British Newspaper Discourse Lesson 4: Review and extension Evaluation

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British Newspaper DiscourseLesson 4 Review and
extensionEvaluation persuasion
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A brief quiz

• What is described as the voice of the
  newspaper? What characteristics does it have?
• What does the inverted pyramid refer to?
• What information is usually included in the
  lead or intro to a news story?

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Commenting

• In the editorial, who is evaluated
• favourably? (give ex of vocabulary used)
• unfavourably? (give ex of vocabulary used)
• Underline example(s) of
• modality
• a rhetorical question
• first person plural pronouns who do they refer
  to?
• a metaphor

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• A brave widow and our broken society
• 19th January 2008
• Brave Devastated widow Helen Newlove spoke wise
  words about today's society
• Anyone who wants to know how to tackle the tide
  of drunken, mindless lawbreaking that threatens
  to engulf our communities, should read the wise
  words of Garry Newlove's widow, Helen.
• Despite still raw grief for the loss of her
  husband and the father of her three daughters,
  Mrs Newlove set out a clear template for dealing
  with Britain's social breakdown in her impact
  statement to the court that this week found three
  youths guilty of kicking her husband to death.
• The first culprit was the legal system. The
  ringleader of the gang had been released on bail
  hours before the attack.
• Mrs Newlove believes that we have a "justice
  system that does not do enough to protect decent
  hard working people".
• Yesterday, in a separate case, a judge agreed
  that our obsession with rights was leaving
  society "bedevilled by feral youth".
• Then, Mrs Newlove criticised the police. The gang
  that killed her husband had, along with others,
  she said, been terrorising the neighbourhood for
  weeks.
• Local police had done nothing to stop them. What
  kind of policing is it that allows criminal gangs
  to make people prisoners in their own homes?
• But Mrs Newlove did not limit her criticism to
  the authorities. Parents must "take
  responsibility for their children".
• It's up to parents to teach their children
  respect for authority and for other people. It's
  up to parents to set an example about drinking.
  It's up to parents to ensure that truanting
  children get the education that will put them on
  the path to a better life.
• Mrs Newlove and her daughters have suffered a
  terrible loss, but if we act on what she has
  learnt, we'll be taking the first steps to making
  our streets as safe as they ought to be.

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Evaluation

• Evaluation is the broad cover term for the
  expression of the speaker or writers attitude or
  stance towards, viewpoint on, or feelings about
  the entities or propositions that he or she is
  talking about. That attitude may relate to
  certainty or obligation or desirability of any
  number of variables
• Hunston Thompson 1999

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• Evaluation is a significant element of our lives
  as a device for interpreting the world and
  offering this evaluation to others, it pervades
  human behaviour when we interact with the world
  around us, we perceive, categorize and evaluate
  what we encounter. Our short term evaluations
  turn into long term values.
• (Bednarek, M. Evaluation in Media Discourse )

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Expressing opinion

• The most obvious function is to tell the reader
  what the writer thinks or feels about something.
• Every act of evaluation expresses a communal
  value system and every act of evaluation goes
  towards building up that value system. This value
  system is in turn a component of the ideology of
  the society that has produced the text.

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Maintaining relations

• The second function of evaluation is to build and
  maintain relations between writer and reader
• Evaluation can be used to manipulate the reader,
  to persuade him or her to see things in a
  particular way

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How to recognise evaluation

• Some lexical items are clearly evaluative with
  evaluation as their chief function and meaning
  e.g.
• Adjectives splendid, terrible, obvious,
  surprising, important
• Adverbs happily, unfortunately, plainly,
  possibly, necessarily
• Nouns success, failure, tragedy, triumph,
  likelihood
• Verbs succeed, fail, win, lose, doubt

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Evaluative and non-evaluative

• Jane is a genius genius is a comparative term,
  the assessment of genius-ness is highly
  subjective and to be a genius is socially valued
  positively
• Jane is a student
• Objective category? Value free?, purely
  descriptive?
• Connotations?

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Synonyms and evaluation

• assist collaborate collude engage
• Help interfere join meddle participate
• All have a meaning of being involved in something
  or taking part in an activity
• But they have different evaluative values

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• Assist and help positive
• Meddle and interfere negative
• Collude evaluates the activity negatively as well
  as the involvement
• Collaborate, engage, join, participate
• Do not evaluate the participation, it depends on
  the nature of the activity

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Approval and disapproval

• Dewy-eyed and sentimental
• An attitude towards the past speaker
  disapproval
• Flag-waving
• The speaker disapproves of this kind of
  patriotism
• Rebel vs malcontent
• Execution vs killing, murder, slaughter

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persuasion

• The choice of lexis provides evaluations which
  can be built up to form a position or stance to
  persuade readers of values.

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Grammar

• Certain aspects of grammar have been associated
  with evaluation
• Intensifiers
• Comparators (e.g comparatives and superlatives)
• Hedges (e.g. sort of, about,like, a bit, perhaps)
• Emphatics (for sure, certainly)
• modals

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evaluation

• Involves comparison comparative adjectives and
  adverbs, adverbs of degree, comparator adverbs
  such as just, even, only, at least expressions
  of negativity
• Is subjective markers of subjectivity
• Is value laden markers of value, including
  indications of goal-achievemnt or non-achievement)

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Evaluation in texts

• See Hunston and Thompson 2000
• Chapter 1 evaluation an introduction

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• Mori poll
• January 2007
• What population of the UK do you estimate are
  immigrants?
• Daily Express readers believed that 21 of the
  population were immigrants
• Daily Mail readers thought that 19 of the
  population were immigrants and
• Guardian readers thought that 11 of the
  population were immigrants.
• In reality, approximately 7 of the population
  were immigrants

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Representation of refugees and asylum seekers in
UK newspapers Baker Gabrielotos 2006
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Representation of refugees and asylum seekers in
UK newspapers Baker Gabrielotos 2006
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pouring water
pouring rain
flood
streaming water
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flooded by

• Britain flooded by cheap heroin from Afghanistan
  - Independent ...

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Representation of refugees and asylum seekers in
UK newspapers Baker Gabrielotos 2006
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Representation of refugees and asylum seekers in
UK newspapers Baker Gabrielotos 2006
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Representation of refugees and asylum seekers in
UK newspapers Baker Gabrielotos 2006
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Representation of refugees and asylum seekers in
UK newspapers Baker Gabrielotos 2006
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Representation of refugees and asylum seekers in
UK newspapers Baker Gabrielotos 2006
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• What other differences in evaluation would you
  expect in the newspapers we have looked at?

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• The Daily Ex-Princess
• The Torygraph
• The Indescribablyboring

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Sources

• http//eprints.lancs.ac.uk/250/1/Discourses_of_ref
  ugees_and_asylum_seekers_in_UK_newspapers-CADAAD20
  06.pdf
• http//eprints.lancs.ac.uk/265/1/Representation_of
  _refugees_and_asylum_seekers_in_UK_newspapers-BAAL
  2006.pdf