Appraisal

‘Appraisal is concerned with evaluation: the kinds of attitudes that are negotiated in a text, the strength of the feelings involved and the ways in which values are sourced and readers aligned‘ (Martin & Rose 2003, p.22, emphasis added)

Halliday (1994, 2004) maintained that text embodies three metafunctions: ideational meaning, interpersonal meaning, and textual meaning. While ideational meaning realizes the experience, interpersonal meaning deals with interpersonal relationship among the participants in the text, and the textual meaning explains how the message is presented (or ordered) in the text. As an evaluation, appraisal is a part of a system of interpersonal meaning. It deals with how participants evaluate themselves, as well as how they evaluate each other or even the things around them when they produce the text.

Appraisal deals with three aspects:

1. Kinds of attitudes,
2. Strength of attitudes: how the attitudes are amplified,
3. Sources of attitudes: who makes the evaluation and how the readers are aligned.

Kinds of Attitudes

Basically, there are three main types of attitudes: expressing emotion, judging character, and valuing the worth of thing (Martin & Rose, 2003). The resources to realize these aspects respectively are affect, judgement, and appreciation. People can choose to evaluate either affect, or judgement, or appreciation at one speech event; but at the same time, they will always also choose how to amplify their attitudes, and the source of their attitudes.

Affect

As mentioned earlier, affect is the resource to evaluate feelings. When dealing with how feelings are expressed, there are two general ways: whether the feelings are positive or negative (good feelings or bad feelings) and whether the feelings are expressed directly or implied.

People may express their mental state (emotion) directly by using some techniques:

1. Mentioning the names of specific emotion: ecstatic, worry, anxious, satisfied, etc.
2. Describing behavior that expresses emotion: smiled, press his face into his hands, rushed breathing, etc.

The indirect ways of expressing feelings can include the following:

1. Describing unusual behavior as an indirect sign of feeling: quiet, drinking too much, wander from window to window, etc.
2. Using metaphor: ice cold in a sweltering night, eyes…dull like the dead.

Grammatically, affect is shown through epithet, attribute, circumstance, mental process, behavioral process, relational process, or modal adjunct.

Affect can be categorized into three:

1. (un)happiness
2. (in)security
3. (dis)satisfaction

    

Judgment

Judgment is a character evaluation that also can be a positive or negative. There are two kinds of judgment: personal judgment (also called social esteem, that is without legal implication) and moral judgment (also called social sanction, that is often with legal implication); each of which can be positive or negative.

Positive personal judgment is called admiration, while the negative one is called criticism.

Positive moral judgment is called praise, while the negative one is called condemnation.

Personal judgment has to do with

1. Normality (how unusual someone is)
2. Capacity (how capable someone is)
3. Tenacity (how resolute someone is)

Moral judgment has to do with:

1. Veracity (how truthful someone is)
2. Propriety (how ethical someone is)

Like affect, both personal and moral judgment, either positive or negative, can be expressed directly or implied.

Appreciation

Appreciation deals with evaluation toward things; that can be either tangible (concrete) like books, CDs, paintings, TV shows or intangible (abstract) like relationship, quality of life.

Like affect and judgment, appreciation also can be either positive or negative.

The system of appreciation consists of three variables:

1. Reaction

   Reaction has to do with attention (reaction:impact) and emotional impact (reaction:quality)

2. Composition

   Composition has to with perception of propostionality (composition:balance), and detail (composition:complexity).

3. Valuation

   Valuation has to do with assessment of social significance of the text/process.

Amplification: Strength of Attitude

Since attitude deals with evaluation, it can be turned up or turned down; and it can also be sharpened or softened. The resources to turn the attitude up or down include some words of intensifiers like very, really, extremely, etc.
and words that contain degrees of intensity like happy, delighted, ecstatic, etc. This kind of amplifying is called force.

The resources to sharpen or soften the attitude are called focus. Some examples of focus are some words like about/exactly or real/sort of/kind of.

Amplifying the Force

Force can be realized through intensifiers or attitudinal lexis. With intensifiers, then it is possible to make a comparison; because the worth of thing is indeed gradable: best/better/good/bad/worse/worst. Some other resources of force may include amplifiers, downtoners, emphasizers, hedging, and grading adverbs like amazingly/unusually/breathtakingly beautiful.

Quantifier
(all, several, some), degree of manner
(frantically, uncontrollably, excitedly), modality
(must, would, might), metaphors, and swearing
are some other resources of force.

Genres also play important role as a force. Narrative amplifies most, exposition less, and Act least.

Amplifying the Focus

Focus is actually making a gradation to something that is actually non-gradable. It softens or sharpens the borderlines between things. In the example below, the clause implies as if he were a kind of teacher.

My husband is a real teacher.

A kind of teacher softens the focus; a real teacher sharpens the focus.

Source of Attitudes

What is meant with source of attitudes is who makes the evaluation or who expresses the attitude. If the attitudes come from the author, it is called monogloss; while if the attitudes come from other than the author, it is called heterogloss.

Some types of heterogloss are projection (both saying and idea), modality, and concession. With projection, it is clear to introduce the source of the attitude. When a speaker uses modality, it means that he is opening a negotiation of the message he is delivering, the quality of which may be below or above that of his message. With concession, it is clear that a speaker is countering an attitude that has already existed.

Prosody & Genre

Summarized from:

Martin, J. R., & Rose, D. (2003). Working with discourse. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.