A Comparative Study of Attitudinal Language Employed by English and Persian Writers in Academic Writing

Academic writing might incorporate evaluative strategies with the aim of construing and registering attitudinal positionings of writers towards other people, objects, and state of affairs included in the texts, and has been the area of investigation from different perspectives. One of these perspectives has been the way that determines attitudinal assessments in the rhetorical formation of textbooks. Thus, this study is done in order to explore and explain the way that language is employed by writers to project their attitudinal assessments of objects and entities, and also to clarify how authors apply evaluative stance to establish their presence. In this regard, four texts of applied linguistics writers, two Persian and two English, were selected and then analyzed on the proposed framework of the appraisal by Martin and White (2005), particularly the one which is about attitude. Results showed that writers were disinclined to express their feelings and judge people as affect and judgment in construing their arguments; however, they showed marked preference for coding attitude as appreciation which is concerned with positive and negative assessments of objects.