The aim of this study is to compare the narrative skills of first grade elementary students who had early childhood education and the narrative skills of first grade elementary students who did not have early childhood education and investigate their parents&rsquo / reading-related activities with them. In order to achieve this aim, the present study focuses on narratives produced by students who had early childhood education and students who did not have early childhood education using Mercer Mayer&rsquo / s (1969) wordless picture-book &ldquo / Frog, where are you?&rdquo / . This study compares those narratives with special attention to how emergence of story structure, the narrative length and inclusion of evaluative devices differ depending on their educational background in their orally collected narratives. Participants are 28 children who had early childhood education and 28 children who did not have early childhood education. Moreover, 27 parents whose child had early childhood education and 25 parents whose child did not have early childhood education participated in the study to get better understanding of their children&rsquo / s narrative skills. The results of the study indicate that narratives of students who had early childhood education include more structural elements and evaluative devices compared to the narratives of students who did not have early childhood education. Moreover, most of the parents participated in this study do not conduct reading-related activities with their children at home.

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The aim of the thesis is to explore, from a linguistic perspective, the construction and maintenance of interaction in documents in which directives are conveyed in business communication correspondence, in order to input directly into the pedagogic practice in written business communication. The focus is research into ways of scaffolding relationships in documents for correspondence, an area that represents an important aspect of language use in business communication practice. The data for the study includes letters, memoranda and saving rams in which directives are conveyed written by writers of English as a second language and following various channels of communication. Two methods are used to extract the relevant data in which evaluative meanings are conveyed. These are Wordsmith to extract evaluative and patterns and a manual analysis to identify the evaluative structures of the texts. The linguistic construal of interpersonal scaffolding is investigated drawing on the model of APPRAISAL (Martin, 2000), which is located within the Hallidayan grammar as the theoretical point of departure. The choice of language used in the texts is interrogated and interpreted with reference to the theory. analysis focuses on the linguistic systems that appropriately serve or construe the interactive function of language and addresses issues such as kinds of semantic values that are conveyed, the patterns in which they are expressed and their texture. The objective is not to make generalizations about how writers of documents manage interaction and persuade their recipients to carry out the actions they desire. Rather the aim is to develop a theoretical framework to explain the evaluative strategies that are encoded in the texts and the implications of choosing amongst different strategies. ii The thesis therefore contributes a theoretically motivated and dynamic explanation of the ways in which interaction is managed in the context of texts in which directives are communicated especially amongst Batswana writing in the English language. From a pedagogic perspective the explanations of managing interaction developed in the study provide insights and resources for teachers of business communication writing to assist them in modelling evaluative strategies in business correspondence writing and helping their students to develop effective written communication strategies. / Thesis (Ph.D. (English)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2010.

The aim of the thesis is to explore, from a linguistic perspective, the construction and maintenance of interaction in documents in which directives are conveyed in business communication correspondence, in order to input directly into the pedagogic practice in written business communication. The focus is research into ways of scaffolding relationships in documents for correspondence, an area that represents an important aspect of language use in business communication practice. The data for the study includes letters, memoranda and saving rams in which directives are conveyed written by writers of English as a second language and following various channels of communication. Two methods are used to extract the relevant data in which evaluative meanings are conveyed. These are Wordsmith to extract evaluative and patterns and a manual analysis to identify the evaluative structures of the texts. The linguistic construal of interpersonal scaffolding is investigated drawing on the model of APPRAISAL (Martin, 2000), which is located within the Hallidayan grammar as the theoretical point of departure. The choice of language used in the texts is interrogated and interpreted with reference to the theory. analysis focuses on the linguistic systems that appropriately serve or construe the interactive function of language and addresses issues such as kinds of semantic values that are conveyed, the patterns in which they are expressed and their texture. The objective is not to make generalizations about how writers of documents manage interaction and persuade their recipients to carry out the actions they desire. Rather the aim is to develop a theoretical framework to explain the evaluative strategies that are encoded in the texts and the implications of choosing amongst different strategies. ii The thesis therefore contributes a theoretically motivated and dynamic explanation of the ways in which interaction is managed in the context of texts in which directives are communicated especially amongst Batswana writing in the English language. From a pedagogic perspective the explanations of managing interaction developed in the study provide insights and resources for teachers of business communication writing to assist them in modelling evaluative strategies in business correspondence writing and helping their students to develop effective written communication strategies. / Thesis (Ph.D. (English)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2010.

