Stages in an online review genre* - SFU.camtaboada/docs/publications/Taboada_stages... · Stages in an online review genre* MAITE TABOADA ... a particular text readers use in order

1860–7330/11/0031–0247 Text & Talk 31–2(2011),pp.247–269Online1860–7349 DOI10.1515/TEXT.2011.011©WalterdeGruyter

Stages in an online review genre*

MAITE TABOADA

Abstract

Genre, from the systemic functional linguistics point of view, refers to the orga-nization of any speech activity in stages, determined by the overall purpose of the genre and by social conventions. In this paper, the SFL approach to genre and register is applied to the genre of online movie reviews. A corpus analysis shows specific stages in the genre: Descriptive stages (in turn, Subject Matter, Plot, Characters, and Background) and an obligatory Evaluation stage. Each stage is described in detail, in particular its characteristics and placement in the texts. We then turn to lexicogrammatical characteristics of the two main stages, showing that Description and Evaluation can be distinguished from each other using two features: evaluative words and connectives. Evaluation stages contain significantly more evaluative words. In terms of connectives, Description was shown to contain more temporal markers than Evaluation, whereas Evaluation contains more causal markers, indicating a basic distinc-tion between narration (which tends to necessitate more temporal relations) and comment (which makes more use of cause, result, concession, condition, and contrast relations).

Keywords: genre; register; systemic functional linguistics; movie reviews; discourse markers.

1. Thegenreofmoviereviews

Mostofusareadeptatrecognizingwhatapieceoftextisabout,whereitmighthavebeenutteredor printed, andwho the likely speaker/writer andhearer/readerare.Thisknowledgeisknowledgeofdifferentgenres,whichweuseineverydaylife.Mypurposeinthispaperistoinvestigatewhatcharacteristicsofaparticulartextreadersuseinordertoidentifythetext’sgenre.Thefirststepinthatinvestigationistodefinegenre,adefinitionthatIpresentinSection2,

(CS4) WDG (155×230mm) TimesNewRoman J-2405 TEXT, 31:2 2405_31-2_06 pp. 247–270 (p. 247)(idp) PMU: (A1) 01/02/2011 17 February 2011 12:07 PM

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

248 Maite Taboada

based on research in systemic functional linguistics. Section 3 presents thecorpususedinthisstudy,andthegeneralgenreofonlinemoviereviews,whichisanalyzedintermsofcomponentstagesinSection4.Thestudyfocusesonreviewswrittenbyamateursandpostedonline,onWebsitesdevoted to re-views.Thegenrediffers,informalityandstructuralcharacteristics,fromthatofcriticalreviewswrittenbyprofessionalmoviecritics,ofthetypethatonecanfindinanewspaper.Thegenericanalysisissupportedbytheanalysisoftwolexicogrammaticalpropertiesthatwerefoundtohelpdistinguishstagesinthisgenre:evaluativewordsandconnectives (Section5).Finally,Section6providesconcludingremarks.

2. Defininggenre

MostdefinitionsofgenreestablishaconnectionwithMikhailBahktin’swork.For Bakhtin (1986), language is realized through individual concrete utter-ancesbyparticipantsinthevariousareasofhumanactivity:

Eachseparateutteranceisindividual,ofcourse,buteachsphereinwhichlanguageisuseddevelops itsownrelativelystable typesof theseutterances.Thesewemaycallspeechgenres.(Bakhtin1986:60)

IntheHallidayantradition,thisrelationshipbetweenhumanactivityandlan-guageisportrayedasonebetweencontextandtext.Theideaofarelationshipbetweencontextandtextwasfirstformalizedintheconceptofregister.Hal-liday,MacIntosh,andStrevensusedregistertoreferto“avarietyaccordingtouseinthesensethateachspeakerhasarangeofvarietiesandchoosesbetweenthematdifferenttimes”(Halliday etal.1964:77).Aregisterisconstitutedbythelinguisticfeatureswhicharetypicallyassoci-

atedwithaconfigurationofsituationalfeatures,classifiedinvaluesofthefield,mode,andtenorofthetext’scontextofsituation.Fieldreferstowhatisgoingon;theareaofoperationofthelanguageactivity.Itdescribestheinherentfea-turesofthesituationandtheeventtakingplace,withanemphasisoninstitu-tionalareasofactivity.Tenorreferstotherelationsamongtheparticipants,totheextentthattheyaffectanddeterminefeaturesofthelanguage.Inthecate-goryoftenorweincludedegreesofformality,therolesplayedbythepartici-pantsandthefocusoftheactivity.Modeofdiscourseisthefunctionofthetextintheevent.Modetypicallydescribesthechannelofcommunication(spokenorwritten), the degreeof spontaneity between extempore andprepared, to-getherwiththeamountandtypeoffeedbackpossible.Insummary,registercapturesaspectsofthelanguagethataredefinedbythe

situation — whatistakingplace,whoistakingpart,andwhatpartthelanguageis playing — alongwith thewords and structures used in the realization of

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42



Stages in reviews 249

thosemeanings.Thethreeelementsthatrealizecontextarelinkedtothelin-guisticsystemintheHallidayanmodel.Field,tenor,andmodehavedirectre-alizations through the metafunctions of language: ideational, interpersonal,andtextual.Thus,fieldisrealizedthroughtheideationalmetafunction,tenorthroughthe interpersonalmetafunction,andmode throughthe textualmeta-function(Halliday1994;HallidayandHasan1976;Halliday etal.1964).Registerplacesemphasisonthecontextofsituation,asdefinedbythefield,

tenor,andmodevariables.Itdoesnotaccountfortherelationshipoflanguagetothecontextofculture,whichistherealmofgenre.Thewidelyquoteddefini-tionbyMartin(1984:25)isthatgenreis“astaged,goal-oriented,purposefulactivityinwhichspeakersengageasmembersofourculture.”Thestudyofgenrewithinsystemicfunctionallinguisticshasconcentrated

onstructuralcharacterizationsthroughgenrestaging.Stagesaretheconstitu-tiveelementsofagenre,whichfolloweachotherinapredeterminedfashion,specifictoeachgenre.Themostbasicstructureofagenreisitsdivisionintobeginning,middle,andend(Eggins1994;Stenström1994).Eggins(1994:37)characterizesthestaging,orschematicstructureofagenre,asadescriptionofthepartsthatformthewhole,andhowthepartsrelatetoeachother.Thisisachievedfollowingbothformalandfunctionalcriteria.ThedefinitionofgenrethatIfollowhereisonewheregenreisprimarilya

structurally determining characteristic of texts.Agiven text is perceived asbelongingtoagenrebecauseofitsstructuralcharacteristics,thatis,itsstaging.Forthatrecognitiontohappentheremustbeestablishedconsensusthatcertaintextsdevelopinacertainseriesofstages.Thestagingappropriateforatextisaresultofthefunctionofthetextinagivensituation.Thebroadterm“func-tion”encompasses twodifferent aspects: thecommunicativepurposeof thetextanditssocialfunction.Thisisnotanoveldefinition,noragroundbreakingreformulationoftheconcept,butanoperationaldefinition,whichhasprovenuseful in the analysis of task-oriented dialogues (Taboada 2003, 2004a;TaboadaandLavid2003)andofpostsinelectronicbulletinboards(Taboada2004b).The relationshipbetween thegenre (organization)and the register (tenor,

