ABSTRACT
To evaluate something is to have an opinion about it, particularly in terms of how good or bad it is. The terms of reference for the judgement may be essentially personal, such as when readers decide they find a particular novelist ‘boring’, or they may occur within an institutionalized framework, such as when teachers decide whether a particular text-book is suitable for a particular group of students. (Of course, the ‘personal’ evaluation is itself influenced by cultural considerations, socialization, philosophical back-ground and so on.)
While this evaluation is a mental process, its linguistic expression forms an essential component of discourse. That is, for a text-an exemplum of discourse-to work as communication, there must be frequent indications of attitudes held towards information given in the text and towards the communicative value of the discourse itself. This is a major finding of various approaches to discourse, such as Winter (1982), Hoey (1979), Sinclair and Coulthard (1975), Sinclair (1981), Labov (1972). Expressing evaluation in a text involves both a statement of personal judgement and an appeal to shared norms and values. In that it creates a shared point of view of speaker/writer and hearer/reader, its meaning is essentially interpersonal.