This thesis is concerned with explicating the role of language in mobilising action through management emails. Situated within the context of organisational change in a globalised manufacturing business, the project is framed by behavioural observations from management scholars Palmer and Hardy (2000) of mobilisation strategies that utilise linguistic resources since they: (a) involve a sense of obligation or inclination in directives; (b) show how co-operation will produce mutual benefits; (c) construct desired actions as legitimate, beneficial or inevitable; and (d) use past or anticipated meanings, for or against certain actions. Systemic Functional Linguistics is the underlying framework employed to provide a theoretically principled account of the intuitively derived observations from Palmer and Hardy (2000) which are applied to a sample of twenty-seven email texts, through corpus- and text-based analysis. A major finding is that the representation of action is enacted interpersonally through the verbal group. This view complements experientially dominated accounts of the verbal group which focus on the tense system. Further, action is found to be motivated through the negotiation of evaluative stance. By relating the grammar of the verbal group as well as other resources to the discourse semantics of Appraisal, modulation (of obligation or inclination) is found to be enabled by both negative as well as positive judgements of capacity. Specifically, judgements of capacity are re-interpreted as invocations of high obligation as managers seek to mobilise (further) positive performance. The analysis demonstrates that elements in the verbal group (complex) and Appraisal co-opt action through enabling positioning of the writer, in terms of assessing and grading categorical meanings, manipulating interpersonal time, or foregrounding solidarity. A significant contribution to the thesis is an extension of the system of GRADUATION: FOCUS (Hood, 2004a) through the demonstration of how resources of the verbal group negotiate expectations of appearances and achievements. This study has also extended the resources of GRADUATION: FORCE by applying it to the management context. The practical contribution of the study is that these insights may more explicitly inform management training and enable managers to participate more effectively within their community of practice.

So called ‘video essays’ on films and cinema have gained substantial popularity on the video sharing internet site YouTube in the past years. This essay explores this relatively recent type of video production from the perspective of genre analysis in order to investigate whether a pattern of form, content and style can be identified, which would suggest the emergence of a new genre. Previous research has investigated a similar genre, the film review, by identifying its pervasive or obligatory moves or stages (Taboada, 2011; de Jong & Burgers, 2013). However, video essays seem to be a rather subjective form of communication, with a clear persuasive purpose. For this reason, linguistic elements expressing evaluation, assessment, feelings and opinions are analyzed in the following under the umbrella term for evaluative language use, that is Appraisal (White, 2015). Five video essays from different creators were chosen for the present analysis, which is focused on situational, structural, and Appraisal elements. The analysis shows that there indeed are similarities between the video essays, pertaining both to their situational context and structure, and their use of evaluative language. Several overall pervasive moves were found, which suggests that the essays follow a specific structural pattern. The evaluative language indicates an intention of persuading the viewer.

The present thesis focuses on the classification, description and comparison of evaluative adjectives occurring in two lifestyle magazines, Cosmopolitan (for women) and Esquire (for men. The theoretical part presents general information on evaluation and evaluative language, local grammars, lifestyle magazines and differences between the use of language by women and men. The material for the analysis is drawn from online articles published by Cosmopolitan and Esquire which are part-of-speech tagged using the freeware Part-Of-Speech tagger TagAnt, the analysis is carried out using the corpus analysis software AntConc. The initial part of the analysis describes and compares the most frequently used evaluative adjectives in the two corpora. The final section uses the patterns presented in the theoretical part of the thesis as a starting point; the two corpora are searched to find their occurrences, potential variations and patterns that have not been described previously. Key words: Evaluation, lifestyle magazines, local grammars, evaluative patterns

A technique for altering subjects' self-evaluations and subsequent performance was developed and tested. Two types of therapist evaluative modeling, positive and critical, were compared, for effectiveness in training subjects to be assertive, with a no-modeling control and an insight treatment group. All modeling conditions used a behavior rehearsal paradigm, while the insight treatment employed a Rogerian therapy design. Dependent measures included a paper-and-pencil self-evaluation scale and a behavioral role-playing test of assertiveness. No significant differences were found among the modeling conditions, but the behavior rehearsal strategy brought about significantly greater increases in assertiveness among the severely unassertive subjects than did the insight treatment.

