Attitude

Attitude is mapped as feelings and emotions construed in English texts, and referred to kinds of AFFECT (valuing as emotions), JUDGEMENT (valuing as assessment of human’s character) and APPRECIATION (valuing as assessment of “things” or phenomena). The attitudinal meanings are usually expressed in adjectives, but other lexico-grammatical features can also realise the attitudinal values explicitly or implicitly. The following sections will exemplify how each kind of attitude is realised.

Affect

Emotion is regarded as the centre of the expressive resource that human beings employ, and such dimension is regarded as affect in the Appraisal system. Affect is concerned with positive and negative feelings, such as un/happiness (love/hate), in/security (confident/unconfident), dis/satisfaction (pleased/annoyed) and so on. In this tutorial, we will only mark the lexico-grammatical features of affect as positive (+ affect) and negative (- affect) for the ease of identification. (The same would apply to the identification of the polarity other Appraisal resources. For details please see Methods.)

Affect resources are rare in academic writing since eliciting writers’ own feelings without support or evidence of authentic and authoritative references is usually not encouraged. However, affect could still be present in the academic writing on some fields of research such as ethnographic study, or at certain stages of the paper (e.g. findings and discussions with focus group interviews or case studies of respondents) that involve evaluation of emotions. Table 1 illustrates some examples of affect values with various grammatical realisation (or “parts of speech” in traditional grammar):

Text	Item	Appraised	Polarity	Lexico-grammatical realisation	Explicitness
…as functional discourse can be achieved without the interlocutors being secure in their use of the language.	secure	interlocutors	+affect	adjective	explicit
Although this text deals with the generally mundane subject of asking for directions, to my surprise students performed it with wild enthusiasm…	surprise	writer	+affect	noun	explicit
	wild enthusiasm	students	+affect	noun	explicit
Burns (2001) makes the point that students’ sense of security “evaporates” when confronted by authentic discourse exchanges.	evaporates	students	-affect	verb	implicit

Table 1. Lexico-grammatical realisation of affective values

Institutionalisation of attitudinal values

In literature reviews, among other academic written works, rephrasing (or “institutionalising”) semantic choices of affect into either judgement or appreciation meanings is common. As Figure 2 suggests, when emotional values towards people’s behaviour are institutionalised, they become judgement values; otherwise, institutionalisation of feeling towards aesthetics and values of “things” become appreciation values. In this way, writers can evaluate their research topic or issue without adding personal judgement. Table 2 shows some examples of institutionalising affect values using resources of judgement and appreciation (Please see next sections for explanation and more examples of judgement and appreciation)

Figure 2. Relationship among AFFECT, JUDGEMENT and APPRECIATION

Judgement	Affect	Appreciation
The students are so surprising that they performed the role play with wild enthusiasm.	To my surprise, students performed the role play with wild enthusiasm.	The enthusiastic students performed a surprising role play in the class.
It was not satisfying for the students to perform like that.	I was not satisfied with the students’ performance.	The students’ performance was not satisfactory.
* N/A	I am worried that the outcome may not reflect the whole picture of the study.	The outcome is worrying; it may fail to reflect the whole picture of the study.

Table 2. Examples of institutionalising affect values with resources of JUDGEMENT and APPRECIATION

* While “the same lexical attitudinal lexis can be used either to judge or appreciate” (Martin & White, 2005, p. 60), not every instance of affective expression can be institutionalised in both ways.

Judgement

Judgement deals with assessing people and their behaviour, or in other words, their character. The lexical choices of judgement can be roughly divided into judgement of esteem and sanction. Judgement of esteem involves “admiration and criticism” (Martin, 2000, p. 156) including (1) how ab/normal a person is, (2) how in/capable a person is and (3) how un/reliable a person is. Meanwhile, judgement of sanction involves praise and condemnation (Martin, 2000, p. 156), often codified as rules and regulation, telling how a person should behave, like honesty or morality. Like affective values, judgemental expressions can be identified according to their polarity and explicitness, with various lexico-grammatical realisations. Table 3 provides some examples of judgemental meanings expressed in academic writing.

Text	Item	Appraised	Polarity	Lexico-grammatical realisation	Explicitness
Teachers must take the initiative to introduce more authentic forms of spoken English into the curriculum…	take the initiative	teachers	+judgement	verb phrase	explicit
…in order to enhance our students’ ability, and indeed willingness, to confidently engage in conversational English.	enhance	teachers	+judgement	verb	explicit
	willingness	students	+judgement	noun	explicit
	confidently engage in	students	+judgement	verb phrase	explicit
Students are more motivated to use authentic conversational English.	motivated	students	+judgement	adjective	explicit
It would be presumptuous for local L2 English teachers to expect students to be able to engage in dynamic conversations…	presumptuous	teachers	-judgement	adjective	explicit

Table 3. Examples of judgemental meanings expressed in instances

Appreciation

When we construe institutionalised feelings towards the aesthetic or value of “things”, we turn to the appreciation resources to evaluate (1) how a thing is catching our attention, (2) how balanced or complex a thing is and (3) how worthwhile a thing is.

In literature reviews, as well as other academic writing, employing appreciation resources is common since we can use them to (1) emphasise how important the research topic is, (2) evaluate the usefulness of the supporting literature and research findings, (3) criticise the limitations of the previous research and so on. Adopting an evaluative stance towards one’s own research is important since it is essential for scholars to offer their opinions towards the issues and to open up new research areas through commenting on their research as well as the previous research by other scholars.

Table 4 illustrates some examples for a sample literature review employing explicit or implicit lexico-grammatical resources of appreciation, with either positive or negative values.

Text	Item	Appraised	Polarity	Lexico-grammatical realisation	Explicitness
I will consider the merits of using scripted and unscripted speaking tasks	merits	scripted and unscripted speaking tasks	+appreciation	noun	explicit
Teaching Hong Kong students to speak English is an educational conundrum.	conundrum	teaching Hong Kong students to speak English	-appreciation	noun	explicit
Real social discourse is unpredictable and dynamic and a result of “moment by moment creations” (Hughes and McCarthy cited in Burns 2001)	real	social discourse	+appreciation	adjective	explicit
	unpredictable	real social discourse	-appreciation	adjective	explicit
	dynamic	real social discourse	+appreciation	adjective	explicit
	moment by moment creations	real social discourse	-appreciation	noun phrase	implicit

Table 4. Examples of appreciative meanings expressed in a sample of literature review

 

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