Appraising Research:: Evaluation in Academic Writing

Appraising Research: Evaluation in Academic Writing makes an important new contribution to our understanding of academic writing in English with a focus on how published writers take an evaluative stance in the introductions to research articles. Drawing on appraisal theory in Systemic Functional Linguistics, the author analyses whole texts and phases of text to explore comprehensively the ways in which writers bring together a range of resources to develop their positions in the flow of discourse. The detailed application of appraisal theory is carefully and progressively introduced such that the book will be a most useful guide for researchers new to the theory. The nature of the analyses means that the book also provides a direct source for teachers of academic discourse to use as models and explanations of evaluative resources at work. The data are drawn from a diverse range of disciplines and disciplinary differences are noted and explained.

Susan Hood is a senior lecturer in TESOL and applied linguistics at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Australia, where she teaches postgraduate courses in discourse analysis, research perspectives and teaching EAP. She has taught, researched and published in the field of academic literacy in Hong Kong and in Australia.