How do evaluative practices become natural and ubiquitous in an organization? In this paper we integrate findings from previous empirical work on the adoption of evaluative practices in organizations with insights from institutional theory and social psychology research for advancing the understanding of possible states of evaluative practices within organizations and the processes through which organizations become permeated by evaluative practices. Our conceptual model suggests that once evaluative practices have gained a foothold in an organization, they tend to be applied to an increasing number of organiza-tional problems and become taken for granted.

nÃo hà / A pesquisa circunscrita neste trabalho dissertativo apresenta como objeto de investigaÃÃo a avaliaÃÃo em processo da construÃÃo da intersetorialidade no Paif do Centro de ReferÃncia da AssistÃncia Social (CRAS) do Bairro Mondubim, municÃpio de Fortaleza. A pesquisa apresenta delineamentos teÃrico-metodolÃgicos configurados em postulaÃÃes epistemolÃgicas que demarcam a proposiÃÃo do âRacionalismo aberto e crÃticoâ de Alba Carvalho, como via do conceber e fazer ciÃncia. Nessa direÃÃo, o traÃado metodolÃgico da pesquisa foi materializado com a realizaÃÃo de pesquisa bibliogrÃfica, de pesquisa documental e de pesquisa empÃrica. Considerando-se a demarcaÃÃo teÃrico-empÃrica, circunscrita no objeto da investigaÃÃo, a construÃÃo dos aportes analÃticos da pesquisa foi estruturada com base no levantamento e na leitura de produÃÃes cientÃficas sobre os temas: Estado, pobreza, proteÃÃo social, polÃtica pÃblica de assistÃncia social e intersetorialidade. O campo empÃrico da pesquisa està circunscrito ao Ãmbito de espaÃos institucionais que operacionalizam a polÃtica de assistÃncia social em Fortaleza, no decurso dos anos de 2012 e 2013, a saber: Secretaria Municipal de AssistÃncia Social; Distrito de AssistÃncia Social da Secretaria Executiva Regional V e, por fim, o Cras do Bairro Mondubim. A pesquisa apresenta um enfoque qualitativo, articulando-se à adoÃÃo de aportes prÃprios da abordagem quantitativa. Nessa direÃÃo, foram aplicados 54 questionÃrios com profissionais de nÃvel superior e mÃdio do Paif da SER V e realizadas entrevistas em profundidade com 19 profissionais e usuÃrios(as) do Paif do Cras Mondubim. No percurso metodolÃgico da pesquisa, tambÃm foi realizado o levantamento e a anÃlise de documentos e, por fim, foi efetivado intenso processo de observaÃÃo do desenvolvimento do Paif no Ãmbito do Cras Mondubim. No que diz respeito aos resultados demarcados pela investigaÃÃo, destacam-se: os(as) interlocutores da pesquisa â em meio Ãs diferenciaÃÃes quanto à perspectiva analÃtica e as especificidades delineadas pelos seus discursos â postulam que a categoria da intersetorialidade apresenta lugar de destaque na configuraÃÃo da identidade e do modus operandi da polÃtica de assistÃncia social, indicando que o estabelecimento desta categoria na operacionalizaÃÃo dos programas, projetos e serviÃos da assistÃncia social demarca uma importante via para a sua afirmaÃÃo como polÃtica pÃblica de proteÃÃo social nÃo contributiva. / The research circumscribed in this argumentative work presents as its main object of investigation the evaluation of the intersectoral construction process in the Paif Social Assistance Reference Center (CRAS) of Mondubim, a neighborhood in Fortaleza . The research presents theoretical and methodological designs configured in epistemological postulations that mark the proposition of "open and critical rationalism" as proposed by Alba Carvalho, as a way of conceiving and doing science. In this sense, the methodological route of the research was done through bibliographical research, desk research and empirical research. Considering the theoretical and empirical demarcation, confined to the subject of the investigation, the construction of the analytical contributions of the research was structured based on the survey and the reading of scientific papers on the themes: State, poverty, social protection, public policy social assistance and intersectoral. The empirical field of the research is limited to the scope of institutional spaces which operationalize social assistance policy in Fortaleza, during the years 2012 and 2013, namely: Secretaria Municipal de AssistÃncia Social; Distrito de AssistÃncia Social da Secretaria Executiva Regional V; and, finally, Cras Mondubim. The research presents a qualitative approach, linking to the adoption of contributions of the quantitative approach. In this sense, interviews questionnaires were applied to 54 professionals of high and medium levels from Paif SER V and conducted in depth with 19 professionals and users (as) the Paif of Cras Mondubim. In the methodological research route, it was also carried out the survey and the analysis of documents and, finally, an intense process of Paifâs development observation was done in Cras Mondubim. With regard to the results marked by the research, we can point out: the interlocutors results â through differences on the analytical perspective and the specifications outlined by their speeches - postulate that the intersectoral category has a prominent place in the configuration of identity and the modus operandi of social welfare policy, indicating that the establishment of this category in the operationalization of programs, projects and services of social work marks an important route to its statement as a public policy of non-contributory social protection.