field, andmode) in a text can be characterized in differentways. Figure 1,takenfromTaboada(2004a),representsmyownconceptualizationoftherela-tionshipofgenreandregistertolinguisticrealization.Genreisaseparatelayerofcontextaboveeverythingelse,butwithelementsthatpercolateintothelan-guage through thegap that separates them.The language is composedof acontextuallevelandapurelylinguisticlevel.Thecontextuallevelofregisterissubdividedinvaluesoffield,tenor,andmode.Thesevaluesarerealizedlin-guisticallyinthethreemetafunctionsofthelanguage.Martinandothersinthesystemicfunctionaltraditionhaverepresentedthis

relationshipofmetafunctions,register,andgenreasconcentriccircles(Eggins



1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

250 Maite Taboada

andMartin 1997;Martin 1992;Martin andRose 2008).The representationproposedhereisnotfundamentallydifferent.Itonlyadvancesalooserconnec-tionbetweengenreandregisterthantheonebetweenregisterandmetafunctions.AsweseeinFigure1,genreandregisterhaveaninfluenceinthelexico-

grammaticalchoicesthatspeakersmake.Genrehasaninfluenceonthetypeofchoicesthatspeakersmakeforoneparticulargenre,asopposedtootherrelatedgenres.Buteachofthestagesinagenretendstohaveitsownlexicogrammaticalcharacteristics.RotheryandStenglin(1997),forinstance,showdifferenttran-sitivitystructuresinthedifferentstagesofstorygenres.Itisthesetwoaspectsofgenre,thestagingandthelexicogrammaticalchar-

acteristicsofstages,thatIwillexploreinthispaper.Ifirstprovideacharacter-izationofthestagesinthemoviereviewgenre,whichariseasaresultofthespecific functions of this particular genre: informand entertain at the sametime,combinedwithadesiretosharepersonalexperiencesthatispervasiveinthecurrentuseofnewInternet technologies( blogs, reviewsites,Facebook,etc.).Atthesametime,Istudysomeofthelexicogrammaticalpropertiesofeach stage. Lexicogrammatical characteristics explored are the numbers ofevaluativewords and theproportionof temporal versus causal connectives.OtherexamplesofgenreanalysisfollowingthismodelhaveexploredTheme–Rheme relations, rhetorical relations, and cohesion (Taboada 2000, 2004a;TaboadaandLavid2003).

3. Themoviereviewgenreandthecorpus

Toillustratetheframeworkforgenreanalysisdescribedabove,Icarriedoutananalysisofmoviereviewspostedonline.Thereviewgenreiswellestablished

Figure1. Relationship of genre, register, and language

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42




intheformofliteraryreviews,traditionallypublishedinprint.Oncemoviesbecamepopular,manyof theconventionsof the literary reviewgenrewereadoptedby themovie reviewgenre, still appearing inprint, andwrittenbyprofessionalmovie critics.More recently, a slightlydifferentversionof thegenrehasappearedonline.Theonlinemoviereviewistypicallywrittenbyanon-professional,withtheintentionofprovidinginformationtoanaudiencepresumablymadeupofpeers.Thereviewscanbefoundinanumberofsites,amongthemRottenTomatoesorEpinions.1Thistypeofmoviereviewisalsorelatedtoreviewsofdifferenttypesand

mediumsofart,includingliterature,film,andotherformsofvisualart.Baud(2003)considersmoviereviews innewspapersasasubgenreof reviews, inturn part of the broad newspaper discourse. Critical reviews, however, arecommonoutsideofnewspapers.School-agechildrenareoftenaskedtopro-videsomeformofcritiqueofstoriesorbooksthattheyhaveread.Thesecri-tiquestendtohaveastrongpersonalcontent,containinghighlevelsofaffec-tivereactiontothestory.MartinandRose(2008:93–94),followingRotheryand Stenglin (1997), characterize the school-based review as consisting ofthreemainstages:Contextofthestory,Description,andJudgment.Intheconstructionoftheonlinemoviereviewgenre,then,itislikelythatall

theseotherreviewgenresarebroughttobear.Thecharacteristicsofthispar-ticularmoviereviewgenrearethatitisproducedforanaudienceofpeersandwiththeintentionofbeinghelpful.Thelatterisprobablyalsotrueofreviewsinnewspapersandmagazines.Thedifferenceliesintheaudience:whereasanewspapercriticisconsideredaprofessional,andthereforedifferentanddis-tantfromhisorherreaders,onlineauthorswriteforeachother,andemotionalcontent and personal experience play an important role, just as they do inschool-basedreviews.Amajordifferencewithprofessionallywrittenreviewsis the spontaneityof thewriting.Whereas reviews in theprintedmedia aretypicallycheckedbyacopyeditor,andrevisedbytheauthorhimselforher-self,onlinereviewsarelikelyproducedwithoutrevisions,andpostedwithoutmediation.The corpus described in this paper consists of 50 reviews posted on the

Epinionssiteandcollectedbetweentheendof2003andthebeginningof2004.Theyarepartofalargercorpuscollectedtodevelopasystemtoanalyzeopin-ionautomatically(Taboada etal.2006;TaboadaandGrieve2004).ReviewersinEpinionsalwaysprovideafinalrecommendationontheproduct(“recom-mended”or“notrecommended”),plusavalueina5-starsystem.Moviesmayrangebetween1and5starsinthereviewer’sopinion.Forthecorpus,wecol-lected25“recommended”reviews,and25“notrecommended.”Moviesdis-cussedincludethoserecentlyreleasedatthetime:Bad Santa, Calendar Girls, The Cat in the Hat, Elf, Gothika, The Haunted Mansion, The Last of the Samu-rai, andMona Lisa Smile.



1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

252 Maite Taboada

Thereviewscontainseveralfieldsthatrevealtheironlineorigin.Theyallhaveatitle,apostingdate,anauthor(typicallyonlytheusernameonEpin-ions),andastarrating.Inthatsense,theyaresimilartobulletin-boardposts,whichIdescribeasagenreinTaboada(2004b).Inthispaper,Iconcentrateonthebodyofthereviewitself.Thereviewsvaryinlengthfrom55wordsto2,139,withanaverageof660

wordsperreview.Thecorpuscontains, in total,33,005words.Negativere-views are slightly shorter: They have an average length of 638.84 words,whereaspositivereviewsare681.36wordslongonaverage.Thisis,ofcourse,averysmallcorpustoanalyzeanentiregenre,butIhopetoprovideaprelimi-naryoverviewofthegenreanditscharacteristics.Thenextsectiondescribestheanalysisintermsofgenreandthestagesfoundinthereviews.

