This paper presents findings of an Appraisal analysis of a set of wine reviews composed by Robert Parker, one of the most influential critics of the industry. A set of texts was co-analysed by both researchers and the findings reviewed using reference to Parker’s own glossary of wine terms. The results provide new support for our recognition that semantic categories of Attitude are Field dependent. In order to accommodate the proliferation of semantic fields attracting evaluation in the texts, new sub-categories of Appreciation needed to be proposed, and these extensions to the present system will be the focus of the presentation.

The Appraisal framework (see for example Martin & White 2005) categorises instances of evaluative language in authentic texts under three main areas: Attitude, Engagement, and Graduation. In this paper we focus on Attitude: Appreciation, and the evaluation of the products of human or natural creation. Sub- categories of Appreciation highlight semantic boundaries between terms that refer to either ‘social value’, ‘composition’, or ‘reaction’.

Each sub-category of Appreciation has been extended in the light of our analysis, and we suggest that the Appraisal framework needs to be viewed as a semantic template capable of accounting for variation in meaning-making practices via such extensions based on analysis of field-specific corpora.

Trust is a pervasive feature of social life and a basic element of both intimate and distant interpersonal relations. Every decision to trust other people, however, involves a certain degree of risk, as our ability to attain full knowledge of their intentions and motives is, in most situations, inescapably limited (Gambetta, 1988; Marková and Gillespie, 2008). Our decisions to trust others are thus influenced and guided by our subjective perceptions of their trustworthiness (Hardin, 2002; Linell and Keselman, 2011). These considerations apply not only to interpersonal relations between individuals, but also to those between business organizations and their stakeholders (Ingenhoff and Sommer, 2010).

This paper investigates how large multinational corporations use images to construct a trustworthy corporate identity across different genres of business communication. We analyze a corpus of images collected from the websites of some of the world’s largest corporations operating in high-impact industries such as the oil and gas, banking and pharmaceutical sectors, where stakeholders’ trust is key to ensuring social legitimation and long-term viability. The goal of the analysis is to identify and describe the pictorial (monomodal) and multimodal metaphors (Forceville 1996, 2002; Forceville and Urios-Aparisi, 2009) employed by these companies to convey three fundamental attributes of trustworthiness: a) ability, which regards a company’s skills and expertise in a specific domain, b) integrity, which relates to its moral and ethical values, and c) benevolence, which refers to its care for and goodwill towards the stakeholders (Mayer et al., 1995; Ingenhoff and Sommer, 2010). Following Koller (2009), this paper emphasizes the centrality of pictorial and multimodal metaphor in companies’ discursive construction of their corporate identity, focusing on a specific and crucial dimension of corporate identity, i.e. trustworthiness. In addition, this study adds to the existing literature on metaphor by investigating how pictorial and multimodal metaphors are used, for persuasive purposes, in emerging genres of corporate communication. More generally, the study has the twofold aim of contributing to our knowledge of how trustworthiness is constructed through visual and multimodal resources, at the same time advancing our understanding of the discursive dynamics of trust, which is still limited and fragmentary (Linell and Keselman, 2011). 

Manual corpus annotation facilitates exhaustive and detailed corpus-based analyses of evaluation that would not be possible with purely automatic techniques. However, manual annotation is a complex and subjective process. Most studies adopting this approach have paid insufficient attention to the methodological challenges involved in manually annotating evaluation – especially concerning transparency, reliability and replicability. This article illustrates a procedure for annotating evaluative expressions in text that facilitates more transparent, reliable and replicable analyses. The method is demonstrated through a case study analysis of appraisal (Martin and White, 2005) in a small-size specialised corpus of CEO letters published by the British energy company, BP, and four competitors before and after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010. Drawing on Fuoli and Paradis's (2014) model of trust–repair discourse, we examine how attitude and engagement resources are strategically deployed by BP's CEO in the attempt to repair stakeholders’ trust after the accident.

The clichéd conceptualization of cancer illness as a battle, which the patient can either win or lose, can be problematic. For patients referred to palliative care, it can cause feelings of guilt and failure. This framing of cancer, here referred to as ‘the battle script’, has been questioned in previous research, and there seems to be awareness among health practitioners that battle metaphors should be avoided.

