Environmental impact statements assess the environmental, social, and economic impacts of a proposed project and outline measures to minimize any adverse impacts. These documents form a core component of development approval processes for major infrastructure and resource projects, and are generally written by consultants hired by the project proponent. Environmental activists and researchers have raised questions as to the reliability of these documents, their capacity to fulfill their apparent purpose of protecting the environment, and whether they may be used for political purposes. In Australia, it is highly unlikely that a project will be rejected on the basis of an environmental impact statement. This study uses the appraisal framework to analyze sections from seven Australian environmental impact statements, providing insight into the stance created by interpersonal language choices. The findings indicate that appraisal resources frame the technical findings of the study in ways that align the reader to view the proposed project in a positive light and therefore encourage approval of the project. These findings illuminate the discourse of documents that operate at the junction of scientific and administrative domains, and that have significant influence over environmental outcomes.
In the digital era, online fundraising has become crucial for charitable organizations' sustainability. This study applies Systemic Functional Linguistics and Rhetorical Structure Theory to analyze fundraising discourse from 36 Hong Kong religious charity websites. Our integrated analysis of “teXture” (metafunctional linguistic choices) and “architeXture” (rhetorical organization) reveals how charities navigate competing demands of information provision, relationship-building, and persuasion. Key findings include strategic deployment of vague material processes maintaining dignity while implying urgency, hybrid registers combining formal and interpersonal features, and a distinctive rhetorical pattern centered on motivation relations. This “philanthropic persuasion arc”—progressing from background through elaboration to indirect appeals—differs markedly from commercial advertising. This study advances discourse analysis by demonstrating how “teXture” and “architeXture” synergistically create “values-based persuasion,” offering theoretical insights for scholars and practical guidance for practitioners seeking to craft effective yet values-aligned fundraising appeals in digital contexts.
A semiotic landscape (SL) refers to all meaning-making resources in public spaces ( Adami, 2020 ). This study examines an unexplored aspect of SL by focusing on the layout of public spaces—the display and arrangement of people and things. Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the layout of public spaces in Tunisia has witnessed a significant reshaping. This article argues that even though the reshaping of SL was initially motivated by health considerations, its social implications extend beyond the sanitary. This “new” SL has contributed to constructing new experiences and communication patterns that potentially reinforce social values of exclusion and distinction and are exploited to perpetuate existing power dynamics. This article explores this phenomenon from two perspectives. By means of Scollon and Scollon's Geosemiotic Model ( Scollon & Scollon, 2003 ) and van Leeuwen's Framing System ( van Leeuwen, 2005 ), this article describes the new SL while underscoring its potential to index new experiences and social relations. Using a questionnaire administered to 130 Tunisian participants and a focus group discussion annotated by the Attitude System of Martin and White's Appraisal Theory ( Martin & White, 2005 ), this study also probes social actors’ attitudes towards the new SL and their perceptions of their roles and relations within it.
Using pedagogic register analysis, this article describes how one teacher's dialogic practice evolves over time to create a community of learners and collective disciplinary knowledge. In current research, there is substantial rigorous evidence of the importance of talk in learning. However, despite this evidence, there remains a need to articulate for teachers the linguistic choices in dialogic pedagogy that can make a difference in student learning. This research tracks the changes in classroom interaction using educational linguistics as a teacher refines her practice guided by dialogic teaching principles and in response to changing class dynamics. Pedagogic register analysis provides an ideational and interpersonal lens to view the teacher discourse. Together, pedagogic activity and pedagogic relations systems provide the tools necessary to identify the evolving dialogic practices that build and enhance students’ collective discipline capability.
The first issue of the Trévoux journal appeared in 1701. Produced by the Jesuits, it provided a competitor for the Journal des Sçavans. Both journals relied heavily on book notices, and Religion was the most common subject dealt with. Analysis of the process types of finite verbs and of nominalized processes, and of the types of theme, shows that the Journal des Sçavans uses more material processes and less mental processes than the Trévoux journal. In terms of the themes used, the Trévoux journal uses more themes of a mental nature, while the Journal des Sçavans uses more themes relating to humans. Overall, the Jesuit publication tends to a mental conceptual stance, while the Journal des Sçavans tends to a more physical, down-to-earth position.
