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Article published In: Language, Context and Text
Vol. 7:1 (2025) ► pp.95–118

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Using appraisal to support students’ inquiry into literature

ORCiD logo with link | University of Florida, USA
Published online: 5 September 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/langct.24006.kel
Abstract
This study centres around an analysis of appraisal resources in the poem “Three Friends of Mine” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. This analysis illustrates appraisal’s capacity to illuminate how individual language choices in the poem constitute a fabric of meaning (Peng, Xuanwei. 2008. Evaluative meanings in literary texts: The first step towards appraisal stylistics. In Nina Norgaard (ed.), Systemic functional linguistics in use: Odense working papers in language and communication, Volume 291, 665–684. Odense: University of Southern Denmark.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) wherein each impacts the other, as in Hood, Susan. 2019. Appraisal. In Geoff Thompson, Wendy L. Bowcher, Lise Fontaine & David Schonthal (eds.), The Cambridge handbook of systemic functional linguistics, 382–409. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar description of prosody; how appraisal focuses readers on the emotions and associations of the poem’s speaker as opposed to their own, which is crucial for successful interpretation; and how appraisal reveals that vibe is impacted not only by the prosody and inscribed meanings, but also by meanings evoked through the discourses that appraisal resources are deployed to embrace or reject. Implications for disciplinary literacy teaching are discussed.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Interpretation and SFL
  • 3.Appraisal
  • 4.Appraisal and literary text
  • 5.“Three Friends of Mine”
  • 6.Methodology
  • 7.Genre, structure and texture
  • 8.Findings
  • 9.Discussion
  • 10.Conclusion
  • References
References (50)
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