The aim of this paper is to shed light on this battle script by examining the discursive dynamics of metaphor use in a large corpus of Swedish blogs written by terminally ill patients. The study focuses on two common linguistic metaphors, kämpa [fight/struggle] and ge upp [give up]. These expressions have the potential to actualize the battle script, but do not necessarily do so, due to their ambiguous meanings. By analyzing the contextualized meaning of these two metaphors, we illustrate the normality of the battle script as well as the problem to handle the perceived normativity of the script. We also discuss discursive strategies used by the bloggers to handle the negative implications of the battle script.

Health care professionals in palliative cancer care often meet emotionally sensitive patients and relatives. An important aspect of these encounters is the use of language; to listen to, understand and adapt to the patients’ and relatives’ own discourse. The MEPAC project raises awareness of language use by focusing on metaphors. Our approach is grounded in empirical me-taphor research, which takes note of metaphorically used words and phrases in authentic texts. This article offers a qualitative analysis of war and battle metaphors in texts written by six bloggers with cancer diagnosis. This type of metaphors has been the object of previous scholarly debate. The analysis shows that all of the blogs include war and battle metaphors. The use of these metaphors is complex; the metaphors can have both positive and negative effects. The results are significant for professionals working in Swedish pal-liative care: perceptiveness of metaphor use enhances the prerequisites for individualized care.

Living with a life-limiting cancer illness can entail a turmoil of feelings such as constant fear of loss, suffering and dying. Because patients live longer with life-limiting illness, there is a need for enhanced understanding of how people make sense of and cope with the complicated aspects that this life situation brings on. In this article, we explore how bloggers with advanced cancer use metaphors as ways of making sense of their experiences. Our study is theoretically grounded in Conceptual Metaphor Theory, where metaphors are seen as a powerful phenomenon that both reflects and affects our thinking. The data consist of a corpus of blogs written in Swedish by individuals with advanced cancer, and the findings from our linguistic metaphor analysis are consistently interpreted against the backdrop of literature on coping. Our study thus highlights the intersection of linguistic metaphor analysis and psychological theories of coping by illustrating the many and complex functions metaphors can have as part of sense-making processes. Our hermeneutic approach enables us to show some differences among the three most pervasive metaphor domains in our material, battle, journey and imprisonment: the journey and imprisonment domains are more flexible than the battle domain in terms of the different kinds of coping strategies that are actualised by the bloggers’ use of metaphors. One particular finding from our analysis is the way in which the bloggers make use of metaphors to compartmentalise experiences and emotions. Our contention is that careful attention to the metaphors used by patients can improve communication in healthcare and enhance understanding of the complex role language use plays in coping processes more generally. By highlighting the relation between metaphor use and coping, our analysis also provides a way to discuss coping strategies based on the patient’s own use of language.

Recent years have seen a rapid influx of reviews in the field of different aesthetic and consumption domains, which is indicative of the importance assigned by present-day society to what we choose to experience and consume. Given their prevalence, there is a need to find an adequate analytic framework which allows insightful understanding of the discursive construction of such reviews. This paper aims to propose such a framework by combining tools from the Appraisal model with ideas from argumentation theory. The combined methodology is demonstrated using one text from a corpus of wine reviews written by the extraordinarily influential wine critic Robert Parker. The analysis takes into consideration both meanings that are internal to the text and meanings that are text-external, so-called world knowledge. I argue that the technique of reconstruction adopted from argumentation theory helps to highlight and explain how the appraisal works in the text. The findings are generalizable to the extent that the methodology can be used for any type of review text, especially in the domain of present-day luxury consumption, which is not overtly argumentative but which can still be found to have an assessment-basis format that leads its readers towards a certain worldview that they are invited to co-construct and see as rational.

This paper presents an analysis of reviews written by world-renowned and extremely influential wine critic Robert Parker, an American ex lawyer raised on Coca-Cola in rural Maryland who promotes himself as a naïve country boy with a super nose. Parkerʼs wine assessments have become so influential that even prestigious Bordeaux wines are adapted to his taste to sell well on todayʼs ever more globalized wine market. As a result, his words have come to exercise considerable dominance in the institutional setting where his texts are staged.

