Evaluative Meanings and Disciplinary Values - eTheses Repository ...

performance, whereas researchers in business studies are more interested in institutional
forms of performance such as profitability levels. Thus, business studies is less likely to focus
on individual ability or knowledge (e.g. see the first BC example how the company survived).
9.2. Relation 2: Attribute
We now turn from connection meanings, to the second set of relation meanings expressed by
the pattern A DJ PR EP N, which (as discussed at the beginning of this chapter) I have called
attribute meanings. Attribute is simply paraphrased as something belongs to something,
someone/something has someone/something or something is a part of something/someone.
Martin and Rose (2007, p. 80) describe the attributed relation inherent in people, things and
places as follows:
[P]eople, things and places belong to more general classes of entities, and at the same time
they are parts of larger wholes, and are composed of smaller parts. These are known as
classifying and compositional taxonomies re
several types of lexical relation in discourse, including class-member and co-class, whole-part
and co-& Rose, 2007, p. 80)
Attributed relations exist among us all of the time in our life; we can only know about a
things location, position or situation by identifying where it stands within a complex network
of taxonomical relations. The taxonomy in attribute expressed by the pattern A DJ PR EP N is
divided into two types, namely something has something or something is in something (see
Figure 9.4).
Figure 9.4. Hierarchy of attribute
Among six semantic groups allocated into attribute in Figure 9.4 above, the ABILITY group
and the RESPONSIBILITY group express the first type, namely someone/something has
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