The present article contributes to research on evaluation by addressing two
complementary objectives: first, we present a protocol for the identification
and annotation of evaluation in English discourse and, second, we show the
results of the implementation of the protocol in the annotation of evaluation
in a sample of a corpus of four genres. We first describe the protocol by
discussing the theoretical and methodological grounding of the annotation
scheme, the criteria, the categories, the steps for the implementation of the
protocol and an illustrative example of the application of the protocol to a
short extract. We subsequently provide the preliminary results of a pilot
study with the frequency of evaluative expressions across the four genres.
Results show that while adjectives and non-metaphoric evaluative
expressions are overall more frequent, there are differences regarding the
preference for positive or negative value and regarding the frequency of
function.
