It is now an acknowledged fact in the world of linguistics that the concept of evaluation is crucial, and that there is very little – if any – discourse that cannot be analyzed through the prism of its evaluative content. This book presents some of the latest developments in the study of this phenomenon. Released more than a decade later than Hunston and Thompson’s (2000) Evaluation in Text, Evaluation in Context is designed as its sequel, in an attempt to continue, update and extend the different avenues of research opened by the earlier work. Both theoretical and empirical studies on the topic are presented, with the intention of scrutinizing as many of its dimensions as possible, by not only looking at evaluative texts, but also considering the aspects of the discursive context that affect the final evaluative meaning at both the production and reception stages of the evaluative act. The editors’ main objective has been to gather contributions which investigate the manifold faces and phases of evaluation by presenting a wide variety of perspectives that include different linguistic theories (e.g. Axiological Semantics, Functionalism or Politeness Theory), different levels of linguistic description (e.g. phonological, lexical or semantic), and different text types and contexts (e.g. the evaluation found in ironic discourse, the multimodality of media discourse or the world of politics, just to name a few). The volume can be of use not only for scholars who study the evaluative function of language, but also for students who wish to pursue research in the area.

Table of Contents:
1. Section 1: Introduction; 2. The many faces and phases of evaluation (by Alba-Juez, Laura); 3. Section 2: Theoretical considerations and approaches to evaluation; 4. The emergence of axiology as a key parameter in modern linguistics: A review of significant contributions from the 1950s to the 1980s (by Felices-Lago, Angel); 5. AFFECT and emotion, target-value mismatches, and Russian dolls: refining the APPRAISAL model (by Thompson, Geoff); 6. Appraising Appraisal (by Macken-Horarik, Mary); 7. The evaluative palette of verbal irony (by Alba-Juez, Laura); 8. The implementation of the axiological parameter in a verbal subontology for natural language processing (by Felices-Lago, Angel); 9. The evaluative function of situation-bound utterances in intercultural interaction (by Kecskes, Istvan); 10. Prosody, information structure and evaluation (by Escandell-Vidal, Victoria); 11. The evaluation of intonation: pitch range differences in English and in Spanish (by Estebas-Vilaplana, Eva); 12. Section 3: Evaluation in different contexts; 13. "An astonishing season of destiny!" Evaluation in blurbs used for advertising TV series (by Bednarek, Monika); 14. Graduation within the scope of Attitude in English and Spanish consumer reviews of books and movies (by Carretero, Marta); 15. Register diversification in evaluative language: the case of scientific writing (by Degaetano-Ortlieb, Stefania); 16. The role of negative-modal synergies in Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species (by Hidalgo-Downing, Laura); 17. Exploring academic argumentation in course-related blogs through ENGAGEMENT (by Ryshina-Pankova, Marianna); 18. Multimodal analysis of controversy in the media (by Breeze, Ruth); 19. The expression of evaluation in weekly news magazines in English (by Martinez Caro, Elena); 20. Evaluative phraseological choice and speaker party/gender: A corpus-assisted comparative study of 'register-idiosyncratic' meaning in Congressional debate (by Miller, Donna R.); 21. Evaluation in emotion narratives (by Romano, Manuela); 22. Evaluative discourse and politeness in university students' communication through social networking sites (by Santamaria Garcia, Carmen); 23. Index