that are more widely accepted in order not to risk losing voters: public services and egalitarian social policies.
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