4. Stagesinmoviereviews

Movie reviews in general are not overly complicated in structure. Leggett(2005:5)claimsthat“[t]hemoviereviewisclearlyoneoftheleastcomplexforms of description and evaluation.”They tend to describe and evaluate amoviealongpredictablelines:plot,director,character,andothercharacteris-tics (cinematography, sets, sound).Hsu andPodolny (2004), in a surveyofmoviereviewsfromThe New York Times andVariety,foundthatthreedimen-sionsweremostfrequentlydescribedbyprofessionalreviewers:plot,screen-play,andsubjectmatter.Ananalysisofthe50reviewsrevealsthattheytendtocontaintwoobliga-

torystages:ageneralsummaryoftheplotandanevaluation.Thegeneralplotsummarycouldbesometimesdescribedasthemovie’ssubjectmatter,inHsuandPodolny’s(2004)description,althoughhereIwillmakeadistinctionbe-tweendetaileddescriptionsoftheplotandamoregeneralaccountofthesub-jectmatter.Onlythreeofthereviewsconsistedofasinglestage:anoverallevaluation

ofthemovie.Thesethreereviewswerealsoamongtheshortestofthe50,oneof themamere55words,reproducedbelow.2Althoughthereviewcontainssomeinformationaboutthemovie’ssubjectmatter, it isdifficult toseparateplotdescriptionfromevaluation,andIclassifiedtheentiretextasconsistingofasingleevaluationstage.

(1) Thismovieportraysthethechildren’sstory“TheCatintheHat”inaverycolorful andoriginalmanner.The children are adorable and the cat isveryamusing.Iespeciallyenjoyedthingoneandthingtwo,with theiroverthewallantics.Thisisatrulyoriginalmovie,whichbringsacartoontolife.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42




Beforeweexplorehowstagesareordered,andwhichonesareobligatoryandoptional,Iprovidebelowadescriptionofthestagesfoundinatypicalreview.InadditiontoSubjectmatter,Plot,andEvaluationdescribedabove,twootherstagesarefrequent.ThefirstoneisadescriptionoftheCharacters,andmaybeoftheactorsthatportraythem(withoutevaluation;thatis,merelydescription).Theother stagecommonly found isBackground,anexplanationof factsoreventsoutsidethemovieproperthathelpinterpretthecurrentmovie.

4.1. Subject matter

TheSubjectMatterstageisageneralsummaryof themovie’scontent. It isdifferentfromthePlotstageinthatitpaintsaverygeneraloutline,anddoesnotnecessarilyfollowatemporalsequenceinthedescriptionofevents.Some-timesitalsoservesaclassificationfunction,peggingthemovieintoaparticulargenre(action,comedy,children’s,etc.).Inexample(2),weseethebeginningofareview,whichstartswithaSubjectMatterstage.Insquarebrackets,Iin-cludemyownclassificationofstages.Thereviewerhas,inaddition,providedhisorherownheading(“Synopsis”).3Inmostcases,theSubjectMatterstagecan indeedbeclassifiedasa synopsis,or isdescribedby theauthors them-selvesasthemovie’spremise.Thiswasdistinctfromamoreextended,chron-ologicaldescriptionoftheplot.

(2) [Subjectmatter] Synopsis:SallyandConradlearntosetlimitsontheirmisadventure,with

alittlehelpfromDrSeuss’(TheodorS.Geisel)CatintheHat(1957).

TheSubjectMatterstageissometimessimilartoanOrientationstage,presentinmosttypesofstoriesorrecounts(LabovandWaletsky1967;RotheryandStenglin 1997), which Rothery and Stenglin describe as a contextualizingstage,one thatcreates“acontext forunderstandingwhat is tofollowin thesubsequent stages of the genre” (Rothery and Stenglin 1997: 236), besidesproviding an introduction to characters and establishing a physical setting.GerotandWignell(1994)alsoproposeanOrientationstageforreviews.Inthemoviereviews,thisstageismorespecificthanageneralorientation,inthatitprovidesaverygeneralsummaryofthecontent,andmaybeagenreclassifica-tion(thriller,action,romanticcomedy,etc.).Of the50reviews,5positiveand7negativereviewscontainedaSubject

Matterstage.Inallbuttwocases,SubjectMatterispresentedafteraninitialoverallEvaluationstage.IntheothertwocaseswhereSubjectMatterdoesnotfollowEvaluation,SubjectMatteristhefirststageofthereview,asinexample(2)above.



1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

254 Maite Taboada

4.2. Plot

Theplotdescriptionistypicallythelongeststageinreviews,althoughitisnotpresentinallofthem.Itprovidesachronologicalsummaryoftheeventsinthemovie.Thechronologycorrespondstothetimelineinwhicheventsarepor-trayedinthemovie,notnecessarilythechronologyinactualorderofoccur-renceintheworldofthemovie.Thedescriptionissometimesbrief,butitcanextendtoafewparagraphswhenalltheeventsaredescribedindetail.Inex-ample(3),theauthoroutlinestheeventsinthemovie,includingatthesametime some comparisonwith othermovies (and how the plot owesmuch tothem).

(3) YouprobablyhaveagoodguessatthestorybasedonthecomparisonsI’vemade,andyoucan’tbefaroff.CaptainNathanAlgren(TomCruise),veteranoftheCivilWar,andmanyskirmisheswithIndians,ishiredtogotoJapanandtrainanarmy.HelearnsthatheistheretoputdownacertainSamurai, Katsumoto (KenWatanabe), and his followers. Pressured toleadhisnewtroopsbeforethey’reready,heiscapturedbyKatsumotointheeventualmiserablerouthis‘army’suffers.HespendsalongwinterwithKatsumoto andhis family in a small village, becauseKatsumotowantsto‘knowhisenemy’.OncewegetbeyondhowAlgrenfindshiswayintotheSamuraiworld,‘Shogun’takesover,completewithaJapa-nesewoman he can grow to love, and surprise night attack byNinja.Fromherewemixequalparts ‘Dances’ and ‘Shogun’, choosing thoseelementsthatbestservethescenariowe’vecreated,andwehaveourplot.

Plotdescriptionscanbefoundin25ofthe50moviereviews(14inpositivereviews,and11innegativeones).4Itissurprisingthatnotallreviewersthoughtitnecessarytoprovideasummaryoftheplot.The25reviewsthatdonotcon-tainPlotdescriptionmaycontainaSubjectMatterorBackgroundstage,but,inmostcases,theyconsistentirelyofEvaluation.Inthissense,theonlinemoviereviewgenreisdifferentthanthemoreformalnewspaperreviews.Theonlinewritersseeitastheirmissiontoprovideopinion,andnotalwaystoprovidedetailedinformation.Plotstages tendtobe thesecondstagein thereview,aftereitheraBack-

ground or Evaluation stage. In some cases, they appear after Background,Evaluation,andCharacterdescription.

4.3. Characters

DescriptionsofcharacterscanbefoundinthePlotstage,buttheymayalsobeastageontheirown.Theseoftenoccurafterthemainplothasbeenpresented,andaddfurtherinformationaboutwhatcharactersdoandwhytheydoit.Such

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42




isthecaseinexample(4),wheretheCharactersstagefollowsadescriptionoftheplot(notshownhere).IntheCharactersstage,eachcharacterisanalyzedindetail,mixinginsomeevaluationoftheactorsthemselves(whichwouldbeadifferentstage,aswewillseebelow).

(4) [Characters] Butherstudents,fourofwhomwefocusoninparticular,havetheirown

stories.JoancouldgetacceptedtoYale,butshe’snotsureshewantstoputoffthe“homelife”wheretraditionwouldhaveherbe.Bettygetsmar-riedrightaway,andstartstomissclasses,butthingsonlygetworseathometoo.Giselleliveswithatorridpast.AndConstanceisjusttryingtomakefriends.

