Appraisal Analysis and the Computer

This paper will explore how software programs can help in the performance of linguistic studies using Appraisal Analysis, both in the maintenance of a coding scheme, annotation of texts using that scheme and statistical studies based on the annotation. Special emphasis will be placed on how to produce visualisations of appraisal-annotated data. Most of the discussion will be based around UAM CorpusTool, software for corpus annotation and exploration.En este trabajo se estudia cómo pueden ayudar los programas de software en la realización de estudios lingüísticos mediante el Análisis de la Valoración, tanto en el mantenimiento de un esquema de codifi cación, la anotación de los textos que utilizan ese sistema y los estudios estadísticos fundamentados en la anotación. Se hará especial hincapié en cómo producir visualizaciones de los datos de valoración anotados. La mayor parte de la discusión se basa en la UAM CorpusTool, software para la anotación y exploración de corpus

We All Make Mistakes! . Analysing an Error-coded Corpus of Spanish University Students Written English

[EN] The present study analyses the errors identified and coded in the written argumentative texts of 304 Spanish university students of English extracted from two corpora one from a technical university context corpus (totalling 950 written compositions) and the other from learners enrolled in the Humanities (totalling 750 written compositions). Considered an important design criterion for computer learner corpora studies, the students levels were measured using the Oxford Quick Placement Test and the scores obtained (0 to 60) were then related to the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) levels ranging from A1 to C2. Learners writing in a foreign language not only make errors related to grammar and vocabulary, but also with regard to their competence in the use of syntax, discourse relations and pragmatics among others, and the error coding system has been designed to attempt to address all the possible levels of error with as many sub-categories as required. Within the field of applied linguistics and language teaching/learning, many studies have been carried out over the years designed to address the phenomenon of interlanguage errors made by learners of English (Dusková, 1969; Green & Hecht, 1985; Lennon, 1991; Olsen, 1999 among many others). Previously, these studies involved analyzing a small number of texts with a limited number of tags, based on either linguistic taxonomies or surface structure categories of errors (Dulay, Burt, & Krashen 1982). However, in the last three decades, technological advances have been made which have facilitated the analysis of much larger amounts of data using computers for both the development of learner corpora and programs for a more detailed analysis of the learner data. The aim of the present research is two-fold. Firstly, we explore the nature of the errors coded in the corpus i.e. which errors are most frequent, including not only the main categories but also the most delicate levels of errors. Secondly, we address the question of the relationship, if any, of the learners competence levels and the type and frequency of the errors they make. The results show that grammar errors are the most frequent, and that the linguistic competence of the learners has a lower than expected influence on the most frequent types of errors coded in the corpus.We would like to acknowledge the support given for the TREACLE Project from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FFI2009-14436/FILO). The author would also like to express her gratitude to Mick O'Donnell and Susana Murcia for their very useful comments on the first draft of this article.Mac Donald, P. (2016). We All Make Mistakes! . Analysing an Error-coded Corpus of Spanish University Students Written English. Complutense Journal of English Studies. 24:103-129. https://doi.org/10.5209/CJES.53273S1031292

SLATE: A Super-Lightweight Annotation Tool for Experts

Many annotation tools have been developed, covering a wide variety of tasks and providing features like user management, pre-processing, and automatic labeling. However, all of these tools use Graphical User Interfaces, and often require substantial effort to install and configure. This paper presents a new annotation tool that is designed to fill the niche of a lightweight interface for users with a terminal-based workflow. Slate supports annotation at different scales (spans of characters, tokens, and lines, or a document) and of different types (free text, labels, and links), with easily customisable keybindings, and unicode support. In a user study comparing with other tools it was consistently the easiest to install and use. Slate fills a need not met by existing systems, and has already been used to annotate two corpora, one of which involved over 250 hours of annotation effort.Comment: To appear at ACL as a dem

Evaluation in Political Discourse Addressed to Women: Appraisal Analysis of Cosmopolitan\u27s Coverage of the 2014 US Midterm Elections

Before the US midterm elections of November 2014, the well-known women’s magazine Cosmopolitan decided to include politics in its contents. The editorial board stated that their aim was to encourage readers to vote and to be engaged with women’s rights advocay in the election process. To that end, Cosmopolitan created a new website, CosmoVotes, with content ranging from discussion of political issues to endorsement of specific candidates who were believed to advance women’s issues. Topics include labour rights, abortion, contraception, health, minimum wage and social equity. This paper evaluates the discourse of this new section of the Cosmopolitan website, together with readers’ responses, concentrating on evaluative language. In particular, we are concerned with differences between the editorial position and readers’ responses as viewed through the Appraisal framework (Martin & White, 2005), and the role that verbal processes play in the expression of evaluative meanings. The corpus used for the analysis consists of a selection of articles and readers’ opinions from CosmoVotes. The methodology is based on annotation of Appraisal features and processes related to the interpersonal dimension of meaning. Those features reveal how attitudes are evaluated and capture ideological positionings in this discourse. Our results show that CosmoVotes has special characteristics, such as a predominance of high intensification in the readers’ opinions, and strong negative judgements and expressions, while the magazine’s pieces on political issues are more nuanced and eschew intensification

An analysis of stance and voice in research articles across Chinese and British cultures, using the Appraisal Framework

Scholars from Mainland China are increasingly publishing in the medium of English, in order to gain visibility and credibility worldwide. However, the visibility of Chinese scholars in the Social Sciences is strikingly low. Due to the holistic, interpretative, reiterative nature of knowledge in the Social Sciences, writers have to work harder to establish personal credibility through claim-making negotiations, sharing sympathetic understanding and promoting tolerance in their readers (Becher, 1994; Becher & Trowler, 2001; Hyland, 2000). This thesis investigates differences in stance and voice style between scholars from Mainland China and Britain so as to derive new information which might be useful to novice researchers in the Social Sciences (particularly applied linguistics) who intend to publish internationally. A corpus of 30 research articles in applied linguistics was analysed in terms of Appraisal Theory (Martin & White 2005), theory of context (Xu & Nesi, 2017) and genre analysis (Swales 1990, 2004), using the UAM Corpus Tool (O’Donnell 2011). Findings from this analysis suggest that both the Chinese and the British authors are aware of the need to argue for their own opinions and maintain good relationships with their readers, but choose contrasting ways to realize these same purposes. Generally the Chinese authors try to maintain writer-reader relationships by avoiding explicit attitudinal evaluation of the work of others, while the British authors try to maintain writer-reader relationships by toning down or only evoking stance. The Chinese authors argue for their own positions by reinforcing their explicit attitudes, adding multiple references, sharpening the completion of tasks and construing claims as unquestioned, whereas the British authors argue for their own positions by explicitly evaluating people and phenomena. Because the statistically significant differences in stance and voice strategies revealed in this thesis indicate differences between Chinese and British scholars’ argumentative styles, they suggest the need for a new way of perceiving Chinese ethnolinguistic impact on research writing, and might also inform the teaching of academic writing in the social sciences