Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Bc. Radoslava Pekarová Evaluative Language in Journalistic Discourse Master‟s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Mgr. Jan Chovanec, Ph. D. 2011 1 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Author‟s signature 2 Acknowledgement I would like to thank to my supervisor Mgr. Jan Chovanec, Ph.D., for his guidance, valuable advice and resources he provided me with. 3 Table of Contents 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 5 2. Evaluation in journalistic discourse .......................................................................... 8 2.1 Galtung and Ruge‟s (1965) criteria of newsworthiness ................................... 10 3. Methods and procedures ......................................................................................... 23 4. The Appraisal Theory ............................................................................................. 27 4.1 Classification of appraisal ................................................................................ 30 4.2 Analysis ............................................................................................................ 45 4.2.1 Attitude ..................................................................................................... 45 4.2.1.1 Affect – expressing our feelings ........................................................ 46 4.2.1.2 Judgement .......................................................................................... 48 4.2.1.3 Appreciating things ........................................................................... 54 4.2.2 Amplifying attitudes ................................................................................. 57 4.2.2.1 Amplifying the force of attitudes ...................................................... 57 4.2.2.2 Sharpening and softening focus ......................................................... 63 4.2.3 Sources of attitudes ................................................................................... 65 4.2.3.1 Projecting sources .............................................................................. 66 4.2.3.2 Modality ............................................................................................ 71 4.2.3.3 Concession ......................................................................................... 74 4.3 Discussion ........................................................................................................ 76 5. Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 83 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 86 Summary ......................................................................................................................... 92 Resumé ............................................................................................................................ 94 Appendix ......................................................................................................................... 96 4 1. Introduction The thesis focuses on journalistic discourse, namely on evaluative features of journalistic discourse. It draws on Fowler‟s (1991) view who challenges the media‟s claims of their impartiality. To start with, if we consider the articles which occur in the newspapers – thousands of events occur every day, however, only few of them reach the reader: the newsworthy events must be picked from those which are regarded as not interesting for the readers of the newspapers, and thus here in the very beginning of writing an article evaluation begins. This topic is discussed in the chapter devoted to Galtung and Ruge‟s factors which explain on what basis certain topics are more relevant than others and thus picked to be published. The hypothesis of this work is that quality newspapers use such language means which are evaluative. The research of the thesis was focused on this aspect of newspapers‟ language employing the appraisal framework which is an approach which enables to explore, describe and explain “the way language is used to evaluate, to adopt stances, to construct textual personas and to manage interpersonal positionings and relationships” (White 2005). By means of this approach it is possible to identify attitudes, judgements and emotive responses that are “explicitly presented in texts” as well as those which are “indirectly implied, presupposed or assumed” (White 2005). This approach is thus suitable for the thesis as its aim is to look at journalistic discourse and find out whether and to what extent journalists use evaluative language. All in all, it is explained here that not only are the newspapers evaluative, but they are necessarily evaluative: the evaluation occurs from the beginning of the process of news production and the news is not a summary of facts as several people with different interests infer with the process and influence what goes to the newspapers, in 5 which form and wording. This is discussed in the second chapter which shows that the same event can be depicted in a different manner with a different amount and type of evaluative expressions. The second chapter provides an introduction to journalistic discourse which is further analysed. There is described a process of news production – it is displayed here that a report of an event is by no means a presentation of facts collected by a journalist. It is rather a cooperation of a team of persons involved in the process. It explains why some news is preferred than another on the basis of Galtung and Ruge‟s (1965) and Harcup and O‟Neill‟s (2001) criteria. Further, there are explained roles of the people who participate in the news production creating the final result that is given to the reader. The next chapter presents the material that was analysed for the purposes of the thesis: the research for the thesis contains an analysis of the usage of language of the chosen quality newspapers, namely of the online versions of the Guardian, the Independent and the Telegraph. The methods and procedures that were employed in the theses and in the research for the thesis are described here. This part further contains a list of the articles on which appraisal was applied and provides a total number of words and of the individual articles that were analysed. The fourth chapter introduces the main part of the thesis – the appraisal network. There are presented two versions of appraisal, as for the purposes of the thesis a „simplistic‟ one (described by Martin and Rose 2007) was more suitable, however, the other, a „complex‟ one is generally applied in all studies I came across when looking for some additional materials concerning appraisal and its application. The two frameworks are briefly compared. On the basis of this comparison is shown that the „simplistic‟ 6 version can be applied as well acquiring the same results with a lesser emphasis on the categorisation. The analysis as such begins from the section 4.2 providing definitions of the individual categories of appraisal together with examples and further explanations showing that evaluative stances occur in articles of the quality press and how appraisal is employed by them. The occurrences of appraisal in the examined articles were counted and the results are presented in the chapter 5 including a commentary concerning their significance for the thesis. In this chapter some problematic areas encountered in the course of the analysis are also pointed out. 7 2. Evaluation in journalistic discourse In this section the process of news production is discussed. Although the emphasis is put on the products of this process in the thesis, it is necessary to realise that evaluation is not only present in the articles we read, but rather it is an inherent part of newspapers as such and thus evaluation that occurs in the newspapers is rather a consequence of the process which is described below. Journalistic discourse has earned substantial attention from the part of linguists. Bell (1995) provides four reasons for the attention paid to journalistic discourse, “First, the media provide an easily accessible source of language data for research and teaching purposes. Second, the media are important linguistic institutions. Their output makes up a large proportion of the language that people hear and read every day. Media usage reflects and shapes both language use and attitudes in a speech community. For second language learners, the media may function as the primary – or even the sole – source of native-speaker models. Third, the ways in which the media use language are interesting linguistically in their own right; these include how different dialects and languages are used” by different segments of media “to construct their own images and their relationships to an unseen, unknown audience. Fourth, the media are important social institutions. They are crucial presenters of culture, politics, and social life, shaping as well as reflecting how these are formed and expressed” (23). Various products of media are indeed all around us and touch perhaps every sphere of our life and as Bell (1995) maintains they influence our views. Journalistic products are all around