1. Evaluation and Text Types Augsburg, 23 July 2005 Evaluation and stance in public and commercial broadcasters’ news bulletins Gisela Redeker & Evelien Klok University of Groningen This ppt file will be made available at http://www.let.rug.nl/~redeker

2. 23 July 2005Redeker & Klok2 Overview Public vs Commercial Broadcasters’ News Corpus: Internet News Bulletins Appraisal Analysis Results Preliminary Conclusions Questions and Problems

3. 23 July 2005Redeker & Klok3 Public and Commercial News Broadcasts Dutch public broadcaster NOS –Mission: information, inspiration, entertainment –TV news: NOS Journaal –Internet news: www.nos.nlwww.nos.nl Dutch commercial broadcaster RTL4 –Mission: easy entertainment –TV news: RTL4 Nieuws –Internet news: www.rtl.nlwww.rtl.nl

4. 23 July 2005Redeker & Klok4 Corpus of Internet News Bulletins 30 topic-matched pairs of texts (NOS, RTL4) collected on six days between 29 Sept – 6 Oct 2004 (excluding the weekend) Topics: national and international political news, some human interest items Number of words: minmaxmediantotal NOS99 494 1686046 RTL478311101.53633

5. 23 July 2005Redeker & Klok5 Text Lengths per Category (# words) CategoryNOSRTL4difference National political news232.4121.1111.3 International political news219.9118.2101.7 Human interest146.4125.121.3

6. 23 July 2005Redeker & Klok6 Appraisal Analysis: Attitude Affect: emotional positioning Judgement: ethical positioning –explicit, provoked, evoked Appreciation: esthetic positioning Based on Iedema et al (1994), White (1998), and Martin & Rose (2003) Added: source of attitude (not only for affect)

7. 23 July 2005Redeker & Klok7 Appraisal Analysis: Engagement Monogloss –Facts, author’s interpretations, presuppositions Dialogic Contraction –Disclaim: Denial, Counter –Proclaim: Pronounce, Concur, Endorse Dialogic Expansion –Entertain –Attribute: Acknowledge, Distance –Report (our addition)

8. 23 July 2005Redeker & Klok8 Appraisal Analysis: Graduation Force –Intensity –Quantity (amount, time, space) –Enhancement Focus –Valeur (sharpening/softening of category boundaries) –Fulfilment (qualification of processes)

9. 23 July 2005Redeker & Klok9 Quantitative Results: Attitudes

10. 23 July 2005Redeker & Klok10 Quantitative Results: Engagement

11. 23 July 2005Redeker & Klok11 Engagement: Dialogic Expansion

12. 23 July 2005Redeker & Klok12 Quantitative Results: Graduation

13. 23 July 2005Redeker & Klok13 Preliminary Conclusions Compared to RTL4 Internet bulletins, NOS news bulletins: –give more background (explanations, reactions, past and related events) for political news items; –contain more Attitudes, esp. a very high number of negative Judgements; –give more quoted or reported statements (Acknowledge); –contain more Graduation, esp. intensifiers, attitude-strengthening quantifications, and focus softeners.

14. 23 July 2005Redeker & Klok14 Problems and Questions Text-level quantitative analysis ignores differences in length and content –Classification of sentences (main news, background, etc.) –Sentence-level comparisons (to correlate codings) How to deal with quoted discourse? –Our analysis includes Attitudes in discourse from other sources (and codes them as Acknowledge, Distance, or Report), but does not analyse the textual function of attributed material (e.g. Denial, Counter) When to code Graduation? –Force: Quantity was only coded when it induced an attitudinal stance

15. 23 July 2005Redeker & Klok15 References Fairclough, N. (1995). Media discourse. London: Arnold. Hood, S. (2004). Appraising research. Taking a stance in academic writing. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Technology, Sidney. Hunston, S. & Thompson, G. (eds.) (2000). Evaluation in text: Authorial stance and the construction of discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Iedema, R., Feez, S., White, P.R.R. (1994). Media literacy. Sydney: Disadvantaged Schools Program, NSW Department of School Education. Martin, J.R., & Rose, D. (2003). Working with discourse. Meaning beyond the clause. London: Continuum. White, P.R.R. (1998). Telling media tales. The news story as rhetoric. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Sydney. White, P.R.R. (2001-2005). An outline of appraisal. The appraisal website. http://www.grammatics.com/appraisal/index.html (1 October 2004). White P.R.R. (2003). Beyond modality and hedging: a dialogic view of the language of intersubjective stance. Text 23(2): 259-284.