The final subcategory of Attitude is termed, APPRECIATION. As indicate previously, we categorise as APPRECIATION those evaluations which are concerned with positive and negative assessments of objects, artefacts1, processes and states of affairs rather than with human behaviour. In some instances, however, human participants may also be `APPRECIATED' - in cases where the assessment does not directly focus on the correctness or incorrectness of their behaviour. The most obvious values of APPRECIATION are concerned with what is traditionally known as aesthetics, with positive or negative assessments of the form, appearance, construction, presentation or impact of objects and entities.
We have looked so far looked in some detail at two sub-types of Attitude: AFFECT and JUDGEMENT. As we have seen, AFFECT is concerned with emotional states and responses, while JUDGEMENT is concerned with normative assessments of human behaviour. Thus under AFFECT, the evaluation is explicitly that of some human subject, the individual or group which is represented as making this or that emotional response or being in this or that emotional state. AFFECT, therefore is very explicitly subjective. When the AFFECTUAL values are those for which the author takes responsibility (the author's own emotional responses and states) they have the effect of strongly personalising the text, of foregrounding the individual role of the author and his/her evaluative position in producing and shaping that text. In contrast, JUDGEMENT is not so explicitly located in the consciousness or subjectivity of a specified human participant since JUDGEMENT values are presented as qualities of the phenomenon being evaluated rather than of the person doing the evaluating. Thus the AFFECTIVE value of `loving' in `Everyone loves Fred' is a quality or property attributed to `everyone' (the emoter/appraiser) while the JUDGEMENT value of `genius' in `Fred is a genius' is a quality attributed to Fred (the appraised). As a consequence, values of JUDGEMENT, at least in relative terms, may be somewhat less personalising, at least to the extent that they don't require that the appraiser be actually represented in the text.
APPRECIATION shares with JUDGEMENT this property of being oriented towards the `appraised' rather than the subjective `appraiser'. Values of APPRECIATION are properties which attach to the phenomenon under evaluation rather than the human subject doing the evaluation. Thus a value of APPRECIATION such as `beautiful' in `a beautiful sunset' is represented as residing in the `sunset' rather than in the person doing the evaluation. Such values involve a manoeuvre by which the subjective, individual, contingent evaluative response by the appraiser is transferred from that appraiser and represented as a property which is possessed of the evaluated entity. The evaluation is thus to some degree `objectified' and values of APPRECIATION share with JUDGEMENT the property of being less directly personalising, at least relative to values of AFFECT. Thus is it is more directly personalising to declare `I just adore that new movie Crouching Tiger, it really thrilled me' than to declare `The new year has provided a masterpiece in the shape of Ang Lee's martial arts epic.' This, of course, is not to overlook that all values of JUDGEMENT and APPRECIATION necessarily indicate the subjective involvement of some human participant - it is just that, with JUDGEMENT and APPRECIATION, that subjective involvement may be implied rather than directly represented.
1 I use the term `artefact' in a very general sense to include not only material objects which result from human industry but also works of art, texts, buildings and so on.