JuliaStiles(Joan) iseasyon theeyes,even ifshedoesact10yearsolderthansheis.Heraccentwasnottooshabby.Meanwhile,the“other”Julia (Roberts) strutsherusual stuff.She’snot terrific,butnot terribleeither.Ithinkshemayjustbehavingalittletoomuchfunplayingmiser-able roles (falling on the ice comes tomind)when in real life, she isanythingbut.Butenoughaboutthat.GinniferGoodwin(Constance)wasjustacutegirlplayingacutesideplot.

KirstenDunst(Betty)isjusttoodamnprettytobedefiant.Youdon’twanttoseeherupset,‘causethenyougetupsetyourself.Sheactuallydidadecentjobb!tchin’ituphere.Ikindalikedherhairtoo.Speakingofhair,whoknewMaggieGyllenhaal(Giselle)hadsomuchofit?Ithoughtthatstuffwasgonnaavalancherightoutintotheauditorium.

Onlysixof the50 reviewscontainedapureCharacterdescriptionstage (inother cases, the character description ismixedwith appraisal of the actors’performance,whichwasclassifiedasEvaluation).Aswithplot,thereviewersdonotseeitastheirmissiontoprovidedescriptionofallaspectsofthemovie,includingcharacters.

4.4. Background

Thisstagetakesonmanydifferentforms,butinallofthemthepurposeistoprovideinformationthattheauthordeemsnecessarytounderstandeitherthemovieorthereview.Theinformationmaybeaboutthereviewerhimselforherself.Forexample,areviewerexplainsthathehasseenthecartoonversionofThe Cat in the Hatnumeroustimes.Thisispresumablynecessarytounder-standwhyheisqualifiedtoevaluatethemovieversion.In(5),thereviewerseems topresentacaveat:Hedidn’tfindGothika, themovieunder review,scary,andthereasoncouldbeeitherthatheisjaded,orthathorrormoviestendtobetoosimilartoeachother.



1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

256 Maite Taboada

(5) OneofthesedaysI’mgoingtolearnthatghostmoviesjustdon’tscaremeliketheyusedto,andIshouldstopwastingmytimeontheminthetheatres.I’mnotsureifIjustgotoverthem,orifit’sjustbecausetheyareall the same.TheRing creepedme out, but lostme towards the end.[...]

TheBackgroundstageismostcommonlyfoundatthebeginningofthereview(in24ofthe30caseswhereaBackgroundstageispresent),butitmayappearelsewhere,iftheauthordecidestoprovidebackgroundinformationaboutpar-ticular aspects as theyarediscussed,orprefers to start out the reviewwithsomefactsaboutthemovie.

4.5. Evaluation

TheEvaluationstage is themainpointof thereviews,andallof themcon-tainedsomeEvaluation,invaryinglengths.Sinceitissuchanimportantstage,I classified the different aspects of themovie that can undergo evaluation:overall(ofthemovieasawhole),script,director,actors,andother.The“other”categoryincludesallotheraspectsoftheproduction,fromcinematographyandsoundtracktocostumes,artdirection,andproduction.Theoverallevaluationofamovietendstobeshortandtothepoint:The

reviewereitherdidordidnotlikeit.Afewreasonsmaybeoffered,but,typi-cally,whenreasonsarepresented,overallevaluationchangesintoanevalua-tionofspecificaspectsofthemovie.Example(6)presentsthewholetextofareview,whichiscomposedentirelyofEvaluation(thatis,thereisnodescrip-tionofsubjectmatter,plot,orcharacters).Theevaluationstartswithageneralvaluation(“overwroughtandoverdone”),andajustificationforit,continueswith an assessment of the art direction (which is assessed positively), andmovesontothescript,theworstpartofthemovie,inthereviewer’sopinion.Finally,asummaryofthequalityofthemovieingeneralispresented,classify-ingitasagoodcandidateforarental.

(6) [Evaluation(overall)] Themovie isoverwroughtandoverdone.Theplot isnot thebook’s. I

knowthatmoviesarenotsupposedtobefully like thebookbutwhenpracticallyeverychild(aswellasadult)inAmericahasreadtheDr.Seussbooks,thisisunforgivable.Themoviesdon’tneedtobefleshedoutwithoveranalyticalinformationaboutwhytheCatiswhoheisorwiththehistoryoftheirlives,butgiveitarest.

[Evaluation(other)] The good stuff ... the visual production itself with its ultra-stylized

appearance.Itlooksnice,butdidthebudgetofathirdworldnationneedtobespenttocreatethisfilm?

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42




[Evaluation(script)] Theplothasaddedabunchofnewthingstoit...andwhocares.Thisis

ashortbookwhichshouldhaveremainedacartoonclassicontv.[Evalu-ation(other)]Withtheholidaysuponusandthemassmerchandising,themovieissuretobeahit ... toobadastherearesomeotherfilmsthatdeservetobeseen.

Atlessthan90minutes,thismovieisdefinitelytoolong.You’llprob-ablyhavescreamingkidswhowanttoseethisfilm...itisonsteroidsthewayitrunsallovertheplacebuttheymaybeentertained.Parentshavetwochoices:lieandsaythetheatrewentoutofbusiness.Orgiveintothechildrenandputupwiththeirdisappointment.Stalepopcornwouldbebetterthanthismovie.

[Evaluation(overall)] SomehowIthinkthismoviewillbebetteronvideoasseeingitonthe

smallerscreenmaymakeitappeartobelessoverproduced.

EverysinglereviewinthecorpuscontainedaclearlyidentifiableEvaluationstage.Halfofthe50reviewsstartedwithanoverallevaluation(theotherhalfopenwithaBackgroundorSubjectMatterstage,butcontainevaluationlateron).

4.6. Schematic structure for movie reviews

Asummaryoftheobservationsoneachofthestagesabovecanbepresentedintheformofaschematicstructure,thesequencingofstages.Theideaofanalyz-inggenresasconsistingofstages( potentialorrealized)goesbacktoworkbyHasan(HallidayandHasan1985;Hasan1984)andhasbeenelaboratedonbyMartin,Eggins,andothers(EgginsandMartin1997;EgginsandSlade1997;Martin1985).Theschematicstructureforagenreisanoutlineoftheobliga-toryandoptionalstages,plus theirordering,whichisbothderivedfromin-stancesofexistingtextsandapplicabletonewtextsinthegenre.Inthepresentcase,theschematicstructureformoviereviewisderivedfromthetextsana-lyzed,andthepredictionisthatmosttextsinthisgenrecanbeaccountedforwiththefollowingformula,wherethecaretsignindicatessequence,andthebracketsoptionality.

(7) (Subject matter) ^ (Background)/Evaluation ^ (Subject matter)/(Plot)/(Background)^Evaluation^(Characters)^Evaluation

TherearethreepossibleplacementsforEvaluationintheformula,butnotalltextshavethreedifferentEvaluationstages.TheformulamerelyindicatesthatanEvaluationstageisobligatory,anditcanbepresentinoneormoreofthosethreepositions.



