Kitabı oku: «Exploring evaluative, emotive and persuasive strategies in discourse», sayfa 3

5 Analysis of Unclear Cases

The system of Engagement, described in Section 2.2., provides a clear definition of subcategories and a number of sample realisations of each; however, given that the boundaries of Appraisal categories are context-dependent and inevitably not clear-cut, cases were found where categorisation was not easy. To start with, the realisations of the different categories were sometimes more complex than the standard realisations; for instance, some examples of Estimate are expressions with nouns that point to possibilities for future events to occur, as in “growth prospects are even worse” (EO_ESS_006), or “mi hipótesis de trabajo es la siguiente” (SO_ESS_004), translated as “my working hypothesis is the following” (ETrans_ ESS_004). Even a seemingly easily detectable category such as Counter, often realised by expressions such as however, although or yet, displayed instances where the realisation was rather more complex, such as (20), where the Noun Phrase headed by paradoxes indicates a contrast between a circumstance (‘in a time…’) and the rest of the proposition expressed by the that-clause.

(20)One of the great paradoxes of our time is that workers and middle-class households continue to struggle in a time of unparalleled plenty. (EO_ESS_006)

Another problem was posed by the modal auxiliary will referring to future time. As is well-known (a sample reference is Palmer (1990)), there is disagreement among scholars about whether it expresses a ‘pure future’ or else its modal value is maintained in all the cases. In the present study, will has been considered as a case of Pronounce, since in the texts studied here it mostly expresses speculative predictions, as in (21), rather than ‘safe’ predictions such as ‘My sister will be fifty next month’. However, will has not been signalled when it is falls under the scope of another Engagement expression; in these cases, it borrows the value of that expression. For example, will in (22) does not express Pronounce, since it falls under the scope of the weaker Estimate expression remains uncertain, and hence it has not been considered as an Engagement span.

(21)Addressing these problems will be difficult, but not impossible. (EO_ESS_005)

(22)But, unless the proper policies to nurture job growth are put in place, it remains uncertain whether demand for labor will continue to grow as technology marches forward. (EO_ ESS_009)

The remainder of Section 5 will concern two basic kinds of problems, treated in 5.1. and 5.2., respectively. The first concerns a number of linguistic devices that lie in between two subcategories of Engagement; the second pertains to the boundaries between Engagement and Attitude.

5.1 DOUBTFUL CASES BETWEEN TWO SUBCATEGORIES OF ENGAGEMENT

There are many cases in which a source of evidence is cited, but the way in which it is cited does not give explicit indications about the writer’s degree of commitment, so they could be classified under either of the two subcategories of Attribute (Acknowledge and Distance) or under Endorse. A typical example of these ambivalent expressions are English according to and its Spanish equivalents de acuerdo con and según. In order to determine the writer’s attitude towards the source, the reliability (prestige or authority) of the source and the text as a whole have been considered. For example, the expression starting with según in (23) has been classified as Acknowledge, since another study is cited next and the writer does not show full commitment to either, while in (24), which belongs to the same text, the prestige of the source has motivated its classification as Endorse.

(23)Según un cálculo, a nivel mundial las mujeres ocupan alrededor del 24% de los puestos ejecutivos superiores. (STrans_ ESS_004)

English original: ‘By one estimate, women hold about 24% of top management positions globally’ (EO_ESS_004)

(24)Según datos del Foro Económico Mundial, hay una correlación importante entre los avances de un país en cuanto a cerrar la brecha entre los géneros – particularmente en educación y fuerza laboral – y su competitividad económica. (STrans_ ESS_004)

English original: WEF [World Economic Forum] data suggest a strong correlation between a country’s progress in closing the gender gap – particularly in education and the labor force – and its economic competitiveness. (EO_ESS_004)

Knowledge of the world may also play a role in expressions with the source cited. We know that Marco Polo’s appreciation of geography and raw materials was invaluable in his time but is now completely outdated. Consequently, the italicised expression in (25) has been classified as Distance:

(25)Out of Marco Polo’s sparkling pages leaped all the good things of creation: there were nearly 13,000 islands in the Indian seas, with mountains of gold and pearls and twelve kinds of spices in enormous quantities, in addition to an abundance of white and black pepper. (ETrans_EXP_003)

5.2 OVERLAPPING CASES BETWEEN ENGAGEMENT AND OTHER APPRAISAL CATEGORIES

This section covers cases in which there are arguments for considering the linguistic devices as instances of both Engagement and Attitude.⁵ The most remarkable overlapping cases are those that express uncertainty tinged with emotion, called ‘apprehension’ in Lichtenberk (1995) (see also Lavid et al. 2016, 2017). An expression of this kind is one hopes that in (26). These cases have the feeling component of Affect and the reasoning component of Engagement (Carretero 2014: 72). I have opted for including these cases as Estimate.

