Appraisal theory is, of course, located within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics. The primary impetus for its development has come from work conducted in the 80s and 90s for the Write It Right project of the NSW Disadvantaged Schools Program. Under Write It Right, researchers explored the literacy requirements of the discourses of science, technology, the media, history, English literature studies, geography and the visual arts. Much of what is presented here comes directly from that research (see for example Iedema, Feez, and White 1994, and Christie and Martin 1997, Rothery and Senglin in press).
Predictably, issues to do with the semantics of the interpersonal proved to be central the various Write It Right projects. For example, across all the discourse domains it proved necessary to explore in what contexts, by what linguistic means and to what rhetorical ends writers pass value judgements, attribute their propositions to outside sources or modalise their utterances.
As indicated above, the researchers starting point was the model of Tenor and the interpersonal provided by the established systemic literature. That literature provided a relatively detailed account of the lexicogrammar of the interpersonal which includes, for example, accounts of
Additionally, work by Poynton in particular (1985, 1990), had provided a model of the interpersonal with respect to social context, that aspect of context of situation which is termed Tenor, and which is concerned with the constitution of social roles and relationships and the negotiation of these roles and relationships by speakers. Under this model, three dimensions are identified by which social relationships may be organised - power/status, contact and affect. A certain amount of work has been carried out to explore the lexicogrammatical reflexes by which power, contact and affect are realised. Thus the principles of reciprocity, proliferation and contraction have been identified by which,
Similarly, various correlations between choices from the interpersonal lexicogrammar and these Tenor variables have been observed. Thus a consistent preference for high values of modals of obligation (you must/should, it's necessary that etc) and for high values of probability (definitely, I'm certain that etc) are linked with the more powerful speaker in an unequal status relationship. In contrast, a preference for modal values of inclination ( I'm keen, I'm willing etc) and for low values of probability (perhaps, may, I guess...) are linked with the less powerful speaker in an unequal status relationship. Likewise, the use of reduced expression forms, colloquial lexis and a diversity of forms of personal address are associated with contexts of higher involvement/contact between interactants. Heightened affective involvement, similarly, has its own set of indicators - the presence of exclamation, repetition, intensification and attitudinal lexis, and so on. (See Martin 1992: 523-535)
While these insights are of obvious relevance to key questions within the interpersonal semantics, they nevertheless were not formulated to answer the types of new questions arising from the Right it Write research. A need soon emerged for new linguistic accounts with which could, for example,
In retrospect we can now say that the Write It Right research was discovering a need for a better, or at least more delicate understanding of the discourse semantics of Tenor. The researchers needed to better understand the rhetorical and social-positioning consequences associated with the various options provided by the interpersonal lexicogrammar.
Perhaps most particularly, a need was emerging for a revision or at least a broadening Poynton's notion of contact. For Poynton, contact tracks the `frequency of interaction' between the interactants in the communicative exchange, and the `extent of time' that those interactants have been involved in some social relationship. Such a formulation is obviously directed towards the relationships between individuals who come into direct social contact - it is most obviously directed towards the interactants in dialogical exchanges. But the `contact' established between, say, a monologic media, history or scientific text and its audience must obviously be understood in less concrete, interactional and contingent terms. It emerged that a key issue here turned, not on the degree of social familiarity or intimacy between interactants, but on the way that texts went about constructing certain degrees of what might be termed evaluative or ideological contact with their prospective readerships. That is to say, it became clear that to understand the rhetorical potential and communicative properties of the types of text under consideration, it was necessary to explore how the evaluative positions conveyed by a text were constructed as more or less compatible, convergent and in sympathy with the anticipated positions of the text's prospective readerships. It was necessary to explore the linguistic means by which a text's authorial voice was constructed as more or less open to alternative or divergent viewpoints, as more or less willing to enter into negotiation with these alternative positions. These developments suggested that, rather than `contact', the term `solidarity' was to be preferred for this mode of social positioning (returning to the original terminology adopted by Brown & Gillman, 1960, in their classic analysis of the pronouns of address in European languages).
In conclusion to this section, therefore, we can say that the Right It Write research had revealed a need to understand more fully the rhetorical consequences associated with choosing one interpersonal value over another, and a need to identify ideological or evaluative solidarity as a key parameter along by which the interpersonal aspects of the social context may vary. In some instances these needs have motivated the identification of discourse semantic subsystems not previously recognised in the literature. Thus the Right It Write research gave rise to an account of Judgement as a set of meanings by which speakers appraise the behaviour of human individuals and to Appreciation as a set of meanings for making aesthetic and related assessments of objects and products. In other instances, these needs gave rise to new approaches to modelling the rhetorical potential of particular lexicogrammatical choices and the relationships between choices.