1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

258 Maite Taboada

Table1summarizesthenumbersforeachstage,andtheirtypicalplacement.Thebeginningandendpositionsrepresenttheveryfirstandlaststagesinthetext.Themiddlepositionismorebroad,anditcanbethesecondstage(forinstance,BackgroundafterSubjectMatter) or the thirdor fourth stage in amultiple-stagetext.Thetablehelpsinterprettheschematicstructureformulain(7).TheinitialstagesmaybeSubjectMatter,Plot,Background,orEvaluation,buttheyarealloptionalasinitialstages.Thefinalstage(sometimestheonlyone)isalwaysanEvaluation.Inbroaderterms,thegenrecanbesummarizedintwostages,whichcanbe

labeledasEvaluationversusDescription,orCommentversusDescribestages,asBieleretal.(2007)doforGermanmoviereviewsandTaboadaetal.(2009)forEnglish.TheEvaluationstageisobligatoryandpresentsanassessmentofthemovie.TheDescriptionstagesareoptionalandpresentfactualinformationaboutvariousaspectsofthefilm,thereviewer,orthefilm’sbackground.Using thebasicdistinctionbetweenEvaluation andDescription, thenext

sectionpresentssomeofthelexicogrammaticaldifferencesacrossthetwogen-eraltypesofstages.

5. Lexicogrammaticalevidenceforstages

Studies ingenreanalysisoftencouple structural characteristicswith lexico-grammaticalaspects,toprovideafullcharacterizationofhowgenreandlexi-cogrammargohandinhand.Stagesoftendeterminethetypesoflexicalorga-nizationandgrammaticalstructuresthatwilloccurineachofthestages,andlexicalandgrammaticalinformationcanalsoserveasfactorstoidentifystagesandtheirboundaries.Forinstance,inTaboada(2000),Ishowhowstagesintask-orientedconversationcanbeidentifiedbytrackinglexicalchainsacrosstheconversation:Anewlexicalchainsignalsthebeginningofanewstage.Thistwo-waydependencybetweenstagesandlexicogrammarhasoftenbeennotedinsystemicfunctionalanalysesofgenre,butisalsopartofalongtraditioningenrestudies inother frameworksaswell.TheclassicLabovandWaletsky(1967)paperonnarrativeincludesobservationsonthelexicalandgrammatical

Table1. Number and placement of stages

Beginning Middle End Total

Subjectmatter 3 9 0 12Plot 1 26 0 27Characters 0 6 0 6Background 24 10 0 34Evaluation 23 12 43 78

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42




structurestobefoundindifferentstagesofnarratives,suchasthepresenceofdistaldeictics(that, there, those)intheCodapartorstageofthenarrative.Registercharacteristicsofparticulargenreshaveabearingon the lexico-

grammar.Theinformalnatureofonlinereviews(lowinterpersonaldistance)resultsinuseofinformalvocabularyacrosstheentirereview(it rips off other great films, the good stuff, a bunch of new things).Withinstages,however,themost informal and emotionally laden characterizations tend to occur in theEvaluationstages.Inthissection,IdiscusstwoaspectsofthereviewsthatdistinguishEvalua-

tionstagesfromtheotherstages(SubjectMatter,Plot,Characters,andBack-ground),whichcanallbecharacterizedasDescriptionstages.Firstofall, Iexaminetheproportionofevaluativewordstoallotherwords,showingthatEvaluationstagescontainmoreevaluativeandsubjectivewords.Thesecondaspectconcernstemporalandcausalconnectives,wheretheresultsshowthatDescription stages contain more temporal connectives, whereas Evaluationstagescontainmorecausal-typeconnectives(includingconditionalandcon-cessiveconnectives).

5.1. Evaluative words in Description and Evaluation stages

ItisfairtoassumethatEvaluationstagesinthereviewswouldcontainmoreevaluativeorsubjectivewordsandexpressionsthanwhatIhavecharacterizedas Description stages, i.e., all other stages that describe the content of themovie,theplot,thecharacters,orthebackgroundwithinwhichthereview’sauthorthinksthemovieshouldbeinterpreted.Totestwhetherthisassumptioniscorrect,Icountedthenumbersofevaluativewordsandphrasesinthetwotypesofstages,andindeedconcludethattheassumptionholds.Inthissection,Idescribehowevaluativewordswereidentified,andthemethodtotestlevelsofsignificanceacrossthetwotypesofstages.Researchincontentanalysis,sentimentextraction,andappraisaltheoryhas

establishedboth that individualwordscarryevaluativecontent,and that theevaluativecontentofindividualwordsneedstobeestablishedincontext.Aspartofaprojectonautomaticextractionofsentiment(thepositiveornegativeopinioninatext),wehavecreatedaseriesofdictionariesforeachopenpartofspeech (adjectives, nouns, verbs, and adverbs). Using those dictionaries asstartingpoints,wehavedevelopedasystem,theSemanticOrientationCALcu-lator(SO-CAL),thatdeterminesthepolarityofatext.AfullexplanationoftheworkingsofSO-CALcanbefoundelsewhere(Brooke etal.2009;Taboada etal.2006,forthcoming).Inadditiontoindividualwords,SO-CALalsotakesanarrowformofcontextintoaccount,searchingfornegationofthewordsinquestion,andafewformsofintensification.5Thefollowingaresomeofthewordsandphrasesextractedfromthecorpusbeinganalyzed.



1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

260 Maite Taboada

(8) Adjectives/AdjPs:terrible, consistently believable, not scary Nouns/ NPs:masterpiece, plot holes, not have a problem6

Verbs/VPs:sparkles, completely enjoyed, not detract Adverbs/AdvPs:peculiarly, rather well, not enough

SO-CAL’sdictionariescontain,intheircurrentversion,2,257adjectives,1,142nouns,903verbs,and745adverbs,plusadictionaryofnegationtermsandalist of 177 intensifyingwords and phrases.The dictionarieswere built firstautomatically(extractingalladjectivesfroma400-textreviewcorpus), thenenhancedwithwordsfromothersubjectivedictionaries,revisedbyahumanexpert,andfinallycheckedforaccuracyandconsistencybyacommitteeofthreelinguisticsexperts.Inordertodeterminehowmanyoftheseevaluativewordsandphraseswere

presentinthetwotypesofstages,DescriptiveandEvaluativestagesfortheentirecorpuswerecollected into twoseparatefiles.ThenSO-CALanalysiswasperformedoneachofthetwofiles.TheresultsareshowninTable2.TotalnumberofwordswascalculatedusingthestatisticsfeatureinMicrosoftWord.SentencecountsareapproximateandarebasedonSO-CAL’spre-processing.ThefirstthingtonoteinTable2isthefactthattherearemorewordsand

sentencesinEvaluationstagesthaninDescription.Inotherwords,thereviewscontainmoreevaluation thananythingelse:About twiceasmanysentences( butnotquitetwicethenumberofwords)canbefoundinEvaluationstages.Fromaquickinspectionofthenumbers,itdoesseemthatevaluativewords

aremorefrequentinEvaluationstages:501adjectives(outof12,312words)inDescriptionversus1,062(outof20,634)inEvaluation.Toadjustforthediffer-encesinnumberofwords,log-likelihoodratioswerecalculatedfordifferentaspectsofthecorpus.Log-likelihoodprovidesinformationonwhetherapar-ticularaspect(oftenaword)ismorefrequentthanexpectedinonecorpusthaninanother. In thiscase, thecalculations referred tonumberofwordswhichhavesubjectivecontent.Forthecalculations,PaulRayson’sexcellentWebsite

