Systemic Functional Linguistics # * Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) is an approach to linguistics, among functional linguistics Functional linguistics is an approach to the study of language characterized by taking systematically into account the speaker's and the hea ...

(SFL), appraisal refers to the ways that writers or speakers express approval or disapproval for things, people, behaviour or ideas. Language users build relationships with their interlocutors by expressing such positions. In other approaches in

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

(including

linguistic anthropology Linguistic anthropology is the Interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary study of how language influences social life. It is a branch of anthropology that originated from the endeavor to document endangered languages and has grown over the past cen ...

sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural Norm (sociology), norms, expectations, and context (language use), context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on languag ...

corpus linguistics Corpus linguistics is the study of language, study of a language as that language is expressed in its text corpus (plural ''corpora''), its body of "real world" text. Corpus linguistics proposes that a reliable analysis of a language is more feas ...

), alternative terms such as evaluation or stance are preferred. J.R. Martin and P.R.R. White's approach to appraisal regionalised the concept into three interacting domains: 'attitude', 'engagement' and 'graduation'. Each of these has various sub-systems; for example, 'attitude' includes 'affect' (expression of emotion), 'appreciation' (evaluation of things/entities), and 'judgement' (evaluation of people and their behaviour), with different choices within these sub-systems. In the case of 'affect', for instance, these more delicate choices relate to different types of emotion. However, there is debate about the different sub-systems that should be recognised, and various researchers have since suggested modifications of the initial description. The analysis of appraisal has also become influential outside Systemic Functional Linguistics, in various types of discourse analysis.

References

Discourse analysis Evaluation Systemic functional linguistics {{sociolinguistics-stub