Susan Hood

Faculty of Education, University of Technology, Sydney

The spread of interpersonal meaning: Propagating values in academic writing

In this paper I report on one aspect of a larger study that explores the construction of evaluative stance in academic research writing, from a discourse semantic perspective within SFL, that is drawing on Appraisal theory (Martin 2000). The paper focuses in particular on the prosodic patterning of interpersonal meanings in both published texts, and texts written by undergraduate students. I explore the means by which explicit Attitude positioned strategically in the text can impact or 'propagate' (Lemke 1998) across a considerable stretch or phase of text, with particular attention to the role of Graduation in this process. An analysis of the prosodic patterning of interpersonal meanings in the academic texts in this study reveals that prosodies of value can be construed both prospectively and retrospectively, and the preference for one or other strategy corresponds to the construction of a particular field kind of argument. The analyses of prosodic patterning contribute to a framework for deconstructing model texts in the teaching of EAP, and for negotiating appropriate rhetorical strategies with novice academic writers.

References:

Martin, J.R. 2000. 'Beyond exchange: appraisal systems in English'. In S. Hunston and G. Thompson (eds), Evaluation in text: authorial stance and the construction of discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (142-175).

Lemke, J.L. 1998. 'Resources for attitudinal meaning; Evaluative orientations in text semantics'. In Functions of Language, 5 (1). (33-56).