Over the last thirty years, affective neuroscience has become a royal road to our understanding of emotion and other affective phenomena, being both a core discipline of the affective sciences, and an engine for the rise of affectivism. After a brief discussion of the role of human affective neuroscience in affectivism, the chapter addresses some terminological and taxonomy-related issues before suggesting a consensual definition of emotion. Next, five major families of theories of emotions are presented in relation to five components of emotion. This review illustrates the fact that different families of theories typically focus on different components – even if each family also often considers some of the other components to a lesser extent. Whereas expression is central to basic emotion theory, action tendencies are central to motivational theories, autonomic reaction is central to bodily/interoceptive theories, feeling is central to constructionist theories, and the role of cognition in emotion-elicitation is central to appraisal theories.

The power of meaning is revealed in diverse arenas from health and wellbeing, to economics, to the way children engage their worlds, to the organized worldviews of adults. The