| Evaluation has become a key term in discourse studies in the recent years and has proved to be an effective way of analyzing academic texts. But while studies have shown the validity of evaluation analysis in review genres, its role in seemingly more promotional genres has largely been neglected. This thesis aims at the evaluative resources in the book blurbs (BBs). Situated at the academic–commercial/promotional interface, BBs provide information for potential readers while make positive evaluations to persuade them to buy the "product". My overall purpose of the thesis is to lay bare the communicative and rhetorical functionality of evaluative configurations—recurrent evaluative choices in a group of related texts in the BBs in the field of discourse study.The theoretical framework drawn upon in this study is APPRAISAL Theory. I will initially analyze expressions on ATTITUDE and GRADUATION from two perspectives: a synoptic perspective and dynamic perspective. In other words, I will attend to patterns—APPRAISAL polarity (positive or negative bias), APPRAISAL mode (inscribed or invoked) as well as APPRAISAL category (preferences in the use of evaluative resources) across the texts and finally co–articulating of evaluation within certain individual texts. Evaluative choices are then interpreted to explicate a range of evaluative strategies employed by reviewers, and the implications of choosing among different strategies.The data used for this study include 30 BBs in the field of discourse studies from three most widely–known publishing companies in the English–speaking world: Continuum, Palgrave Macmillan and Routledge ranging from the year 2004 to 2011. Each publisher has the on–line blurb from which I choose 10 books on the most popular website www.amazon.com.It is found that evaluation in the BBs goes beyond a running commentary on the book. It is "reasoned evaluation", i.e. evaluation should achieve the dual demands of "objectivity" and "persuasiveness", hence entice the potential customer to buy the "product". The "objectivity" is primarily achieved by:A) much use of GRADUATION–invoking attitude, particularly Quantity and Enrichment in Force. Both serve a major role in retaining a sense of "objectivity". B) extensive use of APPRECIATION, which is least personalized compared with ATTITUDE and JUDGEMENT. Besides, Valuation is more frequently employed than Composition and Reaction.Another is concerned with "persuasiveness", which is achieved by:A) "overt persuader", or inscribed attitude is "asserted" positively and very often "up–scaled". In other words, the review author relies heavily on the positive evaluation in an explicit way and many of them are implicit–superlative.B) "covert persuader", or inscribed attitude is "assumed" ,because the positivity of the book is treated as "given" and does not require evidence or justification. Further, negative evaluation plays a part in persuading the customer in an implicit way. In my data, I have found that all the negative evaluation invariably target to the field rather or subject matter rather than the book under review.From the dynamic perspective, it is found in my data: of the three types of prosodic realizations, Saturation is more often employed. Or to be more specific: the initial expressions of ATTITUDE (very often APPRECIATION) are likely to be reiterated elsewhere randomly in the text.Besides, resources of GRADUATION play an important role in the extension of prosodic realizations, particularly when Quantity/ Enrichment in FORCE and Valeur in FOCUS are used. This does not only retain a sense of "objectivity" while suggesting positive evaluation but help the evaluative stance realized prosodically .The thesis contributes a theoretical explanation of appraisal of the "neglected genre"—BBs in the context of academic evaluation. And practically, it will facilitate professional or lay readers to write BBs that are both descriptive and analytical which go beyond a simple personal response. |
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