(26)One hopes that those who understand the economics of debt and austerity, and who believe in democracy and humane values, will prevail. Whether they will remains to be seen. (EO_ESS_001)

In other cases, Engagement was difficult to disentangle from Graduation, the main reason being that both categories concern the strengthening or weakening of assertiveness. In particular, certain adverbs that emphasise the extent to which the information is true, such as largely, completely or literally and their Spanish equivalents, belong to Focus: Sharpen but they have a similar effect to expressions of certainty such as certainly or undoubtedly, classified as Pronounce.⁶ This distinction has been maintained, thus keeping the two kinds of adverbs separate.

6 A Comparative Analysis of the Engagement Options in the Expository and Argumentative Texts

This section starts with a global characterisation of the Engagement expressions in all the texts, and then shows the results drawn from the comparisons in the three ways stated in Section 4: the English versus the Spanish texts, the original texts in the two languages, and argumentative versus expository texts. In all the cases, the significance of the differences was subjected to the chi-square test and, according to what is common practice in social science research, the difference was considered to be significant if the p value equalled or was smaller than 0.05.

6.1 A GLOBAL CHARACTERISATION OF THE ENGAGEMENT EXPRESSIONS IN ALL THE TEXTS

The distribution of the Engagement expressions in all the texts by categories is given in Table 2. Considering that the total number of words is approximately 40,000 words and that the total number of expressions is 1,860, the normalised frequency is 46.5 Engagement expressions per thousand words. Not surprisingly, the Contraction expressions double those of Expansion, due to the high frequency of the two categories under Disclaim: expressing negation or presenting the truth of a proposition as contrary to expectations are common devices in the use of language in general. The difference between Expansion and Contraction is even greater in the two categories of Cited expression categories, where Contraction exactly quadruples Expansion. Within Entertain, the most common category is Estimate, followed by Speculate, while Opine is almost non-existent: the authors did not adopt dialogic positions that indicated possibility for different individual judgements. In its turn, Attribute displays a higher frequency of Distance than of Acknowledge. Within Contraction, the distribution among the three types is roughly balanced, Pronounce and Concur being the most and the least common, respectively.

Table 2. Distribution of the Engagement spans in all the texts

	No.	%
TOTAL NUMBER	1860	100
EXPANSION	562	30.22
CONTRACTION	1186	63.76
CITED-EXPANSION	60	3.23
CITED-CONTRACTION	52	2.80
EXPANSION
ENTERTAIN	370	19.89
Entertain: Estimate	178	9.57
Entertain: Infer	65	3.49
Entertain: Speculate	124	6.67
Entertain: Opine	3	0.16
ATTRIBUTE	192	10.32
Attribute: Acknowledge	80	4.30
Attribute: Distance	112	6.02
CONTRACTION
PROCLAIM	344	18.49
Proclaim: Concur	94	5.05
Proclaim: Pronounce	136	7.31
Proclaim: Endorse	114	6.13
DISCLAIM	842	45.27
Disclaim: Deny	376	20.22
Disclaim: Counter	466	25.05
CITED-EXPANSION
Ex-expansion	12	0.65
Ex-contraction	48	2.58
CITED-CONTRACTION
Co-expansion	10	0.54
Co-contraction	40	2.15

6.2 ENGAGEMENT IN THE ENGLISH AND SPANISH TEXTS

Table 3 shows the distribution of the Engagement expressions of the major categories in the English and Spanish texts (originals and translations). Although the distribution of the frequencies of the categories is similar at first sight, the chi-square test has proved that the difference is significant, thus partly disconfirming the first hypothesis. This difference is due to the higher number of Contraction expressions in the Spanish texts, and above all in the Citedexpansion fragments, which are more than twice as common in the English texts; that is, the translations have not always maintained the Appraisal categories of the original. An example is (27), which occurs within a quotation, where the translator includes an expression of Cited expansion: ex-Contraction that does not occur in the original (28).

