1. Attitude/Affect 6

Here we have an instance where, on the face of it, the writer is not evaluating at all, at least not with respect to the contestant Mel. The writer presents herself as merely reporting on the emotional reactions of `the men' - she is not taking responsibility (at least not directly) for any positive (or negative) assessment which might be suggested or invoked by such a reporting of emotions. The positive evaluation of `Mel' is thus presented here as being external, or non-authorial. It is, in a sense, an attributed evaluation, responsibility of which has been transferred to an external source, in this case `the men'. Tellingly, however, the fact that these men are said to view the young woman, Mel, favourably (they are said to respect, like and trust her) contributes to the writer's general purpose of presenting her to the reader in a positive light.

How does this type of non-authorial affectual Attitude operate rhetorically? Is it simply the case that the attributed evaluator acts as a surrogate, so to speak, for the author. That is to say, the author indicates a positive assessment by having some reported source respond with positive emotions to the phenomenon under consideration (for example, the men trusting Mel in the above example), or, alternatively, the author indicates a negative assessment by having some reported source respond with a negative emotion. Obviously, things are rather more complicated than this. It depends, of course, on the degree to which the source of the reported Affectual value is presented as reliable or reasonable in his/her emotional responses, and upon the degree to which the attributed emotional reaction can be interpreted as endorsed by, or in keeping with, the text's overall evaluative position. In the above instance the emotional positiveness of the men is consistent with the positiveness of the article as a whole. And there is nothing in the article to suggest that the men are untoward, perverse, unwarranted or unrepresentative in their positive regard for the young woman. They are then, at least in the article's own terms, reliable witnesses as to Mel's emotive qualities. But of course, we can well imagine (and will encounter in later text analyses) instances where some emotional response (either positive or negative) is not endorsed by the text or is likely to be viewed as in some way unwarranted, excessive, inappropriate or perverse. In such instances it cannot be that the reported sources of emotion act simply as evaluative `surrogates' for the author, as indirect means for the writer to advance his or her own attitudinal position

There is, as indicated above, an additional level of evaluation going on in such evaluative formulations. In the above extract, the reporting of the men's positive emotions towards Mel served to evaluate Mel, the target of this emotional reaction. But equally, this reporting of emotion can act to evaluate the men themselves. As individuals who `like', `trust' and `respect' Mel, the men themselves are positively evaluated. This functionality follows from the special social value which associates with emotion. As already indicated previously, as a society, we are quick to judge emotions, to see certain emotional responses as praiseworthy and others as blameworthy. Thus to hate is typically `bad' while `loving' is typically (though not always) `good'. Thus anger is `bad', unless it is of the righteous type (against some perceived injustice, for example), in which case it is `good'.

Once again, the inclusion of Affect in a text has the potential to position the reader attitudinally. When the writer attributes some emotion to a social actor (the `men' in the text extract above, for example), we can expect this to provoke either a sympathetic or unsympathetic response in the reader/listener towards this social actor. If the reader endorses the emotional response, sees it as praiseworthy, justified or at least understandable, then they are more likely to be positively disposed to that social actor generally. And of course the obverse applies equally well. If the reader sees the reported emotions of the social actor as destructive, perverse, unwarranted or incomprehensible, then they are more likely to be negatively disposed to that actor generally.

In this context, I mention in passing the well established fact that social actors in many types of discourse (especially Public discourses such as those media) don't function simply as isolated individuals. As has been widely discussed in, for example, the Critical Discourse Analysis literature, they often stand in for, or represent, generalised social types or groupings - for example, embattled teachers, the homeless, asylum seekers, victims of crime, drug addicts, business leaders, scientists, and so on. A reader who sympathises with the emotional response attributed to a given social type is thus predisposed to legitimate the social position that social type represents. We can see this dynamic at work in the following extract, taken from a letter to the editor of the Australian newspaper by an Australian of Vietnamese background. She was writing at a time when racism had become a hot media topic following the recent rise of an anti-Asian, anti-immigration and covertly racist political movement under the leadership of the independent parliamentarian, Pauline Hanson.