Evaluation is the linguistic expression of speaker/writer opinion, and has only recently become the focus of linguistic analysis. This book presents the first corpus-based account of evaluation; one hundred newspaper articles collated to form a 70,000 word comparable corpus, drawn from both tabloid and broadsheet media. The book provides detailed explanations and justifications of the underlying framework of evaluation, as well as demonstrating how this is part of the larger framework of media discourse. Unlike many other linguistic analyses of media language, it makes frequent reference to the production circumstances of newspaper discourse, in particular the so-called 'news values' that shape the creation of the news. Cutting-edge and insightful, Evaluation in Media Discourse will be of interest to academics and researchers in corpus linguistics and media discourse.

This book analyses European media discourses using a variety of tools, including appraisal analysis, argumentation theory, multimodal approaches and corpus linguistics, with various theoretical approaches, including SFL and corpus-informed discourse studies, critical discourse analysis, semio-communicative approaches, and Bakhtinian perspectives.

Papers presented at a conference held June 14-16, 2003, in Pontignano, Siena.

It is now an acknowledged fact in the world of linguistics that the concept of evaluation is crucial, and that there is very little – if any – discourse that cannot be analyzed through the prism of its evaluative content. This book presents some of the latest developments in the study of this phenomenon. Released more than a decade later than Hunston and Thompson’s (2000) Evaluation in Text, Evaluation in Context is designed as its sequel, in an attempt to continue, update and extend the different avenues of research opened by the earlier work. Both theoretical and empirical studies on the topic are presented, with the intention of scrutinizing as many of its dimensions as possible, by not only looking at evaluative texts, but also considering the aspects of the discursive context that affect the final evaluative meaning at both the production and reception stages of the evaluative act. The editors’ main objective has been to gather contributions which investigate the manifold faces and phases of evaluation by presenting a wide variety of perspectives that include different linguistic theories (e.g. Axiological Semantics, Functionalism or Politeness Theory), different levels of linguistic description (e.g. phonological, lexical or semantic), and different text types and contexts (e.g. the evaluation found in ironic discourse, the multimodality of media discourse or the world of politics, just to name a few). The volume can be of use not only for scholars who study the evaluative function of language, but also for students who wish to pursue research in the area.

This book is about moral talk in contemporary British political discourse, drawing on speeches, debates and radio phone-ins. Using a critical sociolinguistic approach, Spencer-Bennett explores the language people use to communicate moral judgement and highlights the relations between the things that people say, the contexts in which they are said and the circulating ideologies about meaning and morality. This is key reading for students and scholars studying language, politics and critical discourse analysis, within linguistics and anthropology.

This is the first comprehensive account of the Appraisal Framework. The underlying linguistic theory is explained and justified, and the application of this flexible tool, which has been applied to a wide variety of text and discourse analysis issues, is demonstrated throughout by sample text analyses from a range of registers, genres and fields.

Now reissued and retypeset, this canonical book explores the role of language and images in newspaper, radio, online and television news. The authors introduce useful frameworks for analysing language, image and the interaction between the two, and illustrate these with authentic news stories from around the English-speaking world, ranging from the Oktoberfest to environmental disasters to the killing of Osama bin Laden. This analysis persuasively illustrates how events are retold in the news and made 'newsworthy' through both language and image. This clearly written and accessible introduction to news discourse is essential reading for students, lecturers and researchers in linguistics, media and journalism studies and semiotics.

Elite Discourse examines how language and communication – or just discourse – define, mediate and legitimize class privilege. It does so from the perspective of those people and places who often stand to gain most from inequality. Collectively, chapters consider language and communication that is elitist in its appeal to distinction, excellence and superiority; they also describe the ways in which various groups and institutions lay claim to ‘eliteness’ as a way to position themselves (or to be positioned by others) as elite or non-elite. As such, chapters are concerned as much with discourse about elite status as they are with the discourse of elites – those groups commonly defined by their material wealth, political control, or demographic rarity. Ultimately, Elite Discourse views ‘elite’ as something we do, rather than something we necessarily have or are. Indeed, elite status and eliteness point us to the rhetorical strategies by which many people differentiate themselves and by which they access symbolic-material resources for shoring up their status, privilege and power. This book was originally published as a special issue of Social Semiotics.

Investigating Media Discourse explores spoken interactions in the media, drawing on contemporary sources from the English speaking world including chat shows, radio phone-ins and political interviews with leaders such as Tony Blair and George W.Bush. The main theoretical framework used in this work is influenced by Goffman, where each media encounter is viewed as a three-way participation framework involving the broadcaster, interviewee and audience, all of whom shape the interaction. The spoken media interactions are analysed from this viewpoint to illustrate how they are managed, how pseudo-relationships are established and maintained and how ‘others’ are created. O’Keefe brings together methodologies of discourse analysis, conversation analysis and corpus linguistics allowing the media extracts to be explored from different perspectives whilst providing multiple insights. Investigating Media Discourse will appeal to students and researchers of applied linguistics, english language and media. Anne O’Keeffe is Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the Department of English Language and Literature, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland.

The Discourse of Online Reviews is the first book to provide an account of the discursive, pragmatic and rhetorical features of this rapidly growing form of technologically-mediated communication. Examining a corpus of over 1,000 consumer reviews, Camilla Vásquez explores many of the discourse features that are characteristic of this new, user-generated, computer-mediated and primarily text-based genre. She investigates the language used by reviewers as they forge connections with their audiences to draw them into their stories, as they construct their expertise and authority on various subjects and as they evaluate and assess their consumer experiences. She also demonstrates how reviewers display their awareness about emerging conventions of the very genre in which they are participating. This book adopts an eclectic approach to the analysis of discourse, and explores topics such as evaluation, identity and intertextuality as they occur in online reviews of hotels, restaurants, recipes, films and other consumer products.