Peter R. R. White

5Evaluative contents in verbal communication

Abstract: This chapter discusses recent scholarship concerned with the analysis of language interpreted as expressing evaluative meanings. It considers work undertaken within semantics, pragmatics, discourse analysis and corpus linguistics and makes special reference to recent developments within the computational linguistics field of “sentiment analysis”. The chapter explores evaluative meaning making under two broad headings: 1. attitudinal evaluations by which positive or negative assessments are conveyed and 2. evaluative positionings by which propositions are construed as more or less reliable, contentious or agreed upon. Under the first heading, the distinction between explicitly ...

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