The terms disgust/revoltarguably combine affectwithjudgement or appreciationalong similar lines (cf. they/it revolted me):
I felt disgusted with them for provoking him. [affect/judgement]
I felt disgusted with/by the smell. [affect/appreciation]
We’ll suggest a way of analysing these apparent hybrid realisations at the end of section 2.6 below.
With attitudinal lexis in general, however, the clause frames introduced above and the nature of the source and target of evaluation can be used to distinguish among affect, judgementandappreciation.
infer the anger Archie’s father felt:
My mother cried go get their dad … Dad shaped up he stood his ground
He said you touch my kids and you fight me [Rose 1996: 81]
Similarly we can hardly resist empathising with the agony we presume Archie must have felt at being taken from his home. Although he says nothing explicit about his own feelings, they are plain to see:
As Archie Roach got up to sing the words of the song Uncle Ernie had played on his gum leaf, he also indicated his anguishat being taken from his parents, and how he had gone on, not to the better life promised at the time by the white authorities, but to face discrimina- tion and destitution. ‘I’ve often lived on the streets and gone without a feed for days and no-one ever said sorry to me.’ [Sitka 1998]
The general point here is that the selection of ideational meanings is enough to invoke evaluation, even in the absence of attitudinal lexis that tells us directly how to feel. At first blush it might seem that analysing the evaluation invoked by ideational selections introduces an undesirable element of subjectivity into the analysis. On the other hand, avoiding invoked evaluation of this kind amounts to a suggestion that ideational meaning is selected without regard to the attitudes it engen- ders – a position we find untenable. In this context it is important to dis- tinguish between individual and social subjectivity – between readers as idiosyncratic respondents and communities of readers positioned by specific configurations of gender, generation, class, ethnicity and in/capacity. When analysing invoked evaluation it is certainly critical to specify one’s reading position as far as possible with respect to the latter variables; and also to declare whether one is reading a text compliantly,3 resistantly or tactically.
By a tactical reading we refer to a typically partial and interested reading, which aims to deploy a text for social purposes other than those it has naturalised; resistant readings oppose the reading position naturalised by the co-selection of meanings in a text, while compliant readings sub- scribe to it. For example, our use of Roach’s verse to illustrate inscribed and invoked attitudeis a tactical one, serving our purposes as linguists, not his as a social activist and spokesman for Australia’s Indigenous peoples. Reading compliantly would have positioned us as Australians sympathetic to, and shamed by, Roach’s experiences; reading resistantly 62 The Language of Evaluation
we might have sided with Australian Prime Minister John Howard in refusing to apologise publicly for this genocidal behaviour by generations of white Australians.
Beyond this, when we suggest that a text naturalises a reading position we mean as far as evaluation is concerned that it will be fairly directive in the kinds of attitudeit wants readers to share. In part these will be co-articulated by any attendant modalities of communication – potentially including paralanguage (voice quality, facial expression, gesture, bodily stance), dress, musical accompaniment, images, dance and so on (Roach’s anguish, for example, is clearly inscribed in his soulful singing and moving melody). Beyond this the prosodic nature of the realisation of interpersonal meanings such as attitudemeans that inscriptions tend to colour more of a text than their local grammatical environment circum- scribes. The inscriptions act as sign-posts, in other words, telling us how to read the ideational selections that surround them. Restoring Roach’s lyrics, the inscription fighting mad certainly colours his father’s futile attempt to defend his children:
My mother cried go get their dad He came running fighting mad Mother’s tears were falling down Dad shaped up he stood his ground He said you touch my kids and you fight me And they took us from our family [Rose 1996: 81]
This is arguably sign-posting that is not required for sympathetic read- ers; but it is important in this regard to imagine a society in which tak- ing children from Indigenous families (up to 50,000 of them on some early estimates; cf. Manne 1998, 2001) was common practice, and pub- licly defended as humane treatment in the best interests of the children themselves. A society of this kind has surely regarded its Indigenous peoples as less than human, perhaps incapable of the emotions Roach inscribes here. And for us, a society which refuses to apologise publicly for behaviour of this kind continues to subscribe to a comparable racist stance.
