Appraisal Theory and Corpus Linguistics

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Appraisal Theory and Corpus Linguistics

• A Happy Union?

Monika Bednarek (Augsburg/Sydney)
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Appraisal Theory and Corpus Linguistics

• A Happy Union

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Starting point

• our maps of feeling (for affect, judgement and
  appreciation) have to be treated at this stage as
  hypotheses about the organisation of the relevant
  meanings offered as a challenge to those
  concerned with developing appropriate reasoning
  (Martin White 2005 46)

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Overview

• Background (corpus etc)
• Classification of Affect
• Discussion

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Background

• Post-doc project combining quantitative (corpus)
  studies with qualitative discourse analysis, use
  of appraisal theory
• Focus on terms denoting affect

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The corpus the BRC

• Conversation (4.206.058 words)
• News reportage (2.613.399 words)
• Fiction (6.688.459 words)
• Academic discourse (5.960.933 words)
• 19.5 million words

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Appraisal

• ENGAGEMENT
• GRADUATION
• ATTITUDE
• AFFECT
• APPRECIATION
• JUDGEMENT

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Classification of Affect

• Three major sets in/security (anxious/confident)
  dis/satisfaction (fed up/absorbed)
  un/happiness (sad/happy).
• Cultural construal positive Affect (happy) vs.
  negative Affect (sad).
• The feelings relate to future states or existing
  ones realis (like) vs. irrealis (want)

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Classification of Affect

• Behavioural surge (laugh, weep) vs. mental
  disposition (like, dislike).
• Intensity low (like) median (love) high
  (adore)
• Reaction to other (the boy liked the teacher/the
  teacher pleased the boy) vs. undirected mood (the
  boy was happy)
• (Martin White 2005 46-49)

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Discussion

• Types of Affect
• Portraying vs. Creating Emotion
• Invoking and Provoking Emotion
• Affect and Appreciation

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Affect types

• Un/happiness
• Dis/satisfaction
• Affect
• In/security
• Surprise

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Surprise

• Surprise negative (insecurity)?
• Corpus data
• Behavioural surges associated with affect terms
  in fiction sub-corpus (handout)
• Emotions conjoined with surprise (N, V)
  surprised in BRC) (handout)
• Surprise as a premodifying noun negative
  (attack), positive (party, gift), neutral
  (decision, move, step)

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Surprise

• Collocations of to surprise in fiction with
  volition (e.g. hoping to, wanted to, urge to,
  it would be nice to)
• I was hoping to surprise you -- a sort of
  unexpected wedding present, but it was no good.
• "Well, I have three children of my own now and I
  thought it would be nice to surprise them with
  the sugar mice on the tree, and also the
  chocolate cat."

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Surprise

• Other aspects
• semantic change (amazing)
• alarming vs. miraculous (Lemke 1998)
• psychological experiments (Wallace Carson 1973
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• Positivity/Negativity (construal of emotion vs.
  implied evaluation)

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Surprise and beliefs

• Expressions of surprise or non-surprise as
  indicators of beliefs/knowledge (schemas)
  (handout)
• No automatic correlation between positive
  emotions and positive evaluation (handout)
• Feelings construable as positive, negative,
  neutral

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Positive/negative construal

• Inscribed
• I was shocked negative Surprise
•  Contextually implied
• What a lovely positive Appreciation surprise
  positive Surprise
• I was surprised positive Surprise and
  delighted Happiness

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Dis/inclination vs. In/security
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• Avoiding overlap
• Irrealis cuts across all emotions grammatically
  vs. lexically (desire, want, fear, afraid of)
• Dis/inclination does not allow a realis Trigger

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Un/happiness Dis/satisfaction Emotion In/secur
ity Dis/inclination I Surprise Realis Trigg
er Irrealis T
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Fuzzy system of modified Affect

• Un/happiness (old)
• Dis/satisfaction (old)
• Affect In/security (new)
• Dis/inclination (new)
• Surprise (new)
• (? see also handout)

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Portraying vs. creating emotion (?)

• How can Emoters emotions be portrayed
  (Portraying emotion)?
• vs.
• How does the text create an emotional response
  (in the reader) (Creating emotion AMBIENCE)?

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How to portray Affect

• Martin Rose (2003)
• Mental disposition (fear, worry)
• Behavioural surge (wept, smiled)
• Unusual behaviour (very quiet, drinking too much)
• Cognitive Linguistics/Psychology
• Emotion schemas (cognitive evaluation, antecedent
  events/eliciting conditions, psycho-physiological
  expressions, actions) (handout)

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Invoking Affect (?)

• the selection of ideational meanings is enough
  to invoke evaluation, even in the absence of
  attitudinal lexis that tells us directly how to
  feel (Martin White 2005 62, emphases mine)
• Emotion
• Portraying Creating
• ? Invoking indirectly portraying or creating?

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Provoking Affect

• Metaphor and Emotion
• Metaphorical conceptualisation of Affect
  (portraying)
• e.g.THE EMOTION IS A FORCE (broken heart,
  knocked back, devastated, deeply hurt)
• Metaphors creating emotional response (ambience)
• e.g. Life's but a walking shadow, a poor
  player, that struts and frets his hour upon the
  stage, and then is heard no more it is a tale
  told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
  signifying nothing. (Shakespeare, Macbeth)
• ? Provoking metaphorical conceptualisation or
  creating?

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Affect and Appreciation (?)

• Overt vs. covert Affect
• thats surprising
• thats surprising to me Appreciation
• I find that surprising Reaction
• that is a surprise
• that is a surprise to me
• to my surprise,
• that surprises me Affect
• Im surprised

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Overt vs. Covert Affect

• Somewhat to his surprise (oA), Dalgliesh found
  himself accepting. But then the whole encounter
  had been a little surprising (cA) (Fiction)
• The griot is both excited (oA) by others and
  exciting (cA) to them There is a double
  complementarity (Irvine 1990 154)

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Bridging opinion and emotion

• Opinion Emotion
• Judg App CovA OvA

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Outlook

• Surprise and counter-expectation
• Affect Ambience
• Polyphony (blends, fusing, conflation,
  collocation)

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• Thank You

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?

• In the aftermath, a huge fog of black smoke rose
  over the city, while several bodies lay in the
  courtyard of the hotel. (Guardian)
• At a bookshop hit by the explosion a woman stood
  covered in blood, clutching her hand where the
  bones showed through. (Telegraph)

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?

• As smoke billowed across central Baghdad and as
  petrol tanks in nearby cars caught fire and
  exploded, rescue teams carried out the wounded on
  stretchers or helped hastily bandaged guards to
  limp to ambulances. Bullets from weapons
  abandoned by guards in the explosion fired off
  occasionally as the flames engulfed them,
  sending rescue workers scampering. (Times)

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?

• Soft white clouds remained motionless against an
  azure blue sky. Between the many breaks in the
  cloud the rays of a thin evening sun shafted down
  at an acute angle to spotlight the pastoral
  scene. Away to the west a flock of Canada geese
  was heading home to descend on one of the larger
  lakes in the distance. In the foreground another
  smaller fock was taking off from the little lake
  on the south side. ... They wheeled in unison
  into a shaft of light which held them for a
  second or so before they soared over the car and
  away. (Fiction)