Appraisal-related elements of attitude in the discourse of Venezuelan and French digital news about teenage pregnancy

Abstract

This investigation analyzes and compares appraisal-related elements that express ATTITUDE – Appraisal Theory´s semantic category (Martin, 2003; Martin & Rose, 2003; White, 2001) – in the discourse of Venezuelan and French digital news about teenage pregnancy. Our analysis show the prevalence of negative values. In the subcorpus of the Venezuelan digital news and comments on teenage pregnancy (SNCV), most valuations occurred in the comment section, while in the subcorpus of French digital news and comments on teenage pregnancy (SNCF), valuations were contained within the news text itself. Under the AFFECT category, DISCONTENT and UNHAPPINESS are more common in the SNCV, while DISCONTENT and INSECURITY are found in the SNCF. Under JUDGEMENT, the subcategories TENACITY (-) and ADEQUACY (-) were more frequent in the SNCV, while TENACITY (-) and NORMALITY (-) were more frequent in the SNCF. Finally, BALANCE (-), which belongs to the APPRECIATION category, was the most frequent subcategory in both subcorpus.