%0 Journal Article
%T Evaluation in English-Medium Medical Book Reviews
%A Mar¨ªa ¨¢ngeles Alcaraz Ariza
%J International Journal of English Studies (IJES)
%D 2011
%I Universidad de Murcia
%R 10.6018/ijes.11.1.137141
%X The aim of this paper is twofold: 1) to identify the evaluative speech acts, either positive or negative, contained in a corpus of 30 English-written medical book reviews published in The British Medical Journal in the period 2000-2009; 2) to analyze the linguistic-rhetorical strategies used to convey this evaluation. Our main results illustrate that various mitigating strategies are used not only to soften criticism, but also to help maintain social harmony and solidarity with the reviewees. Moreover, negative evaluation is on many occasions voiced at aspects outside the book reviewed, which would mean that apart from showing their expertise in the field tackled, book reviewers also want to discuss certain issues of their concern and to put forward their cultural background. Este trabajo tiene dos objetivos: 1) identificar los actos de habla evaluativos, positivos y negativos, en un corpus de rese as de 30 libros m¨¦dicos escritas en ingl¨¦s y publicadas en el British Medical Journal en el periodo 2000- 2009; 2) analizar las estrategias ling¨¹¨ªstico-ret¨®ricas utilizadas para transmitir estos actos de habla. Nuestros resultados principales muestran que no s¨®lo se utilizan diversos mecanismos ling¨¹¨ªstico-ret¨®ricos para atenuar los actos cr¨ªticos, sino tambi¨¦n para ayudar a mantener un clima de armon¨ªa social y solidaridad con los autores de los libros rese ados. Adem¨¢s, la evaluaci¨®n negativa se dirige en numerosas ocasiones a aspectos ajenos a los libros rese ados, lo que implica que aparte de mostrar su competencia en el campo abordado, los rese adores tambi¨¦n desean debatir determinados temas de su inter¨¦s y hacer gala de su cultural general.
%K book reviews
%K medical journals
%K evaluation
%K critical discourse analysis
%U http://revistas.um.es/ijes/article/view/137141