The evaluative role of the adjective and its use as a marker of ideology: study based on journalistic corpora

This dissertation aims at studying the evaluative role of the adjective and its use as an ideology marker in authentic Greek texts, drawn from the Corpus of Greek Texts (CGT) including 450.576 words of opinion articles from three newspapers of different political orientation (To Vima, I Kathimerini and Rizospastis). The theoretical approach followed is based on the principles and methods of corpus linguistic analysis, while the frameworks of linguistic variation analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis are combined in the study of adjectives as markers of ideology. The study of the evaluative and ideological role of adjectives presupposes the definition of the category of adjective on the basis of specific criteria, the identification of the adjectives in the corpus and their categorization with respect to their characteristics. The distinction of adjectives into categories with common characteristics provides a solid frame for the analysis of their evaluative role, while the investigation of their evaluative function can serve as a basis for the study of their use as markers of ideology. The review of the history of the adjective as a part of speech from antiquity to the present day suggests a variety of views in the literature and a multiplicity of criteria used for its external and internal categorization, i.e. its distinction from other word categories and its subcategorization, respectively. In this dissertation specific methodological criteria are used in order to distinguish adjectives from related grammatical categories (e.g. pronouns, numerals, participles), while a combination of criteria is followed for their subcategorization, according to their use in the corpus. The adjectives under study, which are the 4.2% of all lexical types in the corpus, were subcategorized into ten categories: classifying, descriptive, evaluative (which were further classified into modal, comment, intensifying and adjectives of importance), deictic, relational, specializing, indefinite, colour, verbal and quantitative adjectives. The adjectives of these categories present different characteristics according to the criteria used. Apart from the category of evaluative adjectives, adjectives of other categories (e.g. descriptive, classifying, indefinite) were found to have an evaluative role in the corpus. Evaluation is perceived as a bipolar notion, since the expression of an evaluative judgement is regarded as connected, directly or indirectly, with the positive or negative stance of the writer towards the object of evaluation. The positive or iv negative stance of the writer determines the evaluative frame of the text, which facilitates the reader’s comprehension. The study of the evaluative role of the adjectives in the corpus has led to the identification of their function in relation to aspects of evaluation such as its dimensions, mechanisms, scope and strategies. The dimensions of adjective evaluation include value, comment, modality, intensification and importance and are realized through the use of specific evaluative mechanisms, which function mainly on a syntactic, semantic or morphological linguistic level. Regarding the scope of evaluation, the study of the data indicates that adjectives can have both a local function and a discoursal and organizing one, while two basic strategies are followed regarding the degree of transparency of evaluation, namely overt and latent evaluation. The study of evaluation offers the ground for the study of ideologies, since the latter are based on evaluative beliefs. In order to systematically describe the evaluative role of adjectives in the corpus, quantitative data from the analysis of adjectives are taken into account and terms and models of analysis derived from the tradition of Critical Discourse Analysis, such as van Dijk’s ideological square, are employed. The study of adjectives in our data brings to light three basic aspects of the adjectives’ relation with ideology: differences in the frequency of occurrence of common adjectives in the data from the three newspapers, lexical choices (i.e. different adjectives) in the newspapers and the par excellence role of the adjective as a marker of ideology. Adjectives were found to function as markers of ideology in two main ways: as foci of attracting evaluation (by signalling the in-group or the outgroup or their fields of activity) and as evaluators. The study of the use of the adjective as a marker of ideology provides the basis for drawing conclusions about the ideological positioning of the newspapers and the means of their identity constructio