For another example of prosodic realisation and the interaction of inscription and invocation, consider the following text, from Indigenous art critic Eric Michaels. Michaels is evaluating the phenom- enal desert art paintings covering the doors of Yuendumu school (and by now the doors on houses throughout the community as a whole), which he appreciates as a spectacular, remarkableandmajorresponse to
the 1983 headmaster’s modest suggestion – thereby establishing a prosody of positive evaluation, further reinforced by the positive inscriptions of affect(excitement, interest, pleasure, pride, enthusiastic).
In 1983, the new school headmaster (Mr Terry Lewis) brought considerable excitement to the Yuendumu community by his interest in and support of tra- ditional Warlpiri culture and language. One of his more modestsuggestions was to make the school look less ‘European’ by commissioning senior men to paint the school doors with traditional designs. The results were more spec- tacularthan anyone envisaged.
Both European and Aboriginal residents of Yuendumu took considerable pleasure and pride in the achievement. Visitors to the community were equally enthusiastic, and word about these remarkablepaintings began to spread. My own response was to see this accomplishment as a majorone for contempo- rary international art as well as an achievement in indigenous culture. For me, these doors seemed to strike a chord with issues and images that were being negotiated in the art galleries of Sydney, Paris and New York. [Michaels 1987: 135]
Out of context, Michaels’ terms achievement, accomplishment and achievement again to describe these doors might be taken as non- attitudinal – as simple nominalisations of a completed activity; and this is perhaps a plausible reading of achievement the first time it is used. As the text unfolds, and the prosody of positive appreciationis developed, however, one is drawn to an attitudinal reading; second time round achievement means ‘the accomplishment, after a lot of effort, of something good’. By the time Michaels compares the doors with issues and images being negotiated in the art capitals of the world, there is no doubt about the positive appreciationhis ideational selections are designed to invoke. Inscribed attitude, in other words, launches and subsequently reinforces a prosody which directs readers in their evaluation of non-attitudinal ideational material under its scope.
Complementing this, ideational meaning can be used not just to invite but to provoke an attitudinal response in readers. This is one func- tion of lexical metaphor. Earlier in the song we introduced above, Roach draws on this resource to compare the treatment of Indigenous people with that of animals:
This story’s right, this story’s true I would not tell lies to you
Like the promises they did not keep 64 The Language of Evaluation
And how they fenced us in like sheep Said to us come take our hand
Sent us off to mission land
Taught us to read, to write and pray
Then they took the children away …[Rose 1996]
Comparable metaphors are used in Bringing Them Home, a 1997 government report on the Stolen Generations:
We was bought like a market. We was all lined up in white dresses, and they’d come round and pick you out like you was for sale. [BTH 90]
I remember all we children being herded up, like a mob of cattle,and feeling the humiliation of being graded by the colour of our skins for the government records. [BTH 186]
In none of these examples does the Indigenous voice explicitly judge white authorities as inhumane, but the treatment of people as commer- cial goods arguably does more than evoke a judgement – it provokes one. Here’s an extended example from journalist Bob Ellis, criticising John Howard’s 1990s economic rationalism:
John Howard says he knows how vulnerable people are feeling in these times of economic change. He does not. For they are feeling as vulnerable as a man who has already had his arm torn off by a lion, and sits in the corner holding his stump and waiting for the lion to finish eating and come for him again. This is something more than vulnerability. It is injury and shock and fear and rage. And he does not know the carnage that is waiting for him if he calls an election. And he will be surprised. [Ellis 1998]
The affect (felt by ordinary Australians) and judgement (of Howard) provoked by the metaphor are more than clear.