The Philosophical Transactions was founded in 1665, two months after the Journal des S4avans. It was edited by Henry Oldenburg from that date until his death in 1677. During that time he regularly printed translations of items from the Journal des S4avans, 17 in total over that period. Grew, who took over the editorship after Oldenburg's death, continued the tradition printing four translations in the two years that he edited the journal. The Philosophical Transactions then disappeared for several years when Hooke replaced them by his own Philosophical Collections. The Philosophical Transactions were revived in 1682, but the practice of translating from the Journal des S4avans had seriously waned. Under the joint editorship of Ashton, Plot, and Musgrave (1682-1686), there were none; Halley (1686-1693) printed one; Waller (1693-1696) printed none; and the only others before the end of the century were four in 1696-1697, under the editorship of Hans Sloane. The item Halley translated provides an interesting case study. The source text is a piece by Cassini, one of the leading astronomers of his day, and concerns his discovery and observation of the satellites of Saturn. The text is relatively long (2,960 words) and is divided into 11 sections of variable length. Halley chooses not to translate all of these: two are not translated at all, and his translation diverges significantly from the source text in the first and final sections. The sections that are not translated are those which deal with theoretical and historical matters, and it may be possible to explain Halley's choice by his adherence, along with other members of the Royal Society, to a Baconian agenda. This would be a case of context influencing discourse. An analysis using the tools of systemic functional linguistics (transitivity, theme, etc.) will bring out these features.
This article explores how theme resources are employed to construct textual meanings in the famous British novel A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. The data for analysis are confined to the novel's chapter 1, “The Period.” The theoretical framework adopted for analysis is systemic functional linguistics (SFL). Findings of the study exhibit a number of interesting textual features of which four stand out. First, the text is organized mainly around simple themes. Second, simple unmarked themes predominate simple marked themes. Third, between multiple unmarked theme and multiple marked theme, multiple unmarked theme accounts for 100 percent of occurrences in the text. Finally, among the four multiple theme patterns—textual + topical theme, interpersonal + topical theme, textual + interpersonal + topical theme, and interpersonal + textual + topical theme—textual + topical theme is the most employed pattern. The study ends with a summary of the salient findings found in the text; a recommendation affirming the relevance of SFL as a theoretical framework for analyzing and interpreting textual meanings of texts in general and literary texts in particular for EFL literature teaching, learning, and research; and some suggestions for further study.
The epistolary novel, popular for just a few decades of the mid-18th century and out of favor by the early nineteenth, is making a counter-intuitive comeback in young adult fiction. In a recent study by the Smithsonian National Postal Museum of 138 epistolary novels from ancient Greece until the present day, 52 (37%) were published in the 21st century. Yet the actual writing of letters is not exactly undergoing a revival—even a romantic or personal email has something of the anachronistic about it. Here the fall and rise of this immersive and immediate form of novelistic discourse is traced through a quantitative re-analysis of the Postal Museum corpus, and a qualitative study using Halliday's systemic functional grammar to compare one epistolary novel in the corpus written in adolescence with a mature, non-epistolary novel by the same author: Jane Austen. We suggest that the very mimetic qualities that Jane Austen rejected can explain its predictable fall and apparently inexorable rise in adolescent literature.
The aim of this article is to present some of the main results of the research projects called “Literature from a linguistic perspective: modelling and teaching of literary narrative genres and response genres” ( Salmaso, 2019–2021 ; Salmaso, 2022 ), and “Macrogenres short story and academic oral presentation: insights into their generic macrostructure potential and lexico-grammatical realizations of their constituents” ( Salmaso, 2022–2024 ). These projects are carried out in the subjects English Language III and IV of the teaching training, translation and research courses of studies of the English Department at Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UNCuyo, Mendoza, Argentina. One of the purposes of these research projects is modeling the generic macrostructure potential of academic oral presentations (AOPs), which students are asked to produce in the above-mentioned subjects to evaluate their oral competence. These research studies conceive AOPs as macrogenres defined as “the recurrent combination of elementary genres, which, being a combination that is iterative and frequent, can be captured in a generic macro-structure potential—drawing on Hasan's (1996) notion of GSP—( Salmaso, 2022 ).” The purpose of this article is to present the model of the generic macrostructure potential of AOPs created on the basis of response genres ( Rothery, 1994 ) in the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics.
Using as a springboard the principle that there is necessarily an ongoing linguistic process during the translation process, it is necessary to determine which tools of language science could better serve translation training. From these tools, we selected some key notions of Halliday's systemic functional linguistics (SFL) to analyze the source text (ST) and evaluate its transfer to target text (TT). More specifically, we investigated the influence of context on the variation of use (Halliday, 1978), the factors such as field, tenor, and mode on which the choice of register depends (Halliday, 2003); and the cohesion/coherence of the discourse as a whole (Halliday & Hasan, 1976). The core notion is to carry out a so-called top-down analysis. After analyzing the ST as an organized entity using markers carefully chosen by its author, we proceed to analyzing the choices made at the register level while also considering the communication situation. The translation process begins once the TT context has been determined and equivalences in ST have been sought. The contained examples used for this approach are text excerpts translated from French to Greek.