To decipher this exceptionally successful instance of contemporary rhetoric, a combination of argumentation theory and the SFL-anchored Appraisal model is used. The presentation also has the methodologically oriented aim of showing how argumentation analysis and Appraisal analysis can be combined as mutually supportive tools in order to arrive at an insightful understanding of the hierarchical organization of persuasive discourse.

In addition, the choice of subject is intended to accentuate the increasing importance that consumption has come to have as a driving force for present-day life, raising awareness of and encouraging reflection on the effects of global consumption patterns on the existence of cultures. 

The primary purpose of this study is to explore a case of remarkably powerful contemporary rhetoric, namely Robert Parker’s wine writing, which has had an unprecedented impact in the world of prestigious wine for more than two decades. Parker, an American autodidact who gave up his career in law to become a fulltime wine critic, is considered the most influential critic of all time. This background motivates the approach of the current enquiry, which targets the persuasiveness in Parker’s writing. The investigation strives to bring to the fore both explicit and implicit elements of his wine reviews that have the potential to contribute to rhetorical success.

The material selected for analysis comprises a corpus of reviews extracted from Parker’s extensive bulk of wine writing. The texts are studied against the backdrop of socio-cultural and institutional frames. Considerable importance is assigned to the fact that the reviews occur within a strictly specialized field of discourse with a highly conventionalized configuration.

This hermeneutic enquiry approaches the topic from three analytical perspectives, designed to highlight persuasiveness in representations, argumentation and appraisal. The presentation reports on schematic patterns in Parker’s discourse as well as close interpretation of individual texts. The analysis of representations shows that both visual and verbal representations contribute to the persuasiveness of the text. The argumentative exploration of Parker’s discourse, which is assisted by the analytical tools of pragma-dialectics, demonstrates that the reviews involve rational argumentation on several subordinate levels, given in support of assessments and recommendations. Finally, the perspective of appraisal draws on the analytical resources provided by the Appraisal model to shed light on the way in which the audience is positioned to respond with respect to emotional, associative and perceptual values. The results indicate that the persuasiveness of Parker’s discourse arises as a result of concordance among an intricate array of interrelated factors. The audience is recurrently demonstrated to play a crucial role as co-constructors of the message.

The present study also has methodological outcomes, presenting a novel combination of analytical methods to perform contextually situated discourse analysis. In addition, the material is allowed to challenge the theoretical ideas and notions that are addressed.

This presentation will report on a study of the discourse of wine reviewing, specifically the wine reviews of Robert Parker, a US wine writer whose views are purportedly so influential as to have substantially changed tastes and preferences across the global wine market. The study sought to provide an account of how Parker’s reviews worked representationally, evaluatively and argumentatively, with a view to understanding the terms under which readers are positioned vis-à-vis wine and its appreciation by this influential critic.

The field of wine appreciation is highly specialised both in terms of the experiential “reality” of wine production and in terms of its “aesthetics” – the rarefied systems of taste and value by which individual wines are applauded or criticised. This presentation will report on the use of the system of Attitude, as proposed in the Appraisal literature, as a means of describing the specialised “aesthetics” of Parker’s wine appreciation and hence of providing insights into how these reviews work evaluatively.

One significant outcome of the study to be reported is the finding that the attitudinal system of Appreciation, as outlined by White (2001) and by Martin and White (2005), could not accommodate all the meanings by which wine is positively or negative assessed in Parker’s reviews. Accordingly, additional subcategories were introduced into the Appreciation taxonomy. For example, the sub categories of “Intensity”, “Persistence” (and “Maturity”) were proposed as new sub types of Composition, alongside Balance and Complexity. This was to capture additional dimensions of meaning by which the taste of wine was evaluated with respect to the way it was made or with respect to the way in which the contributing flavours and aromas of wine held together or complemented each other. The paper will discuss the reasons for these new sub categories and what was involved theoretically and methodologically in their formulation.

Another point of interest emerging from the study which will be addressed in the presentation is the apparent attitudinal ambiguity, vagueness or under-specification of many of the evaluative terms used in wine reviews. This is a highly specialised domain in which reviewers such as Parker are apparently authorized to use terms in a way unique to the field and to create their own attitudinal lexicon, as they grapple to articulate all the subtle nuances of taste, “feel” and aroma which they detect in the wine. This means that the precise meanings of some terms are often difficult to determine, especially for any readers who come across this type of writing for the first time.