Somewhat less provocative, but still indicating that an evaluation is being invoked, is the use of non-core vocabulary that has in some sense lexicalised a circumstance of manner by infusing it into the core meaning of a word. Comparative manner is infused in this way in herd(in the metaphor cited above), which means ‘gather together the way livestock are’; similarly gallopmeans ‘run like a horse’, and implicates a judgement of a person running in this way.
Simple intensification is also indicative, presumably because it grades a process and grading is an inherent feature of attitudinal vocabulary.
A core lexical item like breakfor example can be intensified in various
ways and by various degrees:
demolish, damage, dismantle, break down, undermine, break up, smash, shatter, smash to smithereens, tear to bits, tear to shreds, pull to pieces …
Former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating uses smashin his famous Redfern Park speech to characterise the treatment of Indigenous culture by invading Europeans, implicating negative judgementas he does so (ajudgementconfirmed by following inscriptions to be sure):
… It begins, I think, with that act of recognition Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing.
We took the traditional lands and smashedthe traditional way of life.
We brought the diseases. The alcohol.
We committed the murders.
We took the children from their mothers.
We practised discrimination and exclusion.
It was our ignorance and our prejudice.
And our failure to imagine these things being done to us.
With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds.
We failed to ask – how would I feel if this were done to me?
[Keating 1992] In traditional terms we might say that these non-core vocabulary items infused with manner connote attitude rather than denote it; as such they lie somewhere between affording an attitudeand provoking it, and so are more sensitive to co-text and reading position for interpre- tation than lexical metaphor and direct inscriptions. There is a range of other mechanisms by which can similarly ‘connote’ or ‘flag’ attitude, and which likewise fall between affording an attitudeand provoking it.
Construing some action or event as contrary to expectation is one such mechanism. Consider by way of example the following,
This is another book by an American who writes about the pleasures and pains of owning a house in France. Barry, however, is something of an exception because, unlike other authors in this genre, she does not actually live in her house in France. Her profiles of Gallic rustic- ity and meditation on the French way of life are derived from visits of only two or three weeks each year and her experience of village life seems confined to finding a neighbor to keep her keys for her and 66 The Language of Evaluation
someone to garage her car while she’s away. [online book review – Amazon.com]
There are several indicators of counter-expectancy here (for example however, actuallyandonly two or three weeks) which act to alert the reader that attitudinal values (positive/negative) are at stake. The ideational content of itself might, of course, have led the reader to this same neg- ative viewpoint. But the point is that the reviewer has here intruded into the text to explicitly evaluate Barry’s behaviour as contrary to expectation and by this flags a negative orientation to the author and her book.
The various strategies for inscribing and invoking attitudeintroduced above are outlined in Figure 2.3. Options can be usefully read top-down as a cline from ‘inscribe’ to ‘afford’ according to the degree of freedom allowed readers in aligning with the values naturalised by the text. Both lexical metaphor and non-core vocabulary have the effect of intensify- ing feeling, and so can be usefully compared with the intensification resources reviewed as ‘force’ in the graduation section of Chapter 3 below.
Recognition of inscribed and invoked attitudemeans that we might allow for double codings of the borderline categories introduced in Figure 2.3. Where players are explicitly judged in a role, an invoked appreciation of their accomplishments might be recognised; simi- larly, where an activity is explicitly appreciated as a thing, a judge- mentof whoever accomplished it might be invoked (see Table 2.10).
invoke
flag
afford we brought the diseases we smashed their way of life we fenced them in like sheep
invite provoke
inscribe it was our ignorance and our prejudice
Figure 2.3 Strategies for inscribing and invoking attitude
Reasoning along the same lines, the hybrids introduced in section 2.5 above that construe an attitude to something we approve or disap- prove of can be treated as affectualinscriptions invoking (ie implying) judgement orappreciation(guilty, embarrassed, proud, jealous, envious, ashamed, resentful, contemptuous; disgust/revolt).