An Axiological Approach To Appraisal Theory

Appraisal theory (AT), a new development of systemic-functional linguistics (SFL), is an enhancement and advancement of the research on interpersonal meanings. There are,however, some weaknesses within the theory, which are hardly explored, such as the definition of evaluation, the axiological foundation and the categorization of attitude-expressing meanings of AT. Further, the axiological research on AT is barely engaged, leaving much to be desired. David Hume (1896: 5) once argued,"'Tis evident, that all the sciences have a relation, greater or less, to human nature; and that however wide any of them may seem to run from it, they still return back by one passage or another."For these reasons, this paper tries to examine AT from the perspective of axiology with human nature being the starting point.By utilizing the explanations or viewpoints on need by Marx, Maslow, Freud, Jung, Cittamatra and Dissipation Structure Theory, the argument that need is human nature may be justified. The phenomena of need are chaotic. Based on previous research (mainly Marx's and Maslow's) and through integrating the two methodologies of Life-Object and Life-Life, the paper distinguishes between two types of human needs:one the general, the other the specific. The general human needs break down into ten subdivisions, namely, living need, security need, emotion and belonging need, intercourse need, respect need, cognition need, aesthetic need, moral need, legal need, self-realization need, ultimate concern need and self-transcendence need; while specific human needs, as further refinements of the general ones, are the needs actualized in concrete circumstances. Herein, specific questions entail specific analyses.Human needs do not simply constitute a static pyramid-like hierarchical structure; they, however, form a complex, open-ended, hierarchical system network. As human feelings and thought are confined within some limens, some needs may not be sensed by the being that needs and may submerge as unconscious ones. In this system network: all the conscious and unconscious needs interplay and interchange with each other all the time; all kinds of general and specific needs change ceaselessly, and link with and influence one another, while in the meantime exchanging information incessantly with the environment. Moreover, human needs are characterized by certain relative hierarchy, and different needs, under certain circumstances, differ in their degrees of importance:some stand high as predominant needs; some lie low as inferior ones.On top of needs, the natures of value and evaluation can be defined. The nature of value is the positive or affirmative meaning that an object has for the living or development of the being with needs: if the object relates to only one need of the being with needs, value is to satisfy their one need; if the object concerns more than one need of the being with needs, value is the positive summation of all the satisfied and/or unsatisfied needs. Evaluation, then, in nature, is value judgment, a cognitive activity in which evaluator judges, according to some evaluative criterion, whether an object has positive or affirmative meaning (and its degree) for the living or development of the being with needs.From the perspective of axiology, AT is based upon emotivism, and ignoring the cognitive nature of evaluation, it has only unveiled the interpersonal function of evaluation and may not be amenable to Chinese discourse analysis. Since cognitivism has better revealed the cognitive nature of evaluation, this research intends to substitute cognitivism for emotivism as the axiological foundation for AT.This paper, after delving, both thoroughly and subtly, into the defects of the categorization of the attitude-expressing meanings in AT, holds the view that these flaws are rooted in two aspects: first, AT is axiologically based upon emotivism;second, from the very outset, AT is developed within the sphere of interpersonal meanings. Subsequently, the attitude-expressing meanings in AT are recategorized into two'king'umbrellas: evaluative attitudes and non-evaluative ones. Evaluative attitude and evaluation are synonymous and hence interchangeable in this paper. As axiology cares only about evaluation, it is necessary to categorize evaluative attitudes or evaluations further in more delicacy. According to the roles played by emotion and reason in the process of evaluation, evaluative attitudes or evaluations fall into three genres: emotion-dominated evaluations, reason-dominated evaluations and emotion-in-par-with-reason evaluations. Based on the fields in which evaluations are involved, however, evaluative attitudes or evaluations can be grouped into another four categories, namely: moral evaluations, legal evaluations, aesthetic evaluations and utility evaluations. The motives of evaluation are quite a maze, reflecting all types of complicate factors, and the evaluator, induced, confined or even cornered by them, has to ponder and choose, under certain circumstances, what specific evaluation to make. In SFL perspective, evaluation, being a special cognitive activity, centers upon ideational function, while at the same time, it may have interpersonal and/or textual function(s). Viewed from a broader perspective, evaluation is capable of five major, fundamental