Introduction
Background
The text that has been chosen for the discourse analysis of meanings is the review of the book called Shrinking the World: The 4000-year Story of How Email Came to Rule Our Lives that is written by John Freeman (Scanlon, n. d.). The review reveals Freeman’s protesting worldview on email, as the growing pandemic invasion eroding human communication and social relations. Instead, the reviewed book stands for the eternal value of handwritten words that nowadays has few powerful instruments to struggle against electronic letters. Arising of this, our text is rather evaluative, as the writer expresses his outright feelings and negative attitude to electronic mail and its corruptive influence on society.
Theoretical Framework and Aspects of Appreciation
According to Martin and Rose (2007), another dimension of appraisal is graduation and engagement. The first aspect deals with adjusting to the force of an expression of attitude using amplifying it or smoothing it to a degree (Martin and Rose, 2007, p.37). As for engagement, it is connected with the number of sources to be evaluated. This part of our discourse analysis will not take much time and space.
Hood (2006) provides a more detailed scheme for grading up the attitudes and meanings of the discourse. Hence, the researcher pays attention to the force of graduation of inscribed attitudes through enhancement, intensity, and quantity (Hood, 2006, p. 39). The focus is discovered through the use of valeur consisting of authenticity and specificity, fulfillment, realization (Hood, 2006, p. 39).
Painter (2003) has also dedicated her studies to the analysis of attitudinal systems. To be more exact, the researcher investigates the linguistic and semantic domain of appraisal, which is called a protolanguage system of effect (Painter, 2003, p. 186). Unlike Martin and Rose (2007), the article provides a detailed classification of the attitudes of effect thus splitting them into directed and reactive. In its turn, directed refers to such emotions as desire, interest, and engagement whereas reactive effect consists of the expressions of delight, taste, and relaxation.
To provide a discursive account of the meanings constructed in the discourse we are planning to apply the theory of appraisal and negotiating attitudes theory proposed by Martin and Rose (2007) in their Working with Discourse. In particular, this theory will promote an understanding of what an appraisal is and what methods should be used to highlight the interpersonal meaning for constructing a discourse. According to Martin and Rose (2007), “appraisal is concerned with evaluation: the kinds of attitudes that are negotiated in a text, the strength of the feelings involved and how values are sources and readers aligned” (2007, p. 22).
The evaluation also consists of different kinds of attitudes and their different dimensions. At this point, there are three types of attitudes: those expressing feeling and emotions – which is also called “affect” (positive or negative, direct or implicit); those providing people’s behavior and judgments, or simply “judgment” (moral and personal), and those assessing different things and events – which is commonly referred as to “appreciation” (Martin and Rose, 2007, pp. 23-24).
A broader theory on the appraisal is revealed by Martin and White (2005) that enhances and sustains what will be learned from the previous textbook. In particular, in their book, they are more focused on considering two aspects of grading or scaling the meanings – those of force and focus – which have different criteria for grading up and weakening the meaning of a word. In the first case, the guiding shift refers to the quality of importance. In the second case, graduation is achieved using lexical devices (Martin and Smith, 2005).
Main Discussion
The Analysis of Inscribed Attitude
The text is a monologic written discourse where the author reports the book written by another person. The reported book narrates the disadvantages of electronic mail where the author expresses a negative meaning to it. The author projects the attitude and tries to be objective to the situation; still, his attitude to the book is also revealed. Still, as the reviewer renders the authors’ opinion in some instances, the appraiser also changes. Such instances are disclosed through the author’s indirect speech.
As for his appreciation, it is mostly viewed in parenthesis and stylistic devices like simile and metaphor. The text is split into numerous sub-headings but still, it is possible to notice that the first three paragraphs are a summary of the author’s thoughts, the middle of the paper provides a deeper consideration of ideas and the last paragraph is subjected to the review’s appraisal.
When looking at the examples below, it is possible to see that the phrase as potentially addictive as the pokies (in 2) is not printed in bold type (Scanlon, n. d.). This is explained by the idea that this phrase does not explicitly denote a positive attitude to the meaning, as it can be more addressed to a metaphorical one. Therefore, word combination belongs to an invoked type of attitude rather than to the inscribed one. In the 9th phrase, the word expanded is less directed so that the writer tries to smooth his negative emotion. Still, it is impossible to impose the final sentence on this phrase and to state that it bears a negative connotative meaning. The final phrase does not bear any homogeneous expression either. However, all of the instances that are not underlined can be further analyzed from the angle of scaling the meaning according to focus and force.
Viewing the other examples, there must be admitted that inscribed attitudes should strictly refer either to negative or to positive writer’s attitude to the text. Generally viewing the text, the writer is more neutral in the beginning and more expressive in the end. After the preliminary analysis, let us evaluate the above instances concerning their positive and negative expressiveness.
- Hollowing out [-] our relationships, eroding community life [-], destroying productivity” [-] (Scanlon, 2009.).
- “Freeman says that email is as potentially addictive as the pokies”
- “Freeman shows that the problems of email are not entirely new” [-] (Scanlon, 2009)
- “His book offers a fascinating account” [+] (Scanlon, 2009.)
- “Freeman sets up a simplistic worldview that is incapable of dealing with…” (Scanlon, 2009.)
