Evaluative Meanings and Disciplinary Values - eTheses Repository ...

5.3.4. Discourse analysis procedure
The discourse analytic methodology employed in the current study involved using
concordancing software to inspect each individual instance of each adjective pattern in each
corpus in order to establish and classify its semantic and discoursal properties. Initially, I set
out to categorize each pattern according to the semantic groups proposed by Francis et al.
(1998). However, in practice there turned out to be many cases in which the semantic groups
described in Francis et al. (1998) did not correspond exactly to the adjective patterns found in
ALC and BC. Thus, it was necessary for me to recategorize most of the semantic groups and
the adjectives included in them, and to rename them in such a way that they were more in tune
with the findings of the current study.
Once this highly labour-intensive classificatory work had been done, I then separated
the data for each semantic group into broader groups reflecting different discourse functions.
In practice, two such broad groups were revealed by my analysis I have termed these
attitude and relation respectively. The term attitude refers to discourse functions that express
a writers claim that is, how a writer sees things within her or his particular disciplinary
specialization. Attitude is thus used in a similar sense to the way it is used in the branch of
Systemic-Functional linguistics known as appraisal theory (Martin, 2000; Martin & Rose,
2003, 2007; White, 2004). As we will see in Chapter 8, my more detailed analysis of patterns
expressing attitude meanings is also consistent with appraisal theory in that it finds that this
broad semantic category can itself be divided into three subtypes, which (again borrowing
terms from appraisal theory) I will refer to as judgement, affect and appreciation. Through a
detailed concordance-based qualitative investigation of attitude patterns, the current study will
identify, and then compare and contrast, how subjective assessments are manifested in the two
academic discourses of applied linguistics and business studies.
Interestingly, this qualitative investigation revealed another broad semantic function
expressed by the pattern A DJ PR EP N, which could not readily be incorporated under the
general rubric of attitude. This other group describes relations among and between things, and
(as I shall argue later) forms an equally important resource for structuring academic argument.
I will refer to this broad domain as relation. As was the case with attitude meanings, my
qualitative analysis found that relation meanings could also be divided into clear-cut
subcategories, although in this instance two rather than three such categories were identified. I
will refer to these as connection and attribute respectively. My analysis of relation meanings
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