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116(ibid.:25) while in evaluative passages the author evaluates what is being reported(ibid.:26-27). She analyzes the linguistic features that actualize subjective comments andthe point in the text where these features occur. Through the examination of linguisticfeatures such as adverbs (e.g., surprisingly, dramatically), or modals, she is able todetect where in the text interpersonal meanings are conveyed, revealing that, forexample, the assessment of probability of the truth of the author’s thesis occurs in asmuch as 80% of all author’s comments in clinical case notes, 70% in research papers,and 53% in editorials (ibid.: 34).There is, however, a certain amount of freedom in Adams-Smith’s approach totexts in terms of theoretical premises. She does not explain how she decides about whichlinguistic items will be counted as a given instance of each one of her categories. Underthe broad category of‘attitudinal markers’, we find several different linguisticcategories: adverbs, reporting verbs, nouns, personal pronouns, discourse structure, etc.Therefore, in trying to apply the same type of analysis to other texts, one may find ithard to decide if a given category is represented solely by a word or by the whole phraseor sentence in which it appears. Likewise, it is unclear whether a given item counts as awhole instance or just a portion of an instance to be completed by other words in thenearby context.Such problems are not at all uncommon in the attempt to produce a qualitativeanalysis of texts which involves an interpretative task on the part of the analyst.Notwithstanding, I will use discourse markers (‘lexical phrases’ according to Nattingerand DeCarrico, 1992; ‘lexical signaling’ according to Hoey, 1983 and Dudley-Evans,