Appraisal of Evaluative Language in People with Aphasia's Cinderella Narratives

By using evaluative language to describe things and occurrences in our environment, we share with our audiences our opinions and feelings on those topics, thereby conveying our perspectives on the subject matter and making our narratives engaging and meaningful to our audiences. In the light of the fact that aphasic speakers have difficulties with language and that they produce a restricted range and amount of evaluations (Armstrong and Ulatowska, 2007), the purpose of the current study was to investigate whether they produced particular types of evaluations described in the Appraisal framework developed by Martin (2003). The evaluative language of eight aphasic speakers and eight normal speakers were compared using the Cinderella story re-tell task. The Appraisal framework was used to assess the use of attitude (Affect, Judgment, and Appreciation) to convey opinions and feelings. Evaluations were also coded for valence (positive or negative) and cognitive representation (abstract or concrete terms). The role of personal style, mood, interest or situation, and gender as well as factors of age and education was considered. The findings of this study, which corroborate Armstrong’s (2005) research, indicate that while aphasic speakers use significantly fewer evaluations than normal speakers, they use the different types of evaluation considered in this study in a similar manner as normal speakers. The implications of these findings are discussed in the light of previous research.