Under GRADUATION, we are concerned with values which act to provide grading or scaling, either in terms of the interpersonal force which the speaker attaches to an utterance or in terms of the preciseness or sharpness of focus with which an item exemplifies a valeur relationship,. These two dimensions are variously be labelled `FORCE' (variable scaling of intensity) and `FOCUS' (sharpening or blurring of category boundaries).
force includes values which have elsewhere been labelled, intensifiers, down-tones, boosters, emphasisers, emphatics etc. Perhaps this category's most obvious mode of expression is through the adverbs of intensification - slightly, a bit, somewhat, rather, really, very, completely etc. Somewhat more problematically, this principle of scaling also applies to those values which act to measure quantity, extent, and proximity in time and space - small, large; a few, many; near, far etc. force may also be expressed through lexical items in which the scaling value (typically a high value of intensity) is fused with some ideational meaning. This mode of force is found widely in the media - for example, the temperature plunged, prices skyrocketed, they've axed the entire accounting division, the storm cut a swathe through...
It should also be noted that this principle of grading for force operates intrinsically across value of attitude in the sense that each particular attitudinal meaning represent a particular point along the scale of low to high intensity. Thus, for example, to like represents a lower scaling of force , to love a higher scaling and to adore the highest scaling - similarly for the judgement values represented by she plays competently / skilfully / brilliantly etc.
FOCUS covers those meanings which are elsewhere typically analysed under the headings of `hedging' and `vague language'. Typical values are, he kind'v admitted it; he effectively admitted it, he as good as admitted etc; a whale is a fish, sort'v. Under appraisal theory, values which sharpen rather than blur the focus are also included - for example a true friend, pure folly, he drank his friend under the table, literally.
The operating of the principle of scaling/graduation is, perhaps, somewhat more problematic here than in the context of FORCE . As we have seen, under FORCE, scaling operates in the context of gradable categories - values which admit of different degrees of some core meaning. In contrast, under FOCUS, scaling operates in contexts which are not gradable in this sense, or where the communicative objective is not to grade in this way. For example, the state of having made a `break' with someone or something, indicated in `a clean break', is not typically construed as gradable. A similar case applies in `a true friend' and `pure folly'. Nevertheless, there is a strong sense that such values have been `scaled up' by the application of the value of FOCUS - there is a sense even of intensification. We find the inverse - a down scaling - operating in the context of values which soften the FOCUS. Thus `kind'v', in `it was kind'v nerve-wracking', lowers the scaling of intensity. From this perspective, FOCUS can be seen as the domain of the application of scales of intensity to ungraded categories. Thus under FOCUS, the scaling, and hence the lowering and raising of intensity, is realised through the semantics of category membership, through a process of narrowing or broadening the terms by which category memberships is determined, through the sharpening or softening of semantic focus.
