Adjective complementation patterns and judgement: Aligning lexical-grammatical and discourse-semantic approaches in appraisal research
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Hang Su
Hang Su is a professorial research fellow at Sichuan International Studies University, Chongqing, China. His research interests include corpus linguistics, systemic functional linguistics, and (corpus) pragmatics. His recent publications have appeared in, for example,
Applied Linguistics, Journal of Pragmatics, Pragmatics, English Today , andLanguage Resources and Evaluation . Address for correspondence: Centre for Linguistic, Literary & Cultural Studies, Sichuan International Studies University, Chongqing, 400031, China. Email: suhangunique@hotmail.com
and
Susan Hunston
Susan Hunston is a Professor of English Language at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her research interests include corpus linguistics, systemic functional linguistics etc. She has published widely in
Applied Linguistics, Text & Talk, Functions of Language, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics , among many others, and is the author of monographs published by Cambridge University Press, Routledge, and John Benjamins. Address for correspondence: Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK. Email: s.e.hunston@bham.ac.uk
Abstract
This study takes a lexical-grammatical approach to exploring the evaluation of human behaviour and/or character. It uses adjective complementation patterns as the starting point to examine the lexical-grammatical resources at risk in the appraisal system of judgement, aiming to explore the extent to which we can arrive at the same categorization of the resources realizing judgement if a formal or lexical-grammatical approach, rather than a discourse-semantic one, is taken. Using a corpus compiled of texts categorized as ‘Biography’ in the British National Corpus, the study, on the one hand, shows that most of the items identified can be very satisfactorily classified in terms posited in the judgement system, suggesting that the nomenclature from that model is useful. On the other hand, a considerable number of items have also been identified which construe attitudes towards emotional types of personality traits, leading to the proposal of a potentially useful new judgement category and further an adjusted system of judgement. The heuristic potential of aligning the lexical-grammatical and discourse-semantic approaches to appraisal is further discussed.
About the authors
Hang Su is a professorial research fellow at Sichuan International Studies University, Chongqing, China. His research interests include corpus linguistics, systemic functional linguistics, and (corpus) pragmatics. His recent publications have appeared in, for example, Applied Linguistics, Journal of Pragmatics, Pragmatics, English Today, and Language Resources and Evaluation. Address for correspondence: Centre for Linguistic, Literary & Cultural Studies, Sichuan International Studies University, Chongqing, 400031, China. Email: suhangunique@hotmail.com
Susan Hunston is a Professor of English Language at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her research interests include corpus linguistics, systemic functional linguistics etc. She has published widely in Applied Linguistics, Text & Talk, Functions of Language, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, among many others, and is the author of monographs published by Cambridge University Press, Routledge, and John Benjamins. Address for correspondence: Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK. Email: s.e.hunston@bham.ac.uk
Acknowledgement
We thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this paper. The first author, Hang Su, would also like to acknowledge the support he got for this study from the National Research Centre for Foreign Language Education (MOE Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at Universities), Beijing Foreign Studies University, China, where he has been an Adjunct Research Fellow.
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© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Announcement
- Clichés as evaluative resources: A socio-cognitive study
- Grammatical choices of ditransitive patterns in academic articles
- Self-quotations and politeness: The construction of discourse events and its pragmatic implications
- New biomedical practices and discourses: Focus on surrogacy
- Textual functions of metonymies in Anthony Browne’s picture books: A multimodal approach
- Adjective complementation patterns and judgement: Aligning lexical-grammatical and discourse-semantic approaches in appraisal research
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Announcement
- Clichés as evaluative resources: A socio-cognitive study
- Grammatical choices of ditransitive patterns in academic articles
- Self-quotations and politeness: The construction of discourse events and its pragmatic implications
- New biomedical practices and discourses: Focus on surrogacy
- Textual functions of metonymies in Anthony Browne’s picture books: A multimodal approach
- Adjective complementation patterns and judgement: Aligning lexical-grammatical and discourse-semantic approaches in appraisal research
