Evaluative Meanings and Disciplinary Values - eTheses Repository ...

while the BC examples evaluate the extent to which an organization is able to carry out
important (and potentially profit-making) functions such as cross-cultural marketing and
forging close customer relationships. Thus, in my corpora, applied linguists may attempt to
see and evaluate intangible psychological skills, whereas business studies may tend to
evaluate business activities that have a clear external manifestation. This finding is also
associated with what I am calling the animacy of the research target: in applied linguistics,
human entities such as students, learners and listeners are targeted, whereas in business
studies, inanimate entities such as technologies, companies and firms form the principal focus
of analysis for the researcher.
Another finding in this group is that applied linguists seem to be more likely to use
this pattern to generalize skills, whereas writers in business studies are more likely to
use them to particularize. This aspect is manifested most clearly in observed differences in the
collocating adverbs that occur with these patterns across the two corpora. As one of the
distinctive features gradability of attitude, adverbs often indicate how strongly we
judge, feel about or appreciate someone or something (Martin & Rose, 2007). For instance,
adverbs of low intensity (e.g. downtoners) such as equally (10), less (3) and probably (2)
co-occur with SKILFULNESS patterns in ALC, whereas those of high intensity (e.g. boosters)
such as more (8), very (3) and particularly (2) appear more frequently in BC. While these
adverbs indicate the scale of intensity (i.e. how skilful the entity is at something), they also
show differences in the kinds of things that are appreciated in the two disciplines. In
particular, applied linguistics evaluates abilities or skills in groups of people (e.g. students,
participants, listeners), whereas business studies focuses more on the superiority of groups of
institutions, a performance, or an operation (e.g. industries, government program, company).
Let us consider the following concordances with equally from ALC and with more, quite, so
and very from BC. (N.B. The following concordances with equally imply how things are
generalized in applied linguistics, whereas the concordances with more, quite, so and very
express how things are particularized in business studies.)
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