functions in human activities, i.e. leading,judging, choosing, predicting and exciting. We have to broaden our ken and understand in depth, in the interplay of world, language and human, all the functions dominated by that of leading.The categorization of evaluative linguistic forms hinges on that of evaluative linguistic meanings. In keeping with the nature of evaluation, the following evaluative meanings can be distinguished: key logical evaluative elements, evaluative criterion and value judgment as evaluation result. Key logical elements of evaluation form a two-layered system: evaluator and evaluand on the layer outside; the being that needs and object (including need object and non-need object) on the layer inside. In this system, each and every element has both its specific connotation and denotation.Broadly speaking, evaluative manifestations fall into two categories: evaluative expression and unintended (spontaneous) evaluative show, both of which have such manifestation means as language, behavior, feeling, etc. The linguistic display of evaluation is a crucial speech act. Being an indication of some (social and) psychological evaluative process, it is essentially dynamic, and a linguistic manifestation of the evaluative act which is closer to practice (in terms of changing the world) than other non-evaluative cognitions. From the perspective of SFL, evaluation results may evidence themselves with the aid of transitivity system, modulation system or thematic system.Linguistic evaluative manifestations make evaluative sentences, and in principle, so long as evaluators make evaluations and consciously,subconsciously or unconsciously display their results by means of language, evaluative sentences come into being. Whether listeners or readers can construe evaluations in such sentences is not a necessary condition in constituting evaluative sentences.The subjects of evaluative sentences have three breeds: information subject(SI), evaluative subjects(SE1, SE2,…SEi,…SEn i=1~n, n≥1, natural number )and need subjects (SN1, SN2,…SNi,…SNn i=1~n, n≥1, natural number). They may either be three in one or two in one or partly overlapped or separated from each other. The typical linguistic expression of evaluation is"X is positively/non-/negatively valuable". And in theory, for a complex evaluative sentence, evaluative meanings can be combined in different ways, nine in total.As to the categorization of evaluative sentences, more than one route may be identified. From the perspective of grammar, evaluative sentences can be divided into predicate evaluative sentences and non-predicate evaluative sentences; in terms of the basic types of evaluation, evaluative sentences fall into four groups: moral evaluative sentences, legal evaluative sentences, aesthetic evaluative sentences and utility evaluative sentences; according to their positive or negative polarization, evaluative sentences break down into two species: affirmative evaluative sentences and negative evaluative ones.On evaluative sentences evaluative meaning analysis can be made, i.e. identifying the linguistic evaluative manifestations in line with key logical evaluative elements, evaluative criterion and value judgment as evaluation result. Moreover, the fact that both predication analysis and case grammar analysis focus on sentence meaning with no regard to tense and word order makes possible a preliminary semantic structural analysis on evaluative sentences from these two angles.An evaluative sentence may include in it more than one judgment type, all intertwined and interpenetrated. Value judgment, fact judgment, probability judgment, ought-to judgment and apodeictic judgment are distinctively different from one another and are not mutually deductive. As to a specific evaluative sentence, all judgment types wherein embedded feature a certain hierarchy. And in evaluative sentences it is often fact judgment which intertangles with value judgment.With evaluative sentences being the media, often evaluative reasonings can be done which is of a twofold kind. One is from fact judgment to value judgment, the other being reasonings among value judgments, which can be further categorized, with a broad brush, into deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, analogical reasoning and preferential selection reasoning. Among the latter, deductive reasoning enjoys the status of being the most common. Evaluative sentences embody value, value reflects need, and need is human nature. So it is possible to construe the need(s) hidden in them as human nature. This need construal of evaluative sentences can be approached in two ways: one is to construe the need(s) of the being with needs; the other is to decode evaluator's need(s). Focusing on the first aspect and aided by some linguistic data, this paper makes a'need analysis'of evaluative sentences by resorting to the systemic-hierarchical need theory advanced by the author.A logic line runs through this paper, that is, beginning with need as human nature, the conceptions of both value and evaluation can be defined and on top of evaluation, the linguistic manifestation of evaluation (evaluative sentence) stand to be reasoned out. At length, this paper'cuts back its way'and makes an evaluative meaning analysis of evaluative sentences and then construes the needs hidden in them as human nature.