Session 5

Question 1

How can we use Language to interact with others?

Answer 1

Because language allows us to:
1. Take on various role
2. Ask form provide, or demand information/action
3. Express feelings and opinions
4. Hide or emphasize information
5. Engage with other perspectives and possibilities
6. Establish and maintain relationships

Question 2

How does the author use language to interact with the audience? (And what is the abbreviation when analyzing a text?)

Answer 2

1. He takes on a role. (RO)
2. He asks for, provides, or demands information/action. (IA)
3. He expresses feelings and opinions (FO)
4. He hides or emphasizes information (HE)
5. He engages with other perspectives and possibilities (PP)
6. He establishes and maintains relationships with peers/readers (RL)

Question 3

Why is understanding interpersonal resources important?

Answer 3

1. To use language effectively and appropriately in our own writing.
2. To express degrees of certainty.
3. To evaluate the way others make meaning implicitly and explicitly.
4. To discriminate between objective and subjective points of view.
5. To understand ideological positions and be critical of more “hidden” massages.

Question 4

What is the Appraisal system?

Answer 4

1. One system of analysis within the interpersonal metafunction.
2. It is a big category of how we look at how evaluation is expressed in a text (spoken or written).
3. Sentiment can be expressed in different ways and with different degrees of force and levels of engagement.
4. Other related analyses are:
5. Sentiment analysis
6. Hedging analysis
7. Stance analysis

Question 5

What are the levels of the appraisal system?

Answer 5

Question 6

What should we be able to answer on the appraisal system in the exam?

Answer 6

If we ask about any of these:
You should know they are part
of the Appraisal system and
be able to say in general what
the Appraisal system
does/offers!

Question 7

What are the big questions in Appraisal analysis?

Answer 7

1. A writer’s style – how they present themselves as, for example, more or less deferential, dominating, authoritative, inexpert, cautious, conciliatory, etc.
2. How different uses of evaluative language construct different authorial
   voices / textual personas
3. How different genres / text types may conventionally employ evaluative
   strategies
4. What the underlying, often covert values in a text
5. The different assumptions speakers/writers make about the belief systems of their intended audiences
6. The communicative strategies by which some discourses (e.g. “academic
   texts”) construct supposedly ‘objective’ or impersonal modes of textuality

Question 8

Name the types of expression in the Appraisal system

Answer 8

1. Attitude: How opinions or attitudes are expressed (Part of FO).
2. Engagement: How the author includes and aligns with attitudes expressed (Part of PP).
3. Graduation: How the author grades (strengthens or weakens) attitudes expressed,

Question 9

Where do you expect stronger graduation? Where weaker?