‘An important issue’a corpus-based contrastive study of evaluation along the parameter of relevance in English and Spanish newspaper opinion discourse
ISSN: 1885-9089
Année de publication: 2016
Volumen: 15
Número: 1
Pages: 36-52
Type: Article
D'autres publications dans: RAEL: revista electrónica de lingüística aplicada
Résumé
This paper approaches the expression of the evaluative parameter of relevance in English and Spanish journalistic opinion discourse. The case-study presented here analyzes adjectives of importance as lexical markers contributing to the construction of writer stance in a persuasive genre. The main aim of the study is to engage in a cross-linguistic analysis which identifies and compares the evaluated entities (Thetela 1997) in English and Spanish opinion texts. Authorial evaluation along the parameter of relevance may be considered to surpass the idiosyncratic features of individual texts and reflect the underlying value system of the society that has produced those texts (Thompson and Hunston 2000: 6). Corpus linguistics provides the methodological framework for a contrastive analysis focused on the primary function of evaluation, the expression of the writer’s views, in this case, against a scale of importance. Keywords: evaluation, relevance, newspaper opinion discourse, English-Spanish
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