The presentation, then, will provide an account of how Parker disseminates a particular specialist and novel system of attitudinal valeur for the evaluative description of wine, and employs this in what is apparently a rhetorically very successful manner – i.e. one which sees him lauded as the US’s preeminent wine critic who influences the preferences of wine drinkers across the world. Thus both the attitudinal repertoire and the persuasive structures and techniques he employs to position readers vis-à-vis his assessments will be discussed. The presentation will be relevant to any who have a particular interest in winespeak, and of more general interest to those interested in how the language’s meaning making potential may be extended to accommodate novel domains of attitudinal assessment. It will also interest those concerned with the on-going formulation of the Appraisal framework and with the possibility that its taxonomies may need to be modified or extended in order to deal with meanings encountered in discourse domains not previously dealt with by Appraisal analysts.

This paper explores the language used by critics to appraise wine, at the same time investigating the validity and usefulness of categories in the Appraisal framework, as set out by Martin & White (2005). Our analysis of a corpus of wine reviews suggests that sub-categories of Appreciation — used to evaluate products, and non-human targets by reference to aesthetics and other values — may need extending or enhancing in terms of delicacy, depending on the register of the texts under investigation. An adapted version of the Appraisal system of Attitude is used as basis for our investigation. The assessment of our adapted model was carried out in the form of a comparison between two analysts’ independent annotations which function as a basis for a critical discussion of the proposed categories. The bulk of the paper discusses the relevance of our findings for the analysis of specialised genres in general, the field of wine criticism in particular and the application of the Appraisal model for discourse analysis. We conclude that the understanding and application of analytical categories is dependent on the analyst’s previous experience with the Appraisal model as well as acquaintance with the discourse field.

Communication in palliative cancer care contexts involving health care professionals, patients and relatives takes place in an arena that merges medical expertise, lay understanding, ‘helpers’ and ‘sufferers’. Professional and private discourses co-exist in conversations about medical as well as existential matters. Such communication often draws on metaphors – conscious metaphors aiming to render the ungraspable graspable and unconscious metaphors which are so conventionalized that they are no longer perceived as metaphors.

But incurable cancer diagnoses often entail emotional hypersensitivity and therefore unpredictable responses to language use (Sandgren et al. 2010). While metaphors have the potential to be empowering, they can also give rise to feelings like fear, helplessness and guilt, which is why particular attention has been devoted to the use of violence and battle metaphors in cancer talk (Semino et al. 2015; Hawkins 1999).

The overarching goal of our study Metaphors in palliative cancer care (MEPAC), a Sweden-based three- year interdisciplinary research project involving linguists and health care researchers, is to strengthen the scientific foundation for health care professionals’ understanding and use of metaphors in Swedish palliative cancer care. We investigate the use of metaphors in personal blogs written by patients as well as relatives and in interviews with patients, relatives and health care professionals, carried out within the frames of the Centre for Collaborative Palliative Care, Linnaeus University, Sweden. The project is inspired by the UK-based study Metaphor in end-of-life care (MELC) and combines qualitative metaphor analysis with quantitative analysis using corpus tools adapted for Swedish.

Our presentation highlights the blog data. We focus on how the use of metaphors sheds light on what is perceived as normal when living with incurable cancer and discuss whether the use of metaphorical expressions can be related to the degree of normality that is attributed to the described phenomenon. We also offer examples from our material of possible negotiation of or resistance to such normality.

