Contrastive analyses of evaluation in text

Key issues in the design of an annotation system for attitude applicable to consumer reviews in English and Spanish

Authors

  • Maite Taboada Simon Fraser University
  • Marta Carretero Universidad Complutense de Madrid

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/lhs.v6i1-3.275

Keywords:

discourse analysis, evaluative meaning, annotation systems, corpus analysis

Abstract

This paper reports on part of the research on evaluative language currently carried out within the CONTRANOT project,[lxxviii] which aims at the creation and validation of contrastive functional descriptions through corpus analysis and annotation in English and Spanish. More concretely, we will present the coding scheme designed for Attitude, a subcategory of Appraisal as studied within Systemic-Functional Linguistics (Martin and White, 2005; White, 2003). The criteria for selection and annotation of spans of Attitude in the coding scheme are specified and illustrated with examples from the Simon Fraser University Review Corpus (Taboada, 2008), a corpus of consumer-generated reviews on hotels, books and movies, and a small-scale English-Spanish contrastive analysis of these reviews has been carried out. The scheme is to be used for the future annotation of evaluation in an English-Spanish corpus, CONTRASTES (Lavid, 2008; Lavid et al., 2007, 2010). Once annotated, the reviews will be part of this corpus.

Author Biographies

  • Maite Taboada, Simon Fraser University

    Maite Taboada is Associate Professor of Linguistics at Simon Fraser University (Canada). She holds MA and PhD degrees from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain), and an MSc in Computational Linguistics from Carnegie Mellon University. Maite works in the areas of discourse analysis, systemic functional linguistics and computational linguistics.

  • Marta Carretero, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

    Marta Carretero is Associate Professor in English Language and Linguistics at the Universidad Complutense, Madrid, where she currently lectures on the areas of pragmatics and functional linguistics. She has done extensive research on modality, including English-Spanish contrastive analysis, the influence of genre on modality and the relationship between modality and evidentiality, among other issues. Within this area she authors articles and reviews in international and Spanish periodical journals. She also has contributions in collective works, such as English modality in perspective: Genre analysis and contrastive studies (2004), Perspectives on evidentiality and modality (2004) and Studies on English modality: In honour of Frank Palmer (2009). She has directed two research projects on modality in English and Spanish. She is co-editor of the collective work A Pleasure of Life in Words: A Festschrift for Angela Downing (2006), and was managing editor of the academic journal Atlantis (2006-2008).

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Published

2012-12-13

Issue

Section

Registers, Genres and Text Types

How to Cite

Taboada, M., & Carretero, M. (2012). Contrastive analyses of evaluation in text: Key issues in the design of an annotation system for attitude applicable to consumer reviews in English and Spanish. Linguistics and the Human Sciences, 6(1-3), 275-295. https://doi.org/10.1558/lhs.v6i1-3.275

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