ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the focus is on appraisal in text–image content, and more specifically on attitude, which is subdivided into affect, judgement and appreciation in Martin and White’s framework (2005). Affect and judgement in discourse (roughly emotions and opinions, respectively) are often tightly interwoven and their expression relies on a broad range of devices, cues and related discourse patterns and strategies that are not always easy to distinguish. The discussion is structured around three broad modes of the semiotisation of attitude in discourse: (1) thematised, (2) signal-like and xxiii(3) supported attitude. First, in discussing thematised attitude, we will see how emotions and opinions become the object of discourse either through direct denotative processes or through more figurative and more – or less conventionalised, connotative expressions. For visual content, rather than trying to identify basic emotions from facial and bodily expressions, I follow a more cautious approach according to which minimal patterns of thematised emotions, namely valence and arousal, can be identified in facial and bodily expressions. However, higher-level divisions between specific emotions are very challenging through visual analysis alone. Second, for signal-like attitude, specific patterns signal the presence of emotions and/or opinions in discourse, especially when they are combined with each other (e.g. exclamation marks can signal emotions and/or opinions). Unlike thematised attitude, which concerns discourse about emotions and opinions, signal-like attitude refers to discourse as emotion or opinion.
Lastly, supported attitude is informed by cognitive schematisations rather than by specific linguistic patterns, as in the case of thematised and signal-like attitude. I am concerned here with the clues of what causes certain attitudes rather than their consequences in discourse (i.e. signal-like attitude). Analytically, I rely on a set of eight appraisal criteria that help me to infer emotions and opinions from manifest content, like the proximity in time and space between a situation that is schematised in discourse and its writer/speaker. In addition, I will discuss how visual arguments can reveal attitude and how they can be constructed and analysed.