Good communication is of utmost importance in all forms of cancer care and especially so in the palliative context, where patients as well as relatives tend to be hypersensitive (Sandgren et al. 2010). To render the ungraspable graspable, met- aphors are frequently used drawing on their capacity to capture the intangible in terms of more familiar experiences. For instance, to die from cancer can be described as coming to the end of a life journey or losing a battle (Semino et al. 2015). The overarching goal of the project Metaphors in palliative cancer care (MEPAC), a Sweden-based three-year interdisciplinary research project involving linguists and health care researchers, is to strengthen the scienti c foundation for health care professionals’ understanding and use of metaphors in Swedish palliative cancer care. The project is inspired by the UK-based study Metaphor in end-of-life care (MELC). Our poster aims to give an overview of the entire project and present a snapshot of some preliminary ndings from a pilot study on blogs written by patients su ering from incurable cancer. Compared to other inter- net-based platforms such as chat rooms or discussion groups, ill-ness blogs are unique forums for self-expression. Personal blogs written by cancer patients have been observed to have the potential to contribute to nursing science’s body of knowledge and hence capability to alleviate the psychosocial burdens associated with cancer diagnosis (Heilferty 2009), which is why blogs were found particular- ly suitable for the current study. Furthermore, the Swedish blog arena stands out in international comparisons, because it is not delimited to young users but hosts a more varied range of writers (Andersson 2012). In addition to the blog data, the project also investigates interviews with patients, relatives and health care profes- sionals carried out within the frames of the Centre for Collaborative Palliative Care at Linnaeus University, Sweden. Our qualitative analysis of the blog data serves as a foundation for subsequent quantitative analyses using corpus tools in collaboration with the SWE-CLARIN initiative.

Metaforer är våra språkliga ”redskap” när vi talar om okända eller känsliga ämnen. Att reflektera över hur dessa används kan ge vårdpersonal ökad förståelse för hur patienter och närstående ser på och hanterar sin situation.

Good communication is of utmost importance in all forms of cancer care and especially so in the palliative context. To render the ungraspable graspable, metaphors are frequently used drawing on their capacity to capture the intangible in terms of more familiar experiences. For instance, to die from cancer can be described as ’coming to the end of a life journey’ or ’losing a battle’. Metaphors are largely language and culture specific. Today’s increasingly multicultural societies require particular awareness in order to achieve dignified, individualized palliative cancer care. This project aims to strengthen the scientific foundation for the use of metaphors in Swedish palliative cancer care. A secondary aim is to compare the use of metaphors in Sweden and the UK in order to reveal differences and similarities. Textual data are collected from

1. a) internet-based blogs, where patients write about their illness-related emotions and experiences while being in palliative care, and from

2. b) interviews with patients, family and health care professionals, where the focus is to investigate what it means to live a dignified life in palliative care.

The two sets of data are analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative linguistic methods. First, the Pragglejaz procedure, a well-established linguistic method for metaphor identification, is used in order to manually identify metaphorical expressions in the material, develop analytic categories adapted to the Swedish language data and ensure inter-rater reliability. Second, the material is approached by means of corpus linguistic methods. The combination of research methods is inspired by the UK-based MELC project. The data are currently being processed and the first results will be presented at the conference. The project is funded by The Kamprad Family Foundation, Sweden.

Background: The significance of metaphors for the experience of cancer has been the topic of extensive previous research, with “Battle” and “Journey” metaphors standing out as key. Adaptation to the patient’s use of metaphor is generally believed to be an important aspect of person-centered care, especially in palliative care. The aim of this study was to investigate the use of metaphors in blogs written in Swedish by people living with advanced cancer and explore possible patterns associated with individuals, age and gender.

Methods: The study is based on a dataset totaling 2 602 479 words produced some time during the period 2007–2016 by 27 individuals diagnosed with advanced cancer. Both qualitative and quantitative procedures were used, and the findings are represented as raw frequencies as well as normalized frequencies per 10 000 words. Our general approach was exploratory and descriptive. The Mann-Whitney U test was used to analyze statistical significance.

Results: Our results confirm the strong foothold of “Journey” and “Battle” metaphors. “Imprisonment” and “Burden” metaphors were also used by the majority of the individuals. The propensity to use metaphors when describing the cancer experience was found to differ extensively across the individuals. However, individuals were not found to opt for one conceptualization over the other but tended to draw on several different metaphor domains when conceptualizing their experience. Socio-demographic factors such as age or gender were not found to be strong predictors of metaphor choice in this limited study.

Conclusions: Using a range of different metaphors allows individuals with advanced cancer to highlight different aspects of their experience. The presence of metaphors associated with “Journey”, “Battle”, “Imprisonment” and “Burden” across individuals could be explained by the fact that the bloggers are part of a culturally consistent cohort, despite variations in age, sex and cancer form. Awareness of metaphors commonly used by patients can enhance health professionals’ capacity to identify metaphorical patterns and develop a common language grounded in the patients’ own metaphor use, which is an important requisite for person-centered palliative care.