(27)“He continually lived in impatient anticipation of something his brain was sure to produce” (ETrans_ESS_004)

(28)“[…] Vivía siempre a la expectativa, más bien impaciente, de algo que iba a surgir en su cabeza” (SO_ESS_004)

As for the subtypes of Expansion and Contraction, the chi-square test yields no significant distributional differences in any of the cases; this result partially confirms the first hypothesis. However, it must be noted that Contraction shows the dissimilarity that Proclaim and Disclaim are more common in the English and Spanish texts, respectively.

Table 3. Distribution of the Engagement spans by major categories in the English and Spanish texts (originals and translations)

With regard to the more delicate categories (see Table 4), the chisquare test yields no significant differences either. Concur is slightly more frequent in the English texts, due above all to the occurrences of of course (totalling 8), which are sometimes not translated, as may be seen in (29) and its translation (30).

Table 4. Distribution of the Engagement spans by delicate categories in the English and Spanish texts (originals and translations)

(29)These are among the issues I shall be attempting to address in this book. To ask for definitive answers to such grandiose questions would, of course, be a tall order. (EO_EXP_015)

(30)Éstas son algunas de las cuestiones que intentaré tratar en este libro. Pedir respuestas definitivas a preguntas tan fundamentales estaría fuera de lugar. (STrans_EXP_015)

The two subcategories of Disclaim, on the other hand, are more common in the Spanish texts than in the English texts. The difference in Deny is due to the fact that in Spanish the number of negative expressions is sometimes higher: in (31), coordination of two negative clauses is expressed by means of ni (‘nor’), while in English this coordination is often achieved by or, as may be seen in its translation (32):

(31)For the most part I will try not to advocate particular policies or to advance the agenda of the political left or right. (EO_EXP_020)

(32)En gran parte intentaré no defender unas políticas concretas ni promover la agenda de la derecha o la izquierda. (STrans_ EXP_020)

As for Counter, the larger number of occurrences in the Spanish texts uncovers the fact that the Spanish translations sometimes make this meaning explicit, for the sake of clarity, even if it is implicit in the originals. For example, the original fragment cited in (33) has no explicit Counter device; however, pero (‘but’) is included in the translation (34).

(33)The Earth is a place. It is by no means the only place. (EO_ EXP_002)

(34)La Tierra es un lugar, pero no es en absoluto el único lugar. (STrans_EXP_002)

6.3 COMPARISON OF THE ORIGINAL ENGLISH AND SPANISH TEXTS

The distribution of the main Engagement expressions in the original English and Spanish texts is specified in Tables 5 and 6. Both

Table 5. Distribution of the Engagement spans by major categories in the original English and Spanish texts

Table 6. Distribution of the Engagement spans by delicate categories in the original English and Spanish texts

Expansion and Contraction are more common in the English texts but, as Table 5 shows, there are no significant differences in the relative frequencies of the English and Spanish texts. On the other hand, the differences in the distribution of the subcategories of Expansion and Contraction are significant. As for the more delicate level of subcategories, Table 6 shows that the distributional differences are significant for Attribute and Proclaim, but not for Entertain and Disclaim.

The expressions of Entertain in the English originals more than triple those of the Spanish originals. In spite of the non-significance in the distribution of the subtypes, it is worth mentioning that the English expressions of Estimate are almost four times as frequent as the Spanish ones. The English writers were thus more prone to express statements with a weak degree of probability: the most common expressions are the modal auxiliary may in its epistemic sense (9 occurrences), the adjective likely (7 times) and the adverb perhaps (6 times); other expressions, such as might or the noun risk also appear several times. In the Spanish texts, however, the adverb quizá/quizás (‘perhaps, maybe’) only appears twice. As for Infer, the expressions in the English texts more than double those in the Spanish texts. The verb seem occurs 5 times; curiously, its synonym appear occurs only once. In the Spanish texts, the close equivalent parecer does not occur at all.