Table2. Evaluative words and phrases in different stages (raw counts)

Description Evaluation

Adjectives/AdjPs 501 1,062Nouns/ NPs 240 455Verbs/VPs 186 333Adverbs/AdvPs 79 165

Totalevaluativewords 1,006 2,015Totalwords 12,321 20,634Sentences 683 1,232

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42




wasused(seealsoDunning1993;RaysonandGarside2000;SokalandRohlf1995).7Resultsof log-likelihood ratio tests (theG2 statistic) show thatDe-scriptionandEvaluationareindeeddifferentwithrespecttothetotalnumberofevaluativewordspresentinthetwotypesofstages(G2 = 21.91;P < 0.0001).Tonarrowdownthecontributionofevaluativewordsandphrasesbypartof

speech,Icalculatedlog-likelihoodratiosforeach,showingthatadjectivesarethemaincontributorstothedifference(G2 = 19.41;P < 0.0001).Thatis,Eval-uation can be distinguished from Description because the former containsmoreevaluativewordsingeneral,andsignificantlymoreevaluativeadjectives.Figure2 summarizes thedifferencesbetweenDescriptionandEvaluation

from the point of view of evaluativewords ( presented inwords per 1,000words).Nouns,Verbs,etc.labelsrefertoboththepartofspeechandthecor-respondingphrase(i.e.,bothnounsandnounphrases).

5.2. Temporal and causal connectives in Description and Evaluation stages

AnotherlexicogrammaticalaspectthatdistinguishesDescriptionfromEvalua-tionstagesisthetypesofrelationsmostcommonlyfound.SinceDescriptionstages tend to narrate a sequence of events (especially the plot descriptionstage),theycontainmoretemporalrelations.Evaluationstages,giventhattheyaremore argumentative in nature, will tend to containmore relations of acausaltype,includingcause,result,purpose,condition,andconcessionrela-tions.Asacoverterm,Iamusingthelabel“causal”forthelattertype.ThisincludestwomaintypesunderQuirketal.’s(1985)classification:“Condition,concession, andcontrast”on theonehand, and“Reason”on theother.Thetwo-way classification is in line with Martin’s (1992) distinction between

Figure2. Evaluative words per 1,000 words in Description and Evaluation stages



1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

262 Maite Taboada

consequentialandtemporalrelations(inadditiontoadditiveandcomparative,whicharenotofinteresthere).ThepapersinCouper-KuhlenandKortmann(2000)alsosuggestagroupingofcause,condition,concession(andcontrast,notincludedhere),anddiscusstheroleofsuchrelationsinindicatingview-point, subjectivity, andepistemic stance.Thehypothesis, then,was that theEvaluationstages,given theirheaviersubjective load,wouldcontainhighernumbers of the broadly defined causal relations, whereas the Descriptionstages,given their emphasison temporaldescriptionofplot,wouldcontainmoretemporalrelations.Afullanalysisofalltherelationsfoundinthestagesisbeyondthescopeof

thispaper.Asanapproximation,Icountedthenumberoftemporalandcausalconnectivesinthetwotypesofstages.Thistypeofanalysis,relatingstagesandcoherence relations,has alreadybeen illustrated inpreviouswork (Taboada2004a;TaboadaandLavid2003).8It has been shown in previous research that connectives and discourse

markersarebutoneofthemanywaysinwhichcoherencerelationsaresig-naled(Taboada2006,2009).Evenatthesentencelevel,wheremarkingofrela-tionsismorecommon,itisstillthecasethatmanyadverbialclauseshavenosubordinatingmarker.Biberetal.(1999,section10.2.8)notethatnon-finiteadverbial clauses are more commonly used without subordinators. On theotherhand,thereisnoevidencetosuggestthatthelevelofmarkingisdifferentforthetwotypesofrelationsconsideredhere(temporalversuscausal).Thus,countingmarkerswill likelygive anoverall indicationofhow frequent therelationsareintherespectivestages,evenifthefrequencyisanunderestimateofthetotalnumberofrelations.Full lists of connectiveswere compiled fromdifferent sources, including

KnottandDale’staxonomy(Knott1996;KnottandDale1994)andstandardgrammarsofEnglish(Biber etal.1999;Quirketal.1985).ThelistsinTable3showthosethatwerefoundinthecorpus.Iconductedasearchthroughthetexts,usingthewordsinTable3.Tomake

surethattheconnectiveswereusedasrelationalmarkers(andnotsentence-

Table3. Temporal and causal connectives

Temporal Causal

after, all the while, as, as soon as, before, by the time, meanwhile, now (that), since, then, till, until, when, whenever, while, whilst

after all, albeit, although, as, as long as, as if, as though, because, but, cause, considering (that), despite (the fact that), even if, even though, even when, however, if, if ever, in order to, lest, nevertheless, on the other hand, only if, or else, otherwise, since, so, so that, still, then, therefore, though, thus, unless, whether, while, whilst, yet

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42




internaladverbs),Iexaminedeveryinstancethatwasextracted.Thisalsoal-lowedthecategorizationofconnectivesthatareambiguousbetweentemporalandcausaluses(suchassince).Forconnectivessuchasafter or before, whichmayintroducebothadverbialclausesandprepositionalphrases,theconnectivewasonlyconsideredassuchwhenitintroducedaclause,whethernon-finiteornot(after he’s died; after getting over their initial fears),butdisregardedwhenitintroducedaprepositionalphrase(after years of not fitting in).Theresultsshowthattherearecleardifferencesintheuseoftemporaland

causalconnectivesinthecorpus.InTable4,wecanseethattherearemoretemporalmarkers( per1,000words)inDescriptionthaninEvaluationstages.Conversely, therearemorecausal-typemarkers,bothoverall andper1,000words,inEvaluationstages.(Fulllistsofconnectivesandtheirfrequenciesareincludedintheappendix.)Log-likelihoodcalculationsindicatethatthediffer-ences are statistically significant for both; temporalmarkers have an over-representationinDescriptionstages(G2 = 27.13;P < 0.0001),whereascausalmarkersareover-representedinEvaluationstages(G2 = 8.90;P < 0.01).Insummary,thesecondlexicogrammaticalcharacteristicthatweobserved,

thetypesofmarkerspresentineachstage,alsohelpsdifferentiatestagesthatcontainmostlydescriptionfromthosethatareevaluativeinnature.Thesedif-ferencesarerelatedtosmalldifferencesinregisteraspectsacrossstages.Al-thoughtenorandmodeareconstantacrossthetwomaintypesofstages,thereisasmallchangeinthefield,ifweconsiderfieldinanarrowsenseasachangeinthetopic,fromdescribingcontenttoevaluatingimpact.