Contributes to contemporary luxury research by depicting the review-based consumer of experiential luxury.

Offers an accessible overview of the Appraisal model and applies the model to the data in a step-by-step manner.

Shows how consumption of wine, perfume and chocolate appeals to intellectual, aesthetic and social aspirations.

This paper presents ongoing critical research staged against the backdrop of global consumerism, which is of continuously escalating importance, both for humanity at large and more concretely in the daily lives of individuals, where consumption choices are increasingly associated with lifestyle and identity. In order to develop an adequate model for our investigation, we focus on a limited and strategically selected material, perfume reviews, which are analysed by means of a combination of argumentation analysis and Appraisal analysis. Consumer reviews in different domains of luxury consumption are of particular interest since they concretize the ambiguity of the concept of consumerism: From the addresser perspective, consumption reviews explicitly function to protect consumers’ rights by providing advice concerning the appropriateness of consumption choices, while also, at least in the range of domains that are not immediately related to the basic necessities of life, implicitly encouraging ever-growing consumption of such excessive products. Consumption reviews also construct ambivalent recipient identities: On the one hand, seeking consumption advice construes a critical persona that is rightly sceptical of the value of products and information from producers. On the other hand, the very existence of consumer reviews in the luxury domain simultaneously invokes an uncertain consumer persona, reluctant to rely on personal taste and therefore in need of guidance. Importantly, these ambivalent identities operate in an environment where what is seen as the basic necessities of life is an ever-changing construction, constantly renegotiated in accordance with both explicit and implicit socio-cultural norms and expectations. The analytical model developed for the current project is subsequently intended to be applicable to a larger corpus of consumer reviews from different domains with the ultimate goal of being able to generalize across present-day consumerism discourses and thus contribute to exploring what we see as a human identity crisis of the 21st century that leads to increasing commodification of our identities. 

The number of university programmes taught exclusively through the medium of English around the world is rising, and when the partial use of English is taken into account (for example, when the language of instruction is the local language but the textbook is in English), then the role of English in higher education is seen to be pervasive indeed. The increasing use of English has, however, been driven to a great extent by policy, rather than by bottom-up preferences on the part of participants in English-medium settings, making it relevant to ask what their perceptions and understandings of the phenomenon are.

This paper will present the results of a large-scale survey of Swedish university teachers and their views on and experiences of the use of English in higher education. The findings show that teachers identify both positives and negatives, but also describe a situation in which there are only limited attempts to accentuate the former and mitigate the latter.

In the context of a pronounced internationalization trend in Swedish higher education, this paper investigates university teachers’ attitudes towards and practices of using English as medium of instruction. Findings from questionnaire and interview data indicate diverse attitudes and a widespread lack in specific pedagogical practices that promote language learning.

English is increasingly used nowadays as a medium of instruction in tertiary education worldwide, facilitating the outward mobility of home universities' staff and students, as well as the inward recruitment of international faculty and students. However, teaching and learning in a foreign language can be a challenging enterprise, and the implications of the trend toward English-medium instruction (EMI) are to date not fully understood. Based on a large-scale survey, this study aims at unveiling the perceptions and experiences of Swedish university teachers involved in EMI. The respondents express a wide array of views and experiences, grouped under ten thematic areas. The respondents' views are often polarised in that they identify both costs and benefits of teaching in English, while describing a reality where little support is provided to augment the benefits and mitigate the costs. These results indicate a need for enhanced communication with all stakeholder groups, to raise critical awareness about impending costs, as a step toward minimizing potential damages and maximizing the benefits of English in higher education today.

This chapter analyzes the language resources that writers have at their disposal to describe their experience of the web of sensory perceptions that are evoked in the wine tasting practice. The task of the writer is to provide a mental understanding of the sensations as well as a prehension of the experiences. We show that this involves the weaving together of the senses, starting with the sight of the wine, followed by a description that is iconic with the wine tasting procedure. The descriptors are systematically used cross-modally both through ontological crossovers and through longer stretches of mixed imagery. We also show how the socio-cultural context of wine consumption correlates with the types of imagery used in wine descriptions.