Investigating The Implicit Evaluation Resources In Academic Discourse

In Systemic Functional Linguistics(henceforth,SFL),evaluation is a critical constituency in interpersonal metafunction,whose research involves evaluative lexicogrammar resources.Functional linguists suggest that evaluation contains three systems:attitude,engagement,and graduation(Martin&White,2005).Some scholars(e.g.,Halliday&Hasan,1985;Sinclair,1987),however,argue that the resources of engagement and graduation systems as well as some other linguistic resources outside the appraisal system are likewise able to realize the attitudinal meaning.The evaluative meaning realized by these resources is implicit and imperceptible.Existing studies of implicit evaluation(henceforth,IE)have yielded fruitful results,but problems remain to be addressed in the following three aspects:(1)the lack of investigations into the connotation and denotation of IE,(2)the lack of a systematic characterization of the resources of IE,and(3)the lack of an interpretation of the collaboration between IE resources.On these grounds,this study investigates the connotation and denotation of IE based on the theories and the paradigm of SFL and establishes a framework for analyzing IE resources in academic discourse.In addition,this study presents an attemptive explanation of the cooperation between constituencies within the framework.The study starts with a discussion of the connotation and denotation of IE.To reveal the essence of IE,the study probes into the discrepancies between the evaluative meaning in IE and that in the Appraisal Theory by adopting essential concepts in value philosophy.The evaluative meaning in IE is testified as being substantially involved in value creation,namely,the result of a particular value judgment,while the evaluative meaning in the Appraisal Theory is a depiction or statement of a given value or utility.This study interprets three constituencies based on the investigations on evaluation by functional linguists:the substance of value,the truth value conditions,and the presentation of value.Those three constituents correspond to the value system,the situation system,and the reasoning system respectively.Second,this study characterizes the resources in the value,situation,and reasoning systems.In light of the characteristics of IE,the study selects academic discourse as the research data in the process of IE characterization.The data comprise research articles published between 2008 and 2018,extracted from the Web of Science(SCI/SSCI/A&HCI)database,with 100 research articles from each category selected in terms of impact factors ranking(300 discourses and approximately 2 million words in total).The depiction is carried out by qualitative example analysis and quantitative retrieval analysis(including Concordance Plot,Word Frequency,Collocates Retrieval,etc.).Based on the results of the analysis of the data,resources in IE systems are as follows:In the value system,value is the result of a judgment.The study,therefore,adopts the three types of heuristics activating people's judgments in psychology and categorizes the value system into representativeness,availability,and anchoring.According to the results of data analysis,representativeness can be realized by such resources as(1)deictics,epithets,and adjuncts that express the concepts of limitation,precision,and particularity;(2)participants and adjuncts that indicate the concepts of attribution,identification,and symbolism;and(3)participants and epithets expressing the concepts of similarity or difference.Availability is realized by resources such as(1)processes,participants,and epithets that express the idea of introduction,objectivity,and clarity;or(2)processes that indicate the concept of suggestions or plans.Anchoring can be realized by resources including:(1)numeratives;(2)processes,epithets,and cohesive devices that display quantitative relations;or(3)processes expressing the notion of inclusion or exclusion.In the situation system,the situation is constructed subjectively by the author(s)of a discourse.The study,hence,employs the idea of a "context model"(i.e.,context is subjective)in discourse analysis and generalizes the situation system into setting and happening.The setting system contains three subsystems:foregrounding,modality,and evidentiality,including resources such as(1)epithets,adjuncts,and comparative structures with the concept of comparison and material processes,conjunction(groups),adjuncts that express causation;(2)modal verbs;and(3)quotations in academic discourse and genitives.The happening system refers to the statement of the information provided by the situation,which is realized by the perfective and progressive aspects of processes.In the reasoning system,the organization of value is the mental presentation of the solution of a research question in academic discourse.The study,thus,adopts the concept of a "mental model",i.e.,reasoning is a mental representation,to divide the reasoning system into induction and deduction.The analysis reveals that induction can be realized by material processes,participants,epithets,and adjuncts indicating the concept of summarizing or finishing,and the processes indicating the concept of origination.Deduction can be subjective or objective and realized by different types of thematic progressions.Second,the knowledge adopted by the reasoning process can be generalized into algorithm knowledge and depiction/explanation knowledge.The algorithmic knowledge is realized by epithets and adjuncts that indicate the concept of sequence or order,while the resources of depiction/explanation knowledge depend on the co-text of the clause.Finally,the study analyzes detailedly parts of the collected data based on the IE resources framework to explore the collaboration between the three systems and the choice of IE resources and constructs a three-dimensional space model with the vectoral and algebraic representations.The study of IE resources enriches and extends the theoretical and applicational investigations of the evaluation in SFL.Theoretically,it illuminates the connotation and denotation of IE and elucidates the relationship between implicit and explicit evaluations.It explains the constituents of IE and develops the relationships between evaluative meaning and metafunctions and illustrates the cooperation between language,mentality,and context in IE and,likewise,the choice of IE resources.In terms of the application,the study of IE resources not only reveals the resource types of IE,but also provides a reference for guidelines and strategies in academic writing.It enables the author of an academic discourse to select a germane linguistic expression to his/her purposes.