6. Conclusion

Thisstudyofonlinemoviereviewsstartedwithanoverviewofgenreingen-eral,andthestepsinvolvedinanalyzinganyinstanceoflanguageasagenre.Takingtheperspectiveofsystemicfunctionallinguistics,Ihaveoutlinedthemainaspectsofagenre-basedanalysis.Inthesecondpartofthepaper,Iexam-ineindetailaparticulartypeofgenre,thatofmoviereviewspostedinonline

Table4. Frequency of temporal and causal markers in stages


Temporal,total 119 98Temporal,per1,000words 9.66 4.75Causal,total 165 364Causal,per1,000words 13.39 17.64Totalwordsinthestages 12,321 20,634



1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

264 Maite Taboada

forumsorWebportals.Usingacorpusof50moviereviews,Ishowthattheycanbecharacterizedintermsofafewstages.AllofthereviewsinthecorpuscontainedanobligatoryEvaluationstage.Theotherstagespresentinthecor-puscanbecharacterized,overall,asDescription.Theyareeitherasummaryofthemovie’ssubjectmatter(anequivalenttotheOrientationfoundinnarra-tivesandothergenres),adescriptionoftheplotandcharacters,orbackgroundinformationthatwouldhelpthereaderunderstandtheauthor’sopinionofthemovie.Thestagesaredefinedfromafunctionalpointofview,thatis,Iclassified

themaccordingtothemainpurposeofeachstage.Thereare,inaddition,lin-guisticaspectsthatdistinguishonegenrefromanother,andstageswithinonegenrefromeachother.Inthepaper,Ifocusedontwoaspects:thefrequencyofevaluativewords,andthefrequencyoftemporalversuscausalconnectives.Forthefirstcharacteristic,Icountedthenumberofevaluativewords(adjec-

tives,nouns,verbs andadverbs, includingboth individualwords andentirephrasesorgroups)andcalculatedtheirfrequencyper1,000words.Theresultsofalog-likelihoodanalysisshowastatisticallysignificantdifferencebetweenDescriptionandEvaluationstages,withthelattercontainingmoreevaluativewordsandphrases,inparticularadjectives.Fortheotheraspect,theanalysisoftemporalversuscausalmarkersinthe

stages,Ianalyzedthefrequencyoftemporalmarkers,asindicatorsoftemporalrelations, whichwere hypothesized to bemore frequent in theDescriptionstages.The cover term “causalmarkers” refers tomarkers of cause, result,condition,concession,andcontrast,hypothesizedtobemorefrequentinEval-uationstages,duetotheirargumentativenature.Theanalysisshowsthat,in-deed,temporalmarkersaresignificantlyoverrepresentedinDescription,andcausalmarkersinEvaluation.Theanalysispresentedhereisbutoneofthepossibilitiesofferedoncewe

haveclassifiedthegenreintermsofitsstages.WecouldextendthesametypesofanalysestotheindividualDescriptionstages,andwewouldprobablyfinddifferences among those.Thehigher frequencyof temporalmarkers inDe-scriptionoverallisprobablyduetotheirpresenceinthePlotdescriptionstage,forinstance.Anothertypeofanalysiscouldconsiderdifferencesbetweenre-views thatexpressapositiveoranegativeopinion toward themoviebeingreviewed.Workinprogressiscombiningthegenreanalysiswithananalysisofthetextsfollowingappraisaltheory(MartinandWhite2005).Therearemanyapplicationsoftheanalysisintermsofgenresandlexico-

grammaticalcharacteristicsofstages.Onethatweareexploringistheauto-maticextractionofopinionfromtexts.Insuchacontext,mostanalysesfocusonextractingpositiveandnegativewordsandaveragingthemacrossthecor-pus.Thisleadstowrongresultswhenthepositiveornegativewordsreferto,forinstance,thecharactersortheplot,butnotthemovieitself.Beingableto

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42




distinguishthedescriptivestages,whichdocontainevaluativewords,butmaynot contribute to the overall opinion that the text conveys, from evaluativestages,willnaturallyhelpsuchasystem.Weshowapreliminaryimplementa-tionofthisideainTaboadaetal.(2009).Insummary,thepapershowshowgenrecanbecharacterized,howthecon-

ceptisappliedtocorpusanalysis,andhowstagescanbeshowntobedistinc-tiveintermsofthelexicalorgrammaticalstructuresthattheycontain.

Appendix:Frequencyofconnectives

Temporal connectives in Description and Evaluation


after 13 7all the while 0 1as 13 5as soon as 1 2before 7 5by the time 1 1meanwhile 5 1now 2 1now that 1 2once 1 1since 4 1then 18 7till 0 1until 7 5when 38 47whenever 1 0while 7 10whilst 0 1

Total 119 98Totalper1,000words 9.66 4.75



1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

266 Maite Taboada

Causal connectives in Description and Evaluation


after all 2 1albeit 0 1although 3 16as 11 12as long as 1 1as if 1 2as though 0 1because 15 27but 52 146cause 1 0considering (that) 0 2despite (the fact that) 1 2even if 2 5even though 2 2even when 0 1however 11 12if 17 54if ever 1 0in order to 3 2lest 0 1nevertheless 1 1on the other hand 0 2only if 0 1or else 1 0otherwise 1 1since 5 10so 15 16so that 3 0still 0 3then 0 2therefore 1 0though 1 12thus 1 1unless 2 2whether 2 1while 7 14whilst 1 2yet 1 8

Total 165 364Totalper1,000words 13.39 17.64

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42




Notes

* ThisworkwassupportedbyaDiscoveryGrantfromtheNaturalSciencesandEngineeringResearchCouncilofCanada(261104-2008),bygrantsfromtheSpanishMinistryofScienceandInnovation(HUM2007-62220,PI:M.A.Gómez-González;FFI2008-03384,PI:J.Lavid;FFI2010-19380, PI: M. A. Gómez-González), and from the Xunta de Galicia, Spain(INCITE09204155PR,PI:M.A.Gómez-González).

1. www.rottentomatoes.com,www.epinions.com.2. Theexamplesarereproducedverbatim,includinganytyposandspellingmistakes.3. AlthoughsomereviewersprovidealinktotheirownWebpagesintheirprofile,fromwhich

genderinformationcanbeextracted,Iassumewedonotknowtheirgender.4. Therearea totalof27plotstages in thecorpus(seeTable1),because twoof thereviews

containedmultipleplotstages.5. Currentresearchaimsatfurtherexploringthecontributionofthewidercontext(Taboadaetal.

2009).6. not have a problemisproperlyaverbphrase.Itislistedasanounphrasebecausethewordin

questionisproblem,whichisnegatedbythenotthataccompanieshave.7. http://lingo.lancs.ac.uk/llwizard.html.Lastaccessedon29November2010.8. IowetheideaofcontrastingtemporalandcausalrelationsinthetwotypesofstagestoMan-

fredStede.

References

Bakhtin,Mikhail.1986.Speech genres and other late essays,VernW.McGee (trans.).Austin:UniversityofTexasPress.

Baud,Dorothée.2003.Analysedegenre:Lacritiquedecinémadanslapressequotidiennebritan-nique.ASp: La revue du GERAS 39/40.37– 45.

Biber,Douglas,StigJohansson,GeoffreyLeech,SusanConrad&EdwardFinegan.1999.Long-man grammar of spoken and written English.Harlow,Essex:PearsonEducation.

