An exploration of evaluative meanings in tourist brochures : the case of British castles

Abstract

The focus of analysis in the present study will be on how writers establish evaluative prosodies that resonate across their promotional discourse and try to accomplish reader positioning by means of their semantic choices. It seems pertinent, then, to bring into play a model of discourse analysis apposite to the study of evaluative resources. The theory drawn upon for this study is Systemic Functional Linguistics (henceforth SFL), which will be delineated in the following chapter (Halliday, 1994, 2004; Martin, 2000, 2002, 2004; Martin & Rose, 2003, 2007). SFL theorises language as social semiotic, as a meaning-making system from which users choose linguistic resources when they engage in communication. It regards language as organised into different strata and performing three major metafunctions: it construes a world of experience (ideational metafunction), it establishes relationships between people (interpersonal metafunction) and it organises discourse (textual metafunction). In SFL the meaning potential of language is described in terms of interrelating sets of options organised as systems (Economou, 2009). Meaning is realised metafunctionally –as interpersonal, ideational and textual meanings– by the choices language users make out of the possibilities available in the language systems. In other words, meaning choices can be realised across different systems of lexicogrammar (Hood, 2004). EVALUATION1 , alongside INVOLVEMENT and NEGOTIATION, is one of three major resources that construe interpersonal meaning. It is located in the interpersonal dimension of language, at the level of discourse semantics – the stratum that maps meaning systems available at the level of text. Analysing Evaluation in language involves the study of the resources writers make use of when adopting a particular stance in an attempt to align the readers with the value position advanced in the text. These aspects of the interpersonal metafunction have been elaborated on by Martin (2000), Martin and Rose (2003), and Martin and White (2005) in the APPRAISAL model.