- “Lamenting [-] the rise of online shopping and what he sees as the erosion of public space…” [-] (Scanlon, 2009.)
- “Other claims are simply wrong” [-] (Scanlon, 2009.)
- “They have expanded the reach of communication” (Scanlon, 2009)
- “This is a provocative claim” [-] (Scanlon, 2009)
- “It is not always clear [-] what Freeman’s target is” (Scanlon, 2009).
- “This too little, too late” (Scanlon, 2009).
- “Resistance is futile” (Scanlon, 2009).
- …poker machines reward their victims at irregular intervals, thereby encouraging them to keep pushing the coins in…
The next step of our appraisal will be the analysis of the word in through the concepts of effect, judgment, and appreciation.
As it can be viewed, the beginning of the text renders the author’s appraisal of different things and events which are appraised within several sub-categories. In particular, the effect can be expressed through desire, (in) security, (dis)satisfaction, and desire. In our instances, the 7th instance expresses the effect of insecurity and the 4th one reveals the effect of satisfaction. Addressing judgment, this attitude is split into social esteem (normality, capacity, and tenacity) and social sanction (veracity and propriety). Viewing the instances, which predominantly bear this type of inscribed attitude, such words as wrong, provocative, and not clear express the judgment of social sanction: veracity whereas the words as hollowing out, eroding, and destroying belong to social sanction of propriety. Finally, appreciation mostly refers to valuation (simplistic, futile) and composition (erosion).
Analysis in terms of quantitative distributions
Judging upon the writer’s attitude to the existing discourse, the amount of inscribed attitudes is preliminary small, as the genre of the text is the review that presupposes the emotionless depiction of the details of the narration. This is also in this respect that the prevalent type of attitude is judgment as the writer describes the character of narration and author of the book under consideration. The second reason is that the genre and contextual information does not allow the writer to make use of attitudes expressing the feelings and emotions but character and behavior only. The effect of the expression is the least revealed type. Still, we can see the effect in the concluding part of the text through the use of intonation marks and interrogative questions.
Concerning the quality of appraisal, the negative type prevails, due to several reasons. The first one is that the subject appraised is the author of the book that puts forward some protesting and negative ideas about the internet. In most cases, the subject of appraisal is the content of the book and the author.
Despite the formality of language and lack of expressiveness of the writer’s discourse, it is still possible to observe the explicit shifts in the attitude to the work – from positive in the middle and at the beginning of the text and to negative at the end of it. For instance, at the beginning of the text, the writer agrees with Freeman’s negative to electronic mail by using graduation of fulfillment be using such words as indeed, a tsunami of emails, and such phrase “generally undermining our capacity for sustained and concentrated reading and thought” (Scanlon, 2009).
Graduation of nonattitudinal meanings in the text
When addressing the implicit displays of expressions and their graduations, it is purposeful to consider such an invoked kind of attitude presupposing the consideration of ideational meanings of discourse. This is mean to scale the objective meanings. Such expressions are more explicit and less direct where one can observe only a hint of subjectivity.
Hence, this particular text reveals a plethora of examples where the main source of graduation is that of force with few instances of focus. To be more precise, the force is revealed through intensity (too little, too late), quantity: extent (within a longer historical timeframe; potentially addictive; not entirely new), and enhancement (people rarely trade one for another). There are also instances of focus expressed through valeur: authenticity (indeed, however, or then again, for example) and realization (of course) (Painter, 2003, p. 39).
It is worth saying that when the writer uses graded attitudinal meanings, he/she wants to emphasize the idea that there is an objective meaning that can bear a slant of subjectivity. For instance, such phrases like, the problems of email are not entirely new can be transformed in the word combination with explicit inscribed attitude: the problems of email are old, or the problems of email are not new (Scanlon 2009.).
The process of graduation also involves the use of lexical metaphors where there is no place for inscribed attitudes to meanings. The main role of graduation, thus, lies in the writer’s capability to express negative or positive attitudes using connotative constructions. This can be revealed in the following table:
Conclusion: main findings
After a thorough examination of the text, some peculiarities of the expression of interpersonal meaning in the book review have been found. In particular, it has been discovered that there are more inscribed attitudes, specifically a direct, negative evaluation of the context. However, this negative attitude is explained by the writer’s intention to agree with the protesting thoughts describes in the book. But the book itself is positively evaluated. In addition, the prevalent kind of attitude is judgment, which is the core attribute of the book review genre. As for invoked attitude, the writer prefers to use the graduation of force rather than that of focus. Still, unlike attitudinal aspects, the invoked attitudes are relatively balanced.
Reference List
Hood, S. 2006. The persuasive power of prosodies: Radiating values in academic writing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes. 5, pp. 37-49.
Martin. J.R. and Rose, D. 2007. Working with Discourse. London: Palgrave.
Martin. J.R. and White P.R.R., 2005. The language of evaluation: Appraisal in English. London: Palgrave.
Painter, C. 2003. Developing Attitude: An Ontogenetic perspective on appraisal. Walter de Gruyter. 23(2), pp. 183-209.
Scanlon, C. n.d. Shrinking the World: The 4000-year Story of How Email Came to Rule our Lives by John Freeman. Review pp. 1-304.