Bieler,Heike,StefanieDipper&ManfredStede.2007.Identifyingformalandfunctionalzonesinfilmreviews.InProceedings of the 8th SIGdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialogue,75–78.Antwerp,Belgium.

Brooke,Julian,MilanTofiloski&MaiteTaboada.2009.Cross-linguisticsentimentanalysis:FromEnglishtoSpanish. InProceedings of the 7th International Conference on Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing,50 –54.Borovets,Bulgaria.

Couper-Kuhlen,Elizabeth&BerndKortmann(eds.).2000.Cause, condition, concession, con-trast: Cognitive and discourse perspectives.Berlin&NewYork:MoutondeGruyter.

Dunning,Ted.1993.Accuratemethodsforthestatisticsofsurpriseandcoincidence.Computa-tional Linguistics 19.61–74.

Eggins,Suzanne.1994.An introduction to systemic functional linguistics.London:Pinter.Eggins,Suzanne&JamesR.Martin.1997.Genresandregistersofdiscourse.InTeunA.vanDijk(ed.),Discourse as structure and process. Discourse studies: A multidisciplinary introduction,230 –256.London:Sage.

Eggins,Suzanne&DianaSlade.1997.Analysing casual conversation.London:Cassell.Gerot,Linda&PeterWignell. 1994.Making sense of functional grammar.Cammeray,NSW:AntipodeanEducationalEnterprises.

Halliday,MichaelA.K.1994.An introduction to functional grammar, 2ndedn.London:Arnold.Halliday,MichaelA.K.&RuqaiyaHasan.1976.Cohesion in English.London:Longman.



1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

268 Maite Taboada

Halliday,MichaelA.K.&RuqaiyaHasan.1985.Language, context, and text: Aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective.Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress.

Halliday,MichaelA.K.,AngusMacIntosh&PeterStrevens.1964.The linguistic sciences and language teaching.London:Longman.

Hasan,Ruqaiya.1984.Thenurserytaleasgenre.Nottingham Linguistics Circular 13.71–102.Hsu,Greta& JoelM. Podolny. 2004.Critiquing the critics:An approach for the comparativeevaluationofcriticalschemas.Social Science Research 34.189–214.

Knott,Alistair. 1996.A data-driven methodology for motivating a set of coherence relations.Edinburgh:UniversityofEdinburghPh.D.dissertation.

Knott,Alistair&RobertDale.1994.Usinglinguisticphenomenatomotivateasetofcoherencerelations.Discourse Processes 18(1).35– 62.

Labov,William&JoshuaWaletsky.1967.Narrativeanalysis:Oralversionsofpersonalexperience.InJuneHelm(ed.),Essays on the verbal and the visual art: Proceedings of the 1996 Annual Meeting of the American Ethnological Society,12– 44.Seattle,WA:UniversityofWashingtonPress.

Leggett,B.J.2005.Convergenceanddivergenceinthemoviereview:Bonnie and Clyde.Film Criticism 30(2).1–23.

Martin,JamesR.1984.Language,registerandgenre.InFrancesChristie(ed.),Children writing: Reader,21–30.Geelong,Victoria:DeakinUniversityPress.

Martin, James R. 1985. Process and text: Two aspects of human semiosis. In James Benson& William Greaves (eds.), Systemic perspectives on discourse, 248–274. Norwood, NJ:Ablex.

Martin, James R. 1992.English text: System and structure.Amsterdam& Philadelphia: JohnBenjamins.

Martin,JamesR.&DavidRose.2008.Genre relations: Mapping culture.London:Equinox.Martin,JamesR.&PeterR.R.White.2005.The language of evaluation.NewYork:Palgrave.Quirk,Randolph,SidneyGreenbaum,GeoffreyLeech&JanSvartvik.1985.A comprehensive

grammar of the English language.London:Longman.Rayson,Paul&RogerGarside.2000.Comparingcorporausingfrequencyprofiling. InProceed-

ings of the Workshop on Comparing Corpora, 38th Annual Meeting of the Association for Com-putational Linguistics,1– 6.HongKong.

Rothery,Joan&MareeStenglin.1997.Entertainingandinstructing:Exploringexperiencethroughstory.InFrancesChristie&JamesR.Martin(eds.),Genre and institutions: Social processes in the workplace and school,231–263.London:Pinter.

Sokal,RobertR.&F.JamesRohlf.1995.Biometry: The principles and practice of statistics in biological research,3rdedn.NewYork:W.H.Freeman.

Stenström,Anna-Brita.1994.An introduction to spoken interaction.London:Longman.Taboada,Maite.2000.Cohesionasameasureingenericanalysis.InAlanMelby&ArleLommel(eds.),The 26th LACUS Forum,35– 49.ChapelHill,NC:TheLinguisticAssociationofCanadaandtheUnitedStates.

Taboada,Maite.2003.Modeling task-orienteddialogue.Computers and the Humanities 37(4).431– 454.

Taboada,Maite.2004a.Building coherence and cohesion: Task-oriented dialogue in English and Spanish.Amsterdam&Philadelphia:JohnBenjamins.

Taboada,Maite.2004b.Thegenrestructureofbulletinboardmessages.Text Technology 13(2).55–82.

Taboada,Maite.2006.Discoursemarkersas signals (ornot)of rhetorical relations.Journal of Pragmatics 38(4).567–592.

Taboada,Maite.2009.Implicitandexplicitcoherencerelations.InJanRenkema(ed.),Discourse, of course,127–140.Amsterdam&Philadelphia:JohnBenjamins.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42




Taboada,Maite&JackGrieve.2004.Analyzingappraisalautomatically. InProceedings of AAAI Spring Symposium on Exploring Attitude and Affect in Text (AAAI Technical Report SS-04-07),158–161.Stanford,CA:StanfordUniversity.

Taboada,Maite&JuliaLavid.2003.Rhetoricalandthematicpatternsinschedulingdialogues:Agenericcharacterization.Functions of Language 10(2).147–179.

Taboada,Maite,CarolineAnthony&KimberlyVoll.2006.Creatingsemanticorientationdiction-aries. InProceedings of 5th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC),427– 432.Genoa,Italy.

Taboada,Maite,JulianBrooke&ManfredStede.2009.Genre-basedparagraphclassificationforsentimentanalysis.InProceedings of the 10th Annual SIGDIAL Meeting on Discourse and Dia-logue,62–70.London.

Taboada,Maite,JulianBrooke,MilanTofiloski,KimberlyVoll&ManfredStede.Forthcoming.Lexicon-basedmethodsforsentimentanalysis.Computational Linguistics.

MaiteTaboadaisAssociateProfessorintheDepartmentofLinguisticsatSimonFraserUniversity,inCanada.Sheworksintheareasofdiscourseanalysis,systemicfunctionallinguistics,andcom-putationallinguistics,concentratingoncenteringtheory,coherencerelations,andsubjectivityintext.Addressforcorrespondence:DepartmentofLinguistics,SimonFraserUniversity,8888Uni-versityDr.,Burnaby,B.C.V5A1S6,Canada<[email protected]>.



1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42


Documents

Stages in an online review genre* - SFU.camtaboada/docs/publications/Taboada_stages... · Stages in an online review genre* MAITE TABOADA ... a particular text readers use in order