Appraisal
Table of contents
Appraisal is a framework for analyzing the language of evaluation. It has emerged from within systemic functional linguistics (see, for example, Halliday 1994; Martin 1992; Matthiessen 1995) and was driven in its early days by work in the field of educational linguistics and the development of Australia’s genre-based literacy programs (see, for example, Iedema, Feez & White 1994; Christie & Martin 1997; Martin 2000). It provides techniques for the systematic analysis of evaluation and stance as they operate in whole texts and in groupings of texts. It is concerned with the social function of these resources, not simply as the means by which individual speakers/writers express their feelings and take stands, but as the means by which they engage with socially-determined value positions and thereby align and dis-align themselves with the social subjects who hold to these positions.