Presupposed evaluation in environmental argumentative discourse

This paper shows how a novel perspective on the analysis of evaluation in argumentative discourse may be used to explore the values that underlie environmental debates, claims and policies. Expressions of evaluation in discourse have been studied from a number of different perspectives, all highlighting the fact that evaluation may be expressed cumulatively, through a combination of different linguistic means, and pragmatically, at various levels of implicitness, which often defy precise categorization. The paper argues that, in argumentative discourse, the pragmatics of evaluation includes not only implied but also presupposed aspects. A case study centred on the environmental debate over the contested practice of fracking is used to identify the evaluative premises that underlie the main stances (specifically, APPRECIATION, Martin and White 2005) or claims on the issue, as expressed by different stakeholders. It is argued that this wider approach to the analysis of evaluation may be particularly suited to uncover the evaluative premises that underlie different and often contradictory environmental positions and policies as well as to explore the evaluative basis of other argumentative discourse.