Traditionally, academic writing has been considered objective and impersonal form of discourse. However, in recent times, academic writing is considered as a persuasive effort through interaction between writers and readers. In other words, academic writing is not only producing texts whose function is to represent an external reality in a plausible manner. Its function is also to use language for acknowledging, negotiating and constructing social relations (Hyland, 2005). For effecting these contributions of language, the writers take stances or show attitude or use persuasive expressions. In these actions of writers, the evaluative adjectives play a significant role.
1. Evaluation in Academic Writing
The academic writers have used various labels to express the notion of evaluation, e.g., appraisal, stance, attitude markers (hedges). Broadly expressing, evaluation is a term that covers writer’s ‘attitude or stance towards a view point, or feeling about an entity or proposition (Hunston and Thompson 2005). Such evaluative expression or stance gives special meaning to the stretches of text and help develop the writer’s key message. Particularly, when the intent of argumentation is persuasive, the role of evaluative language goes very significant.
Evaluative expressions commonly perform three functions. First, the writer’s opinion reflects his or his community’s value system. Second, the writer’s opinion helps construct and maintain relations between the writer and reader. Last, it plays a significant role in the organization of discourse (Agçam and Özkan, 2015).
1.1 Requirements of Stance Taking
When a writer takes a stance related to the presented situation, s(he) employs assessments and value judgements. This he does with evidentiality (evidence), epistemic modality (likelihood of the described situation) and deontic modality (the arguments related to the necessity or desirability of the situation to be realized) (Biber et al., 1999).
1.2 Interactive & Persuasive Expressions
In their interactive and persuasive expressions, the academic writers make an effort to offer a credible representation of themselves and their work. This they do by claiming solidarity with readers, evaluating their own ideas, and acknowledging alternative views. All this is necessary as controlling the level of personality in a text is important for constructing a convincing argument.
2. Categories and Types of Evaluative Adjectives
Swales and Burke (2003) have placed evaluative adjectives into seven categories. First four categories, i.e., acuity adjectives (e.g., smart, stupid, etc.), aesthetic appeal adjectives (e.g., beautiful, elegant, etc.), size adjectives (e.g., small, huge, etc.) and strength adjectives (weak, strong, etc.) are easily identifiable. This is so because, these adjectives are self-evident and straightforward in their evaluative role. Further, assessment adjectives are such as their evaluation of things is at general level (e.g. excellent, terrible, etc.). Furthermore, deviance adjectives (e.g. typical, strange, etc.) indicate how much something is close to the expected level. The last but not the least, relevance adjectives (e.g., important) indicate the closeness of something to the topic or field under discussion (Agçam and Özkan, 2015). From these categories, size adjectives and relevance adjectives are frequently used in academic writing.
2.1 Axiological Evaluative Adjectives
Axiological evaluative adjectives are those descriptive words that are used to assess or judge the worth, value, or moral/aesthetic quality of something (noun) subjectively. This judgement is based on some value system, e.g. moral or social system. The task of evaluation (rooted in philosophy) is performed to evaluate ‘choices’, ‘behaviours’, or ‘phenomena’ through the lens of ethics and aesthetics. On the whole, the purpose of this type of evaluation is to determine what is inherently or extrinsically good or bad. The commonly used examples of axiological evaluative adjectives include honest, virtuous, unjust, corrupt, elegant, tasteful, hideous, bright, etc.
2.2 Neutral Evaluative Adjectives
These adjectives are the descriptive words which are used to evaluate subjects objectively based on some factual or empirical data. The frequently used examples of these adjectives include complex, comprehensive, traditional, balanced, systematic, significant, noticeable, etc.
2.3. Typification of Evaluative Adjectives
Evaluative adjectives are commonly put into types on two bases, i.e., semantically as well as syntactically. Thus, semantic types include value, difficulty, similarity, dimension, qualification and quantification. On the other hand, syntactic types are predicative, and attributive adjectives (Tutin, 2010). For example:
a. This conclusion appears very logical. [Predicative]
b. Every researcher wants to reach a logical conclusion. [Evaluative]
Evaluative adjectives can be identified by using with evaluative verbs like ‘consider’ or ‘find’. If these can be used, they are evaluative and if not, they are non-evaluative. For example:
a. I consider this method underdeveloped.
b. *We find this paper blank.
4. Stereotypical Evaluative Phraseology
Disciplines maintain particular conventions in academic writing. One of these conventions is the recurrent use of Evaluative Adjective + Noun. The scholars show propensity to use such phraseology for their identity in their respective academic community. Further, they use evaluation markers to ensure scientific quality of their documents as well as to guide the readers’ attention. Another point about the evaluative markers used in a discipline is that they are closely linked to specific pragmatic and rhetorical functions in the academic text. For example, these help justify the interest of a study in the introduction section, demonstrate the profound knowledge of literature and provide significant results (Tutin, 2010).
