Evaluation in experimental research articles

This thesis examines evaluation in experimental research articles in terms of the meanings made and their contribution to the organisation of the articles. After an introduction to the phenomenon of evaluation in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 surveys recent work concerning the process of scientific discovery and the writing of research articles. Chapter 3 returns to evaluation and its place in various theories of discourse, mainly those of Sinclair and of Halliday. The model of evaluation proposed in this thesis is set out in the next three chapters, dealing in turn with the Status, Value and Relevance functions of evaluation. Status is the function of evaluation which bestows entity, assessing along a certain-uncertain parameter. Value bestows quality and assesses along a good-bad parameter. Evaluation of Relevance is meta-discoursal and marks significance. Relevance Markers are identified, which progressively chunk and organise the text. Comparisons between texts analysed for Status, Value and Relevance demonstrate a movement towards the theoretical and an increase in complexity of argument as the sub-discipline under discussion progresses. Chapter 7 investigates the contribution of evaluation towards text structure and notes a number of ways in which discourse units in experimental research articles may be organised. The concluding chapter, Chapter 8, discusses some of the practical and theoretical implications of the work described in the thesis. The Appendix contains the research articles which comprise the corpus

Coming to terms with success

Corpus studies have taught us that many lexical items regularly co-occur with specific evaluative meanings, to the extent that those items themselves can imply attitude. Examples can be obvious, such as ‘recover from + something bad’, or less obvious, such as ‘cause + something bad’. When such an item co-occurs with an opposite meaning, it has been argued that the reader may draw the conclusion that the speaker is being insincere or ironic. Phrases such as ‘come to terms with’ are interesting in this regard. The Cobuild dictionary asserts that ‘come to terms with’ co-occurs with negative meaning (as in ‘come to terms with failure’). In at least half the cases found, however, and even in the example quoted in that dictionary, ‘come to terms with’ is used with an item that appears to be positive, such as ‘success’. In this paper it is argued that this cannot be interpreted as insincerity or irony, but that it forces a reinterpretation of the positive term, along the lines of ‘success may seem to be a good thing but it necessitates considerable life adjustment’. In more interesting cases, the item following ‘come to terms with’ relates to another individual and thus an interpretation of conflicting points of view is required. An invented example would be ‘Joe has to come to terms with Mary’s success’, where ‘success’ may be positive for Mary but negative for Joe. A genuine example, from a White House press conference, is ‘The US must come to terms with China’s industrial development’, where a divergence in viewpoint is imposed on the US and China. This paper develops this argument, discusses how similar phrases might be found, and illustrates how the imposition of conflicting points of view is used in discourse

A linguistic ethnography of theatre production

Voices and Practices in Applied Linguistics comprises a selection of original applied linguistics-based research on the theme of the diversity of Applied Linguistics and in Applied Linguistics. It is a unique collection of reflections and cutting-edge research relating to academic, policy and professional fields of Applied Linguistics, featuring chapters written by founders of the field, established researchers, and rising stars. This accessible, eclectic and forward-looking volume is significant both for research and practice. It highlights current globalised perspectives on diversity in language use and communication, across a variety of contexts, and with a rich mix of frameworks, methodologies and participants. Compiled and edited by a team of academic experts in the field, this edited collection will be of interest to established and emerging researchers in Applied Linguistics globally. It will also be relevant to language professionals, practitioners, and policy makers. The volume draws together papers from the 2017 British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) conference, marking the 50th anniversary of its inaugural meeting. Founded in the mid-1960s, this UK-based professional association provides a forum for Applied Linguistics and its annual meeting brings together researchers and language professionals from across this field

Introduction. Converging ways of applying corpus linguistics

Corpus analysis is an area of research that has broadened the scope of a number of different fields of language analysis. One aspect of this research is quantitative. For more than sixty years, linguists have demonstrated that language features can be counted and frequencies calculated, and that these data are useful for the interpretation and understanding of language. For this reason, corpus analysis has been used in several fields of knowledge to support or challenge hypotheses and theories. In this volume our intention is to show that corpus analysis not only deals with a large amount of numbers and quantities, it also comprises studies that consider both quantitative and qualitative analysis.Carrió Pastor, ML.; Hunston, S. (2012). Introduction. Converging ways of applying corpus linguistics. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada. 25(1):11-14. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/78184S111425

Multi-dimensional analysis, text constellations, and interdisciplinary discourse

Multi-Dimensional Analysis (MDA) has been widely used to explore register variation. This paper reports on a project using MDA to explore the features of an interdisciplinary academic domain. Six dimensions of variation are identified in a corpus of 11,000 journal articles in environmental studies. We then focus on articles in one interdisciplinary journal, Global Environmental Change (GEC). It is expected that they will diverge sufficiently to produce differences that are analogous to register differences. Instead of identifying these “registers” on external criteria, we use the dimensional profiles of individual texts to identify ‘constellations’ of texts sharing combinations of features. Six such constellations are derived, consisting of texts with commonalities in their approaches to research: the development of predictive models; quantitative research; discussions of theory and policy; and human-environment studies focusing on individual voices. The identification of these constellations could not have been achieved through an a priori categorisation of texts