While systemic functional linguistics (SFL) has made considerable headway in numerous linguistic circles around the world and across multiple languages, it has not encountered the same enthusiasm in French academic linguistic circles. The current study addresses this issue by examining the potential barriers and challenges facing SFL in France, particularly the question of knowledge circulation and translating SFL research into French. The study explores these challenges through the lenses of a small translation project that serves to identify and further illuminate some of the linguistic and cultural factors contributing to this glass ceiling. Results indicate that lexis is not necessarily the most important issue among translators, although it can include notable areas of concern. Phraseology, however, poses a noteworthy problem given its role in the general construction of the text and its larger units of meaning. The results also show that specialized terminology and inter- and intra-translation variations are areas of concern, particularly in the translation of academic discourse.
This paper investigates the potential differences in the strategies of persuasion employed in activist campaign emails written in English and French. Developing recent work by Don (2019) and Peter White (2020a, 2020b, 2021a, 2021b), it seeks to highlight how the imagined reader is positioned as being at various levels of alignment and affiliation with the author. The analysis is based on a corpus comprising 50 campaign emails received from Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace France. While the two groups adopt similar attitudinal positions regarding environmental issues, they nevertheless can be distinguished in the role given to the imagined reader in the resolution of the campaign issue. More specifically, the texts can be characterized in terms of disparity of knowledge, experience, and capacity to act between writer and the reader-in-the-text (Thompson, 2012). The stance that the writer takes to the imagined reader is either “identifying” in the English emails, that is, between equals, or “authoritative” in the French emails, where the reader is limited to a supporting role. The analysis focuses on the use of markers of disclaim and concur, inclusive versus exclusive personal (pro)nominal groups, and a proposed cline of realization of commands directed toward the reader.
Migration remains a recurring yet controversial subject in today's society. Previous research on press discourse has predominantly focused on migration metaphors from their verbal construction (Santa Ana, 1999; O'Brien, 2003) and the interplay with the visual mode in articles (Catalano & Waugh, 2013; Catalano & MitchellMcCollough, 2019) or political cartoons (El Refaie, 2003). This genre frequently reflects an unfavorable and discriminatory representation of migrants through the lens of the host country. However, children's picture books addressing this sensitive issue have received little attention despite their pedagogical value for promoting intercultural, positive attitudes at an early age in an increasingly multicultural and multilingual world. Our study aims to examine the metaphorical construction of migration in Yuyi Morales' picture book Dreamers, combining the cognitive and social semiotic approaches (Forceville, 2016; Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006; Painter et al., 2013) to shed light on how both frameworks can complement each other in Critical Discourse Analysis and to demonstrate how children's picture books can constructively contribute to social change byproviding a counterbalancing voice to the dominant narrative on migration.
In a time ofglobalisation, the teaching of intercultural understanding has become one of the essential components of teaching curriculum in classrooms around the world. Among various materials for teaching intercultural understanding, multicultural children's picturebooks have been applied widely in classrooms to raise students' awareness of cultural representations of diverse countries, especially the teaching of Asian cultures in the context of Western classrooms. However, studies in teaching intercultural understanding have also reported teachers' difficulties in interpreting and analysing cultural elements in multicultural materials including Asian children's picturebooks. Therefore, this paper firstly explores painters' and illustrators' methods in depicting cultural aspects in Vietnam. Then, the paper proposes a conceptual framework for interpreting cultural meanings children's picturebooks about Vietnam. To do so, we conducted in-depth interviews with Vietnamese painters and illustrators who are experienced in illustrating Vietnamese culture in artworks including picturebooks. Based on interview findings with Vietnamese painters and illustrators, we propose a conceptual framework for exploring cultural aspects in Vietnamese children's picturebooks. Grounded Theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) and qualitative research design (Burgess & Bryman, 1999; Mayring, 2014) along with influential theoretical frameworks in the field of cultural studies and children's literature (Hall, 1976; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006; Painter et al., 2013; Weaver, 1993) are applied in the present paper. Findings in this paper are significant to researchers and teachers who are interested in working with multicultural picturebooks as well as multimodal texts to explore Asian cultures.
