Difficult Neighborhoods: Consensus and Conflict in Academic Book Reviews

• Autores: Monika Zasowska
• Localización: Difficult neighborhoods: the semiotics of conflict in culture / Sachiyo M. Shearman (ed. lit.), Wladyslaw Chlopicki (ed. lit.), Wladyslaw Witalisz (ed. lit.), Linda G. Kean (ed. lit.), 2025, ISBN 9781469696553, págs. 290-314
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The contemporary classification of linguistics as a humanities field and psychology as a social science discipline has not always been universally agreed upon, andover the centuries, many different representations have abounded. Regardless ofthe taxonomy adopted, both disciplines deal with the human subject in one way oranother and may therefore be regarded as neighboring areas of knowledge. However,the two fields frequently blend, overlap, and diverge, creating a conceptual territory that defies clear interpretations. From this perspective, the notion of difficultneighborhoods becomes particularly relevant. This article sees the notion of difficultneighborhoods in a dual way. First, in terms of the intrinsic polarity of evaluativemeanings, pertaining to either positive or negative assessments, formulated in allmanner of ways and carried across the pages of an academic book review. Second,in terms of the very status of the two disciplines from which the book reviews havebeen retrieved, namely, linguistics and psychology. This paper offers an explorationof the management and distribution of positive and negative evaluations in the twocorpora of 240 book reviews. The analysis was conducted with the UAMCT software (O’Donnell, 2019), short for Universidad Autonoma de Madrid Corpus Tools.The study makes use of part of a structured annotation scheme comprising two overarchingclassifications: eVALUTION-TYPe and eVALUATION-ObJecT (Zasowska,2023). As part of a more extensive analysis, this paper takes as its prime focus theparameter of STYLe as an eVALUATION-ObJecT and its 12 subcategories. Upona detailed examination of the evaluative expressions within two interrelated yetindependent academic disciplines, several observations regarding the writing stylein each corpus have been identified. The findings conclude that what is cruciallyimportant is the extent to which the evaluative parameters are represented in the twocorpora. Specifically, the parameter of ATTRAcTIVeNeSS emerges as a distinctivefeature of psychology reviews, while the parameter of cLARITY is highlighted asemblematic of the linguistics corpus