The role of APPRAISAL in the NRF Rating System: an analysis of Judgement and Appreciation in peer reviewers’ reports

Abstract

This research is based on analyses of a corpus of reviewers’ reports that were elicited for the purposes of assessing South African researchers who have applied for a rating from the National Research Foundation (NRF). Such ratings are highly sought-after by South African researchers as a form of official affirmation and recognition of research expertise, which brings with it scholarly accolades and the opportunity to access national research funds. The article is a pilot study which explores the use of evaluative language in the reports and tries to make explicit the kinds of linguistic resources exploited by reviewers when making evaluations, and the way in which their linguistic choices influence the intuitive judgments made by the panel of assessors when allocating ratings based on the reports. The ultimate aim in the larger research project is to explicate the relationship between the types of evaluative language used and the rating allocated, which will give some indication of the reliability and validity of the NRF Rating System. The interpretive framework used is the APPRAISAL system (Martin, 2000; Martin & Rose, 2003; Martin & White, 2005), with a specific focus on Judgement (evaluation of behaviour) and Appreciation (evaluation of things). The system lends itself to a rigorous analysis of linguistic data, and offers a way to strengthen the reliability of the rating assessments of the NRF.

Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2009, 27(4): 391–412