ABSTRACT
This and the following chapters offer a more earnest analysis of semantic prosody as described in the literature so far. Up to now I have claimed that semantic prosody has been assigned many different characteristics with varying degrees of emphasis, but the present chapter will be devoted to the two features of semantic prosody which are common to just about all descriptions of it-its evaluative function and its ‘hidden’ quality. I shall argue, however, that these features are, for differing reasons, anything but straightforward.
