Appraisal Resources in Book Reviews: A Study of Cross-Gender Variations

Writing a book review is an instance of evaluative academic writing where thewriter is involved in an interaction with the author and the reader, evaluates theviewpoints stated in the book and voices his own position and stance in a dialoguewith the reader. Working within the framework of Martin and White’s (۲۰۰۵)Appraisal Theory as an effective tool for studying the essential resources employedin this interaction and evaluation, the present study examined ۶۰ book reviewsfrom the Humanities academic journals written by native male and female writers,and tried to investigate the type and frequency of the three Appraisal categories(Attitude, Engagement, Graduation). The findings indicate that both writer groupsmade extensive use of these resources in their writings. However, the male bookreview writers exceeded the female writers in all the three categories. In addition,the Attitude resources were used the most and The Engagement resources werethe least employed resources. The implications of the study for teaching writingskills and developing materials and tasks for writing courses at academic levels arementioned in detail

کلیدواژه ها:

appraisal theory ، Book review ، Humanities ، gender ، Native writer