5. Academic Nouns & their Types
Certain nouns stay specific to the academic writing. These nouns refer to academic reasoning, academic experience, evaluation and meta text, e.g., ‘quality’, ‘hypothesis’, ‘results’, ‘chapter’, etc. (Tutin, 2010). For understanding the role of evaluative adjectives, the awareness of these nouns types is necessary. Types of these nouns are as follows:
i. Scientific Artifacts: These artifacts (e.g., approach, model, study, etc.) are objects, instruments or physical tools which are used to measure natural phenomena, conduct research or document major advances in the history scientific knowledge.
ii. Scientific Observables: These manifestations (e.g., data, examples, results, etc.) are quantities, events, or outcomes that can be measured objectively and verified by impartial observers or by scientific instruments.
iii. Quality Nouns: These nouns are abstract in nature (e.g., significance, pertinence, etc.) whose function is to describe attributes, traits, properties of things, places or people.
vi. Relation Nouns: These nouns (cause, consequence, effect, etc.) indicate relation of events, factors, etc.
v. Nouns of Scientific Medium: These nouns (document, chapter, section, etc.) do the function of identifying the physical, structural or organizational formats in the texts of scientific information.
6. Eva-adj Nouns Associations
Noun-Eva-adj associations are linguistic pairs or collocations which are frequently used in academic writing. Their main function is to help express an author’s stance, give prominence to arguments or qualify research objects. In academic texts, they mainly stay as sentence modifiers, e.g. it is certain that…. The academic writers employ these associations generally for showing four features:
i. Evaluation of correctness, relevance or appeal of a discourse structure such as an argument, explanation, or finding (e.g., Interesting results, Convincing argument).
ii. Importance and Salience by using these nouns as meta-discursive pointers so that the readers can be led to the most important pieces of information in a document (e.g., Significant difference, Key finding).
iii. Novelty and Currencey so that the readers can become aware that the presented claims are providing new knowledge or built on current frameworks (e.g., Recent literature, Innovative approach).
iv. Indicating inadequacy and limitation so that the gaps in the existing research are pointed out or the areas that need deeper analysis are spotlighted (e.g., Insufficient data, Unreliable metrics).
6.1 Significance of Evaluative Adjectives + Nouns Collocations
The evaluative adjectives become linked with certain nouns on the basis of their inherent propensity and thus collocations emerge. These collocations as metadiscursive pointers signal salient points of the content to the reader and thus facilitate the reading task. In addition, these pointers indicate that author is capable to furnish the core information of research and thus does not involve the reader in useless details. In other words, with the help of these, the reader is led to the most relevant information whether it is related to issues, problems, results, conclusions of the research (Tutin, 2010).
7. Evaluative Adjectives and their Functions
Evaluative adjectives are describing words, whose function is to express the writer’s personal opinion, judgement or feeling about the qualities of a noun.
Since academic writing is highly dialogic genre, the writer’s authorial presence and subjectivity are pervasive. For sustaining this authorial presence, evaluative adjectives are inevitable. Evaluative adjectives have ability to elucidate the rhetorical strategies used by the writers. Owing to this ability, they play a prominent role in argument and help reveal the writer’s attitude towards the textual content. This interpersonal dimension of theirs helps writers persuade the reader to acknowledge that the topic under study is of interest. That is why, the use of these adjectives is frequent in strategic sections such as introduction and conclusion of the research studies. In these sections, the writers opt persuasive strategies and use arguments like novelty, salience, quality, etc. to qualify the centrality and significance of their topic. Examples of common evaluative adjectives used in the area of research are recent literature, valid hypothesis, interesting results, etc. On the whole, the purpose of these adjectives in these sections is to justify and promote the authors’ work (Tutin, 2010).
8. The Criteria of Evaluative Adjectives Use
The evaluative adjectives are used keeping in view the epistemological system of each discipline. In the disciplines, like economics, the focus is on the theoretical apparatus and words related to models, approaches and theories which are evaluated with adjectives. In other disciplines (like linguistics) focus is on terminological and defining issues as they have to deal with the concepts such ideas, definitions and notions borrowed from their peers (Tutin, 2010).
In sum, keeping in view the significance of evaluation in academic writing, first the requirements of stance taking and interactive & persuasive expressions have been detailed. Next, the categories of evaluative adjectives (i.e., subjective and neutral adjectives) have been mentioned. Later, the significance of the collocations that emerge in the result of evaluative adjectives + nouns associations has been presented. Then, functions of evaluative adjectives have been dealt with. In the end, the bases on which evaluative adjectives are used have been presented. The knowledge and understanding of all these aspects of evaluative adjectives are very important for the production of impactful scholarly texts.
Sources Cited:
- Agçam, R. and Özkan, M. (2015). A Corpus-based Study on Evaluation Adjectives in Academic English Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 199, 3 – 11.
2. Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. London: Longman.
3. Hunston, S. & Thompson, G. (2000). Evaluation in Text. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
4. Hyland, K. (2005). Stance and engagement: a model of interaction in academic discourse. Discourse Studies, 7, 2, 173–192.
5. Swales, J. M., and Amy, B. (2003). It’s really fascinating work: Differences in Evaluative Adjectives across Academic Registers. Language and Computers, 46: 1-18.
6.Tutin, A. (2010). Evaluative adjectives in academic writing in the humanities and social sciences in Constructing Interpersonality: Multiple Perspectives on Written Academic Genres, Cambridge Scholars Publishing., pp.219-242.
