Rational and emotional evaluation: is it all about expressiveness?

Abstract. 

Much research has been done on the category of evaluativeness, especially on types of evaluation. Nevertheless, there are still some controversial questions to be considered. One of such debatable matters is the distinction between rational and emotional types of evaluation. Thus, the article analyzes the practicability of distinguishing these two types of evaluation. The research is primarily based on institutional sports discourse, namely the texts obtained as a result of transcribing videos with sports commentaries on international figure skating events. The analyzed data revealed that subjective and objective components of evaluation cannot be examined separately since an evaluative judgment comprises both descriptive information (objective characteristics of an object of evaluation) and the attitude of the subject of evaluation towards the object of evaluation (a subjective opinion). What is more, the rational and the emotional make up an indissoluble unity as well: the evaluation process, on the one hand, includes rational analyzing of the characteristics of the object of evaluation, on the other hand, evaluation is always accompanied by emotional reaction of the subject of evaluation since emotions, from the psychological point of view, accompany any response to an external stimulus. Besides, the idea of emotive-evaluative unity is indispensable when it is necessary to identify an implicit evaluative statement in the text: since evaluative meanings of an implicit evaluative statement are normally realized in the context, the author’s attitude towards a supposed object of evaluation is crucial for considering this statement evaluative. Hence, emotions are indicators of implicit evaluation that also stresses the importance of the emotive component of any evaluation type. These results demonstrate that there is a very low probability that evaluation devoid of any emotions can exist. At the same time, the degree of emotionality varies on an ad-hoc basis. The examples of evaluative statements analyzed in the paper also illustrate the significance of the category of expressiveness in describing the degree of the emotional intensity of evaluation.

Keywords: rational evaluation, emotional evaluation, subjective component of evaluation, objective component of evaluation, expressiveness.