As I indicated earlier, the analysis of JUDGEMENT is complicated by the need to distinguish between what can be termed `inscribed' (or explicit) JUDGEMENT and what we terms `tokens' of Judgement (implicit). Under the inscribed/explicit category, the evaluation is explicitly presented by means of a lexical item carrying the JUDGEMENT value, thus, skilfully, corruptly, lazily etc. It is possible, as I have already indicated, for JUDGEMENT values to be evoked rather than inscribed by what we call `tokens' of JUDGEMENT. Under these tokens, JUDGEMENT values are triggered by what can be viewed as simply 'facts', apparently unevaluated descriptions of some event or state of affairs. The point is that these apparently 'factual' or informational meanings nevertheless have the capacity in the culture to evoke JUDGEMENTAL responses (depending upon the reader's social/cultural/ideological reading position). Thus a commentator may inscribe a JUDGEMENT value of negative capacity by accusing the government of `incompetence' or, alternatively, evoke the same value by means of a token such as `the government did not lay the foundations for long term growth'. There is, of course, nothing explicitly evaluative about such an observation but it nonetheless has the potential to evoke evaluations of incompetence in readers who share a particular view of economics and the role of government. Similarly, a reporter might explicitly evaluate the behaviour of, for example, a Californian suicide cult as `bizarre' or `aberrant' or they might evoke such appraisals by means of tokens such as `They referred to themselves as "angels"' or `They filled the mansion with computers and cheap plastic furniture.' Such tokens, of course, assume shared social norms. They rely upon conventionalised connections between actions and evaluations. As such, they are highly subject to reader position - each reader will interpret a text's tokens of judgement according to their own cultural and ideological positioning. They are also subject to influence by the co-text, and an important strategy in the establishment of interpersonal positioning in a text is to stage inscribed and evoked evaluation in such a way that the reader shares the writer's interpretations of the text's tokens.
In some instances, the ethical evaluation evoked by some 'factual' description (a token) will have become so naturalised or taken-for-granted in a given cultural situation that it is likely to be regarded as explicit (inscribed) rather than as implicit (evoked). JUDGEMENT. Consider, for example,
They ordered a pizza and then shot the deliveryman in the head at point-blank range.
Now the moral evaluation associated with such an action is so firmly established in our culture as to be virtually automatic. Nevertheless, it is still useful to distinguish between token (implicit JUDGEMENT) and inscription (explicit JUDGEMENT) in these contexts. The writer always has the choice between the token, the description couched essentially in experiential or 'factual' terms (`They shot the man in the head at point-blank range') and a description couched in the explicitly evaluative terms of explicit/inscribed Judgement (`They murdered him, heinously, callously and in cold-blood.') Since the choice is always available it remains meaningful and significant and should not be overlooked in the analysis, however `automatic' the connection between the factual description and the JUDGEMENT value it implies.
