Justify-from-data

An important idea that needs to be stressed is that my research was

grounded on Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal theory, but in a critical manner. By critical, I do not mean that I was judging the good or bad aspects of the theory, but mean that in light of the theory I went through my data and aimed at spotting any instance of language being used for an interpersonal function, whether or not it was categorized by Martin and White (2005). In other words, my analysis has an inductive as well as a deductive dimension, and is data sensitive. Through such analysis, there indeed emerged an additional option, which seems to be genre specific and was not classified by Martin and White (2005). This option was mainly employed by the thesis writers as they referred to their research data within discussion sections, which in a way was different from the simple data

presentation in results sections. Reference to data used in discussion sections was often found to sustain an authorial argument (Bitchener & Basturkmen 2006;

155 Murray, 201; Oliver, 2004), which can be seen as assuming an interpersonal function to convince the reader.

The current study is by no means the first within the Appraisal tradition to identity new Appraisal options. For example, by a thorough analysis of

undergraduate research papers and published research articles, Hood (2004) indentified a new dimension to the system of Graduation: Force in Martin’s (1997, 2000) model, on which her doctoral research was based. White (2012) also modified the system of Engagement in Martin and White (2005) by presenting a new dialogic contractive option of Justify in newspaper editorials. This option is typically realized by “connective such as therefore and related locutions” and functions to “present the speaker motivating the current propositions so as to win over those who might be dubious or resistant” (White, 2012, p. 64). For instance, “The government has betrayed the people because it didn’t maintain full

employment” (p. 65).

Both Hood’s (2004) and White’s (2013) proposal for new Appraisal option signaled that Martin and White’s (2005) scheme is not to be considered as static, but rather as dynamic, which may be further developed when it is applied to exploring interpersonal language in a new discourse domain. In fact, the practice of justifying with reference to data was noticed during the pilot, but it was

156 bringing in an external voice to the author’s text and disassociating the authorial voice from the proposition being advanced. Such instances were labeled as “acknowledge (from data?)” as shown in the example below:

42. From what they wrote in the letters, I could see that they did struggle very much in deciding whether or not to come to my class and in fighting between their internal beliefs and external pressure. In Class 1, for example, a student(S35, Class 1)foundthat [engagement: attribute: acknowledge(from data?)] final-year students’ (including herself) learning behaviours and purposes became very utilitarian. (L, 2007: 267)

However, the more I encountered similar instances the more it became clear that the use of reference to data generally showed a dialogic contractive function. The previous label thus may confuse the reader that this genre-specific option, as the Acknowledge option in Martin and White (2005), is dialogic expansive. For this reason,and inspired by White (2010), I labeled the option which emerged from my corpus as Justify-from-datain that their linguistic expressions also functioned to enhance the argumentative force of the proposition being advanced, in a similar way to the Justify option in White (2012).

Justify in this corpus was mainly employed bythe thesis writers to refer to their own research data (i.e. interviews, questionnaires, and teaching journals) in order to support an authorial proposition that was presented preceding to this reference. For example:

157 43. Ms. Pai supplemented the textbook by teaching an element of writing

called a “hook.” Mr. Sun supplemented the textbook when he taught students to write something he called a “bridge.” Students reported they were rather confused by the whole thing. As one student commented: “I write the hook in the Mr. Sun’s class, he said no, you can’t write this on it, so I think maybe it’s not a part of academic writing.” (G, 2008: 254) 44. Length was one condition for EAW; for some respondents, the length of

the text was a necessary condition for a piece of writing to be EAW. While the length of a composition being a criterion for EAW is not, to my

knowledge, discussed in current literature on second language writing, two teachers and a student during this study refer to it. For example, the writing instructor Mr. Brown thought the writing needed to be longer than a paragraph/page in order to be considered EAW. (G, 2008: 234)

45. The data suggested that inconsistency existed among these dimensions, for example, some students’ conceptions implied learner autonomy for

communicative ability whereas their reported behaviours focused on self-directed learning for academic success (see Table 7-4). As shown in Table 7-4, both interviewees 2 and 9 reported that English language learning should aim at gaining communicative ability (see section 5.4), however, their reported behaviours (see section 4.4.1) are much oriented towards academic success. (J, 2008: 290)

Examples from 43 to 47 in one aspect acted similarly as Acknowledge to disassociate the authorial voice from the proposition being advanced. In the other aspect, they were employed to support the main authorial proposition expressed prior to the reference and thus reinforced the arguability of that proposition, which consequently enhanced the interpersonal cost of challenging that

proposition and reduced the dialogic space for negotiation. Therefore, instances of reference to research data were classified as a new sub-category of the contractive Engagement system.

158 The three examples above represent typical realizations of

Justify-from-data emerged from this corpus, which can be summarized as a specific research participant + reporting verb (e.g. example 45, both interviewees 2 and 9 reported that…). However, there also appeared other formulations that were used for the justifying function but whose form might appear more typical of results presentation.For example:

46. Findings of the present study indicate that teachers’ immediacy behaviours are associated with learners’ affect for the teachers and the intrinsic values learners attach to the course. In 4.1.3.3, the target learners claimed that caring and approachable teachers prompted them to generate positive affect for the teachers. They also claimed that teachers who were keen on

interacting with them and who use a lively, funny way to teach may make learning more interesting and fun to them. (W, 2010: 200)

47. The findings also indicated the high degree to which the informants consider their intercultural experience to have been conducive to improving their teaching performance when they went back to teach in China from abroad in terms of CLT implementation and general teaching effectiveness. In general, the overseas experience of teacher education overseas was commonly agreed as effective in improving the overall quality of Chinese EFL practitioners academically, practically, ideologically, socioculturally and linguistically. (X, 2009: 246)

Example 46 showed a reference to a number of research participants while example 47 even did not give an exact reference; however, in terms of the co-text they functioned to support the authorial proposition being uttered prior to the reference so that they were still coded as Justify-from-data. A critical point that needs to be mentioned again is that assigning any span of text to a particular

159 Appraisal category is not simply by the form of language but is widely co-text and context based. As in example 48 below:

48. As he revealed his criteria for good writing, he did not seem to value the personal but rather displayed a lack of credence for the creative not in keeping with tenets of the Personal-Expressivists movement. When

grading academic writing Mr. Johnson said he had “criteria that are much more rigid,” but creative writing “is the kind of writing that is not in any way challenging to grade okay. None whatsoever. You can sit down and do thirty papers in thirty minutes and still have time to drink a cup of coffee.” (G, 2008: 241)

The expression Mr. Johnson said is same to the typical realizations of Justify-from-data in form such as example 44, actually did not fulfill any justifying function. It was just a report of what Mr. Johnson said about grading academic writing and hence was coded as Bare Assertion, rather than Justify-from-data.