Essays that have an expounding or explaining nature are a common type of text in many academic disciplines such as business. While their primary function is to explain the causes or consequences of a phenomenon, they also serve to illustrate the writer's perspective. In other words, these essays persuade readers to recognise the writer's arguments, often when they are summarised in the concluding sentence of a paragraph with a final commentary. To illustrate how reasoning and persuasion are undertaken in the concluding components of a paragraph, this paper investigates the expounding essays written by English-as-a-Second-Language associate degree business students in a Hong Kong self-financed tertiary institution. To understand how logical coherence facilitates the writer's evaluative stance, the present study examines the text structure and its influence on evaluative language choice by combining two analytical frameworks, Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) and APPRAISAL. The textual focus is the body paragraphs announcing and explaining the factors or effects of a business topic to reveal how a conclusion is reached with an evaluative insight. The findings will demonstrate the common rhetorical relations for reasoning, elaborating and conjoining arguments. The findings will also illustrate the two key RST relations, Evaluation and Interpretation, located at the end of the paragraph. These two relations exhibit differences in the choice of explicit and implicit ATTITUDE resources. This paper concludes with a brief discussion on the pedagogical implications for instructing student writers in the rhetorical strategies for writing concluding components of a paragraph with an evaluative punch, based on the writer's intention to resonate with his or her assessment throughout the paragraph or to make an alternative personal judgement over the subject matter.
Migration remains a recurring yet controversial subject in today’s society. Previous research on press discourse has predominantly focused on migration metaphors from their verbal construction (Santa Ana, 1999; O’Brien, 2003) and the interplay with the visual mode in articles (Catalano & Waugh, 2013; Catalano & Mitchell-McCollough, 2019) or political cartoons (El Refaie, 2003). This genre frequently reflects an unfavorable and discriminatory representation of migrants through the lens of the host country. However, children’s picture books addressing this sensitive issue have received little attention despite their pedagogical value for promoting intercultural, positive attitudes at an early age in an increasingly multicultural and multilingual world. Our study aims to examine the metaphorical construction of migration in Yuyi Morales’ picture book Dreamers, combining the cognitive and social semiotic approaches (Forceville, 2016; Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006; Painter et al., 2013) to shed light on how both frameworks can complement each other in Critical Discourse Analysis and to demonstrate how children’s picture books can constructively contribute to social change by providing a counterbalancing voice to the dominant narrative on migration.
Essays that have an expounding or explaining nature are a common type of text in many academic disciplines such as business. While their primary function is to explain the causes or consequences of a phenomenon, they also serve to illustrate the writer’s perspective. In other words, these essays persuade readers to recognise the writer’s arguments, often when they are summarised in the concluding sentence of a paragraph with a final commentary. To illustrate how reasoning and persuasion are undertaken in the concluding components of a paragraph, this paper investigates the expounding essays written by English-as-a-Second-Language associate degree business students in a Hong Kong self-financed tertiary institution. To understand how logical coherence facilitates the writer’s evaluative stance, the present study examines the text structure and its influence on evaluative language choice by combining two analytical frameworks, Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) and APPRAISAL. The textual focus is the body paragraphs announcing and explaining the factors or effects of a business topic to reveal how a conclusion is reached with an evaluative insight. The findings will demonstrate the common rhetorical relations for reasoning, elaborating and conjoining arguments. The findings will also illustrate the two key RST relations, Evaluation and Interpretation, located at the end of the paragraph. These two relations exhibit differences in the choice of explicit and implicit ATTITUDE resources. This paper concludes with a brief discussion on the pedagogical implications for instructing student writers in the rhetorical strategies for writing concluding components of a paragraph with an evaluative punch, based on the writer’s intention to resonate with his or her assessment throughout the paragraph or to make an alternative personal judgement over the subject matter.
In a time of globalisation, the teaching of intercultural understanding has become one of the essential components of teaching curriculum in classrooms around the world. Among various materials for teaching intercultural understanding, multicultural children’s picturebooks have been applied widely in classrooms to raise students’ awareness of cultural representations of diverse countries, especially the teaching of Asian cultures in the context of Western classrooms. However, studies in teaching intercultural understanding have also reported teachers’ difficulties in interpreting and analysing cultural elements in multicultural materials including Asian children’s picturebooks. Therefore, this paper firstly explores painters’ and illustrators’ methods in depicting cultural aspects in Vietnam. Then, the paper proposes a conceptual framework for interpreting cultural meanings children’s picturebooks about Vietnam. To do so, we conducted in-depth interviews with Vietnamese painters and illustrators who are experienced in illustrating Vietnamese culture in artworks including picturebooks. Based on interview findings with Vietnamese painters and illustrators, we propose a conceptual framework for exploring cultural aspects in Vietnamese children’s picturebooks. Grounded Theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) and qualitative research design (Burgess & Bryman, 1999; Mayring, 2014) along with influential theoretical frameworks in the field of cultural studies and children’s literature (Hall, 1976; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006; Painter et al., 2013; Weaver, 1993) are applied in the present paper. Findings in this paper are significant to researchers and teachers who are interested in working with multicultural picturebooks as well as multimodal texts to explore Asian cultures.