In contrast to Entertain, Attribute is more common in the Spanish originals. Acknowledge is more frequent in the English texts, but the expressions of Distance in the Spanish texts more than triple those of the English texts; a reason for this may be that a large part of the Spanish expository texts concern history and contain citations of ancient sources of information such as Marco Polo, prestigious in their time but now unreliable because of modern knowledge (see example 19 above). In addition, and more importantly, the authors of the Spanish argumentative texts tend to cite more information from unreliable sources (and later refute it), as in (35), whose translation is quoted in (36):

(35)En la crisis financiera de 2008, la creencia de que los riesgos se pueden calcular, asegurar y vender a otros incitó a asumir más riesgos. (SO_ESS_001)

(36)In the financial crisis of 2008, the belief that risks could be calculated, insured and sold on to others incited dealers to take on even more risks. (ETrans_ESS_001)

Concerning Contraction, the number of expressions of Deny is virtually equal in the texts of the two languages, while Counter is more common in the English texts. If we consider that the cases of Counter are more frequent in all the Spanish texts than in all the English texts, we can infer the importance of the tendency of Spanish translations to use cohesive devices even if they are not used in the originals, pointed out in 6.2. and exemplified with (33) and (34) above. That is to say, this higher explicitness of adversative or concessive relations seems to be a feature of Spanish translations compared to the original English texts, but this feature is not seemingly due to a tendency of Spanish written discourse to signal these relationships more explicitly than English written discourse. Research on cohesion along these lines would be welcome.

6.4 COMPARISON OF THE ARGUMENTATIVE AND EXPOSITORY TEXTS

The distributional differences in the number of Expansion and Contraction devices in the argumentative and expository texts are yielded by the chi-square test as significant (see Table 7), the main difference being that Expansion is more frequent in the expository texts, while the expressions of Cited-expansion, although they are few altogether, are more than twice as common in the essays. That is to say, the essays display more cases of dialogic acknowledgement of alternative positions through reference to other sources. The percentages of Contraction are almost identical in the two subtypes. Noticeably, the relative percentages of Expansion and Contraction present in both essays and expository texts are similar to those registered for English and Spanish professional and consumer-generated film reviews in Carretero (2014: 77), which were 34.95 for Expansion and 65.05 for Contraction. These data together hint that, in non-fictional texts aiming at transmitting information and/ or persuading the reader, typically the occurrences of Contraction roughly double those of Expansion.

Table 7 also shows that the distributional differences between the main categories of Expansion and Contraction are significant. In particular, Proclaim is markedly more frequent in the argumentative texts, while Entertain is more common in the expository texts, which is not surprising due to the greater need of the writers of essays to defend their dialogic position. The distribution of the most delicate subtypes, given in Table 8, indicates that the differences are significant for the subcategories of Contraction (Proclaim and Disclaim) but not for the subcategories of Expansion (Entertain and Attribute).

Table 7. Distribution of the Engagement spans by major categories in the argumentative and expository texts (originals and translations)

Table 8. Distribution of the Engagement spans by delicate categories in the argumentative and expository texts (originals and translations)

With regard to Contraction, the occurrences of Concur are almost equal in the two text types, while Pronounce and Endorse are more frequent in the argumentative texts. That is to say, the support of dialogic position is most commonly realised by emphasising one’s own viewpoint (Pronounce) or by supporting the position by authoritative or prestigious sources (Endorse). With regard to Disclaim, it is globally more common in the expository texts; the cases of Counter are virtually the same for the two registers, but the expository texts display more cases of Deny, which often refer to a contrast between people’s beliefs and the way things actually are, as in (37), a fragment that contains eight instances of this category:

(37)It is natural but wrong to visualize the singularity as a kind of pregnant dot hanging in a dark, boundless void. But there is no space, no darkness. The singularity has no “around” around it. There is no space for it to occupy, no place for it to be. We can’t even ask how long it has been there—whether it has just lately popped into being, like a good idea, or whether it has been there forever, quietly awaiting the right moment. Time doesn’t exist. There is no past for it to emerge from. (EO_ EXP_001)

With regard to Expansion, although the distribution of the subcategories in Entertain and Attribute is not significant, attentive observation leads us to note that the higher frequency of Entertain in the expository texts is largely due to the difference in number of Estimate devices, which is also related to the main difference in the overall purposes of the texts. Estimate expressions tend to weaken the writer’s assertiveness and this weakening is more at odds with the persuasive purpose of argumentative texts than with the informative purpose of expository texts. The high frequency of Speculate in both text types is plausibly due to the intellectual character that they share: writers often pose complex questions with no obvious answers, as in examples (8-9), in order to trigger reflection and then propose answers through reasoning.

