In this chapter we outline a framework for mapping feelings as they are construed in English texts, referring to this system of meanings asattitude. This system involves three semantic regions covering what is traditionally referred to as emotion, ethics and aesthetics. Emotion is arguably at the heart of these regions since it is the expressive resource we are born with and embody physiologically from almost the moment of birth (Painter 2003). We will refer to this emotive dimension of mean- ing as affect.
Affectis concerned with registering positive and negative feelings: do we feel happy or sad, confident or anxious, interested or bored? In the following example the feelings construed are unhappy ones as a mem- ber of Australia’s Stolen Generation recounts her experience of being separated from her siblings.
[2.1] So this meant the grievingtook place again. The griefcame for my younger sister and two brothers whom I thought I would never see again. The day I left the Orphanage – that was a very sad day for me. I was very unhappy, and the memories came back. There was nowhere to turn. You was on your own. I was again in a different environment … I had no choice but to stick it out. With the hardships going and thinking of my sister and brothers which I left at the Orphanage. My heart full of sorrowsfor them. [Bringing Them Home1997: 12]
Judgementdeals with attitudes towards behaviour, which we admire or criticise, praise or condemn. Australia’s treatment of Indigenous people, responsible for the negative affectin 2.1 is strongly challenged in the following comment from early in the century.
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[2.2] You have almost exterminated our people, but there are enough of us remaining to expose the humbugof your claim, as white Australians, to be a civilised, progressive, kindly and humanenation. By your crueltyandcal- lousness towards the Aborigines you stand condemned… If you would openly admit that the purpose of your Aborigines Legislation has been, and now is, to exterminate the Aborigines completely so that not a trace of them or of their descendants remains, we could describe you as brutal, but honest.
But you dare not admit openly that what you hope and wish is for our death!
You hypocriticallyclaim that you are trying to ‘protect’ us; but your modern policy of ‘protection’ (so-called) is killing us off just as surely as the pioneer policy of giving us poisoned damper and shooting us down like dingoes!
[Bringing Them Home1997: 46]
Appreciation involves evaluations of semiotic and natural phenom- ena, according to the ways in which they are valued or not in a given field. Michael Ondaatje’s novel Anil’s Ghost, about post-colonial struggle and human rights abuses in Sri Lanka, is commended to prospective readers in positively glowing terms:
[2.3]Virtually flawless, with impeccableregional details, startlingly original characters, and a compelling literary plot that borders on the thriller, Ondaatje’s stunningachievement is to produce an indeliblenovel of danger- ous beauty. USA Today[Previews M Ondaatje Anil’s GhostToronto: Vintage.
2000: i]
As partially reflected in the examples just considered, attitudinal meanings tend to spread out and colour a phase of discourse as speak- ers and writers take up a stance oriented to affect,judgementorappre- ciation. We offer three longer examples here to illustrate this predilection for prosodic realisation, which according to Halliday (1979) is characteristic of interpersonal meaning in general across levels of language.
Affect (emotions; reacting to behaviour, text/process, phenomena) [2.4] … It might have been said that Jack Aubrey’s heart had been sealed off, so that he could accept his misfortune without it breaking; and that sealing- offhad turned him into a eunuch as far as emotion was concerned. … whereas in former times Captain Aubrey, like his hero Nelson and so many of his contemporaries, had been somewhat given to tears– he had wept with joyat the masthead of his first command; tearssometimes wetted the lower part of his fiddle when he played particularly moving passages; and cruel sobs had racked him at many a shipmate’s funeral by land or sea – he was now as hard and dry-eyed asany man could well be. He had parted from Sophie and
the children at Ashgrove Cottage with no more than a constriction in his throat which made his farewells sound painfully harsh and unfeeling… [O’Brian 1997a: 10]
Judgement (ethics; evaluating behaviour)
[2.5] ‘The temptation is the same whatever the country: it is often to the lawyer’s interest to make wrongseemright, and the more skilfulhe is the more he succeeds. Judges are even more exposed to temptation, since they sit every day; though indeed it is a temptation of a different sort: the have enormous powers, and if they choose they may be cruel, oppressive, froward and perversevirtually without control – they may interrupt and bully, further their political views, and pervert the course of justice. I remember in India we met a Mr Law at the dinner the Company gave us, and the gentleman who made the introductions whispered to me in a reverential tone that he was known as “the just judge”. What an indictmentof the bench, that one, one alone, among so many, should be sodistinguished.’
[O’Brian 1997b: 226–8]
Appreciation (aesthetics; evaluating text/process, natural phenomena) [2.6] ‘To tell you the truth, Maturin, on a perfectvernal day like this, I find nothingso pleasantas sitting on a comfortablechair in the sun, with green, green grass stretching away, the sound of bat and ball, and the sight of crick- eters. Particularly such cricketers as these: did you see how Maitland glanced that ball away to leg? A very prettystroke. Do not you find watching good cricketrestful, absorbing, a balmto the anxious, harassed mind?’ ‘I do not.
It seems to me, saving your presence, unspeakably tedious.’ ‘Perhaps some of thefinershades may escape you. Well played, sir! Oh very well played indeed.
That was as pretty a late cut as I have ever seen – how they run, ha ha …’ [O’Brian 1997b: 189–90]
Alongside this prosodic disposition, attitude involves gradable meanings, which have the potential to be intensified and compared – as with several items in 2.1–2.6 above. Feelings have depth, in other words, a feature we can perhaps interpret as affording their tendency to spill out and sprawl over a phase of discourse. This aspect of attitu- dinal meaning will be dealt with in the discussion of graduationin Chapter 3.
very sad, very unhappy, full of sorrows, the more skilful, virtually flawless, startlingly original, so pleasant, very pretty, finer, as pretty
44 The Language of Evaluation