Evaluative meaning and its cultural significance
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Date
2008
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Adam Mickiewicz University
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Abstract
In the framework of traditional descriptive semantics, evaluative meaning is defined as an aspect
of affective meaning. By virtue of its general positive and negative evaluation, evaluative meaning
finds its place in the compartment of interpersonal meaning in functional linguistics. The
concept of evaluative meaning is also in agreement with the categorisation of meaning in contemporary
stylistics. Having stated its spread and disagreement with logic, the cultural significance of
evaluative meaning is analysed in this article. Employing the contextual and binary methods of
analysis, it has been shown that much of cultural significance in fiction and the image of culture
in general owes much to evaluative meaning. It is both plain evaluation and its emotive component
that increase the potential of evaluative meaning in fiction and render most delicate senses in
it. In fiction, evaluative meaning ranges from rude and moderate name calling to metaphor and
irony at the other extreme. The chosen methods appear sufficient in the analysis of evaluative
meaning, while its expressiveness is shown to gain much because of its logical inconsistency.
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Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, vol. 44 (2008), pp. 373-389