7 Final Discussion and Concluding Remarks

This paper has set forth a quantitative study of the Engagement expressions in 40 argumentative and expository texts, consisting of English and Spanish originals and their corresponding translations into the other language. I acknowledge that the study has limitations concerning the accuracy of the labels assigned to the expression of Engagement, mainly because all the texts were analysed by the author of the paper: the analysis of the same texts by one other researcher (or more) and the ensuing comparison of the results would have been an extra tool for detecting possible errors, and the cases of disagreement would have led to an increase in the refinement of the criteria for assigning expressions to the different categories. Nevertheless, as its stands, the analysis may be considered to be sufficiently reliable for proving the hypotheses stated in Section 3.

The first hypothesis, namely that the expressions under study were faithfully translated to a great extent, has been partially disconfirmed by the significant distributional differences found in the major Engagement categories (Expansion, Contraction, Cited-expansion and Cited-contraction) in the English and Spanish texts. The main reason was that the Spanish translations sometimes added explicit Counter expressions that were absent in the English originals. This finding, together with the higher frequency of Counter expressions in the original English texts than in the original Spanish texts, lead us to believe that the Spanish translations of non-fictional texts had a tendency to overspecify cohesion, an issue that could be pursued in further research. On the other hand, this hypothesis has been partially confirmed by the absence of significant differences in the distribution of the main types of Expansion and Contraction and of all the subtypes of these categories.

The second hypothesis, which stated that differences would be found in the English and Spanish originals, has also been partially disconfirmed by the distribution of the main Engagement categories, but partially confirmed by the distributional differences found in all the subcategories of Expansion and Contraction, and especially in the subtypes of Attribute and Proclaim. The English originals display more cases of Entertain, especially of the subcategories Estimate and Infer.

The third hypothesis, namely that the distribution of Expansion and Contraction in argumentative and expository texts would differ due to the overall aims of both texts, has been confirmed by the results in terms of both the main categories and their subtypes: not surprisingly, Expansion was more common in the expository texts, which aim above all to transmit knowledge, and Contraction in the argumentative texts, where the need to persuade the reader is greater.

This study provides evidence of the crucial role of the expressions of Engagement in persuading the reader that the writer’s assessment is the most sensible within the array of actual or potential viewpoints. The need to be persuasive is more obvious in the essays, but is far from being non-existent in the expository texts. This persuasive role of Engagement may be noticed in many of the examples cited in this paper, such as (15), (16) and (37), to name only a few. Engagement, then, may be considered to offer a privileged perspective on the pervasive relation between persuasion and evaluation in language.

Further research on Engagement in different types of non-fictional texts, especially from parallel corpora, could be carried out in order to shed light on the extent to which the main findings presented here could be extrapolated to other types of non-fictional texts. If we begin by comparing the results presented here with those of Carretero’s (2014) study on film reviews, we find that the three categories that involve citation of a source of information, namely Acknowledge, Distance and Endorse, are markedly more common in the texts analysed here; conversely, Counter is even more frequent in the film reviews, for the reason that critics are quick to communicate the ways in which expectations created by films are unfulfilled in order to warn prospective viewers (Carretero 2014: 76). These differences are one more illustration of how different subtypes of non-fictional texts create different needs for writers to assess their position against other possible positions with regard to the information transmitted and of how writers actually cope with these needs. That is to say, the relative frequency of the Engagement categories seems to vary according to the subtype of nonfictional text, depending on the writers’ assessment of the need to place emphasis on one category or other in order to legitimise their position or, in other words, to persuade the addressee that they are legitimate sources of information.

Acknowledgements

This research has been carried out as part of the EVIDISPRAG Project (reference number FFI2015-65474-P MINECO/FEDER, UE). We gratefully acknowledge the support provided by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the European Regional Development Fund. My thanks are extended to an anonymous referee for his/her thorough report on a first version of the paper. The remaining shortcomings and inconsistencies are my sole responsibility.

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