Covert Evaluation In The Abstracts Of English Academic Discourse

The researches on academic abstracts have drawn substantial attention within the academic community at present. However, most of the researches are confiened to the genre analysis of the academic abstracts. The present study is focused on the dual demands of academic discourse as objectivity and difference establishing, based on which we extend the research of academic discourse to the area of evaluation.To achieve the dual demands of academic discourse in a seemingly neutral'tone', the author of the academic discourse adopts the covert evaluative strategies or devices in his writing. The primary goal of this paper is to anaylize the covert evaluation in academic discourse in expectancy to the enlightment theoretically and practically.The analytical framework of the present study is established on the Appraisal Theory and is proposed specifically for the purpose of exploring the covert evaluation in academic abstracts. Borrowed from the terms of Bernstein as "horizontal" and "vertical", two dimensions have consituted the analytical framework, namely the "horizontal"dimension and the "vertical" dimension. The phenomenon of covert evaluatoin in academic abstracts are approached respectively from the local lexico-grammatical perspective and the text's as a whole.In the horizontal dimension, the covert evaluative strategies are analyzed into provocation. Specifically, under the framework of Graduation system of Appraisal, the provocation strategies are divided into intensificaiton, quantification, enrichment and metaphor. The entity of covert evaluation is provoked thus by its quanlity, quantity and the features of process (if the entity is a process).In the vertical dimension, the research is not any more confined to the local strategies for covert evluation in academic abstracts. The text's axiology becomes a priority in the research. More emphasis in the analysis is put on the co-function of strategies to create the text's axiology.As for the data in this paper, the sample abstracts are all from authoritative linguistic journals in China, for example, Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Foreign Language Teaching and Research (bimonthly), Journal of Foreign languages, Foreign Language Research, Foreign language and literature.