It is vital to stress JUDGEMENT, as a system of attitudinal positioning, is, by definition, shaped by the particular cultural and ideological situation in which it operates. The way people make Judgements about morality, legality, capacity, normality etc will always be determined by the culture in which they live and by their own individual experiences, expectations, assumptions and beliefs. So there's always the possibility that the same event will receive different JUDGEMENTS, according to the ideological position of the person making those JUDGEMENTS. (Are strikes necessary, sometimes heroic bids by workers to protect their rights and their families' standard of living, or irresponsible, bloody-minded attempts by workers to get more than they deserve? Was the Gulf War an entirely moral exercises in defending a weak nation (Kuwait) against the avarice of a tyrannical regime, or a cynical exercise in protecting US economic interests in the oil- rich Middle East?)
For similar reasons, the way particular words in actual texts will be interpreted may also depend on the social and ideological position of the reader. Accordingly, it's important to note that the listings of JUDGEMENT terms I supplied above were only meant to provide a rough guide to some of the core JUDGEMENT meanings. They listings were not meant to indicate that a specific word will always have the same JUDGEMENT value. The actual meaning of a word, its specific JUDGEMENT value, will often be determined by where it occurs in the text and by what other JUDGEMENTS have been made previously in the text. Take, for example, the word militant . From a left-wing, union oriented perspective, the term has obvious positive connotations - to be militant is to have a praiseworthy determination to pursue the interests of the working class. From a right-wing, management perspective, of course, militancy is a negative value, connoting a hard-line, obstinate determination to frustrate management initiatives wherever possible.
Consider likewise the word mean. In most contexts this word is related semantically to cruel or unkind and would indicate a negative JUDGEMENT. Thus, we might say to a child, `Don't be mean to your little sister - let her play with the train set.' However, listening to one of those post-match post-mortems so favoured by television sports programs, I heard one of the panel of sports experts using the term in a clearly positive sense. He said, `You know, what I like so much about Abblett [a star Australian rules football player] is that he's a really mean forward - he doesn't give anything away, his opponents don't get any easy kicks.' Here the commentator's use of mean (derived from mean in the sense of stingy or parsimonious) indicated a positive assessment of the player's dependability, of his resolve to play in what the commentator saw as a laudably aggressive manner.
As one further illustration, consider the term `Top-Gun' (derived from a celebrated Hollywood move starring Tom Cruise. In the following report by the Sun of US and British missile attack on Iraq it indicates positive assessment of the competence of allied pilots.
Brit jets join Bush's blitz Allied jets bombed Iraqi capital Baghdad last night - in one of George W Bush's first acts as US President. British Tornado pilots joined in with US Top Guns to attack missile and communications HQs. (The Sun, page 1, Feb 17, 2001)
Yet it is used with a clearly negative connotation in the following report of a tragic accident in which US airforce planes, flying too low at an Italian ski resort, crashed into a ski lift, resulting in a number of fatalities as the ski car plunged to the earth.
Italian PM: Plane Was Far Too Low The U.S. Marine jet that severed a ski lift cable, plunging 20 people to their deaths, violated Italian air safety regulations with its "earth-shaving flight" across a snowy hillside, the prime minister of this angry nation said Wednesday. The defense minister said the American pilot should be prosecuted, several influential lawmakers said U.S. bases in Italy should be closed, and Italian and American investigators started looking into the accident near Trento, about 90 miles east of Milan. "This is not about a low-level flight, but a terrible act, a nearly earth-shaving flight, beyond any limit allowed by the rules and laws," Premier Romano Prodi told reporters. Witnesses said the Marine EA-6B Prowler swooped through the valley just above the treetops on Tuesday. Its tail severed two, fist-sized, steel cables, sending a gondola full of European skiers and the operator to their deaths. Startled by an unusually loud boom, 66-year-old Carla Naia looked up and saw the jet "coming at me at an incredible speed." "I've seen lots of planes and I've often cursed them," the Cavalese resident said. "But this one seemed completely out of control, far lower and faster than the others." Residents of this valley have long complained about low-flying jets out of Aviano Air Base at the foot of the Italian Alps. "We are fed up," said Mauro Gilmozi, the mayor of this picturesque town of 3,600. "This 'Top Gun' stuff has got to stop."
Here, rather than indicating a positive assessment of competence, the term negatively evaluates the pilot's behaviour as foolhardy and reckless.
To summarise then, JUDGEMENT involves positive or negative assessments of human behaviour by reference to a system of social norms. Thus for an utterance to act to indicate a JUDGEMENT value it must, either directly or indirectly, reflect on the behaviour or performance of some human individual or grouping. Negative values of Judgement typically involve a sense of guilt or of dysfunctionality.
