ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors look at one of the less researched ways to mark stance, a structure K. Hyland & P. Tse call ‘evaluative that’. This is a pattern which pulls different types of explicit ‘that’ clauses together, and relates them to evaluation, the formal identity reflecting a functional kinship. The authors clarify the value of pulling together the different treatments of related structures into a single coherent construction as Hyland and Tse suggest and propose a common function for this. Linguists tend to treat the different predicates embraced in the evaluative that structure as distinct patterns. While evaluative that remains a significant rhetorical option for writers in all disciplines, with the possible exception of biology, the data indicate important changes in the ways writers mark their alignment with material. The authors look at changes in what is evaluated and who the evaluation is attributed to, and then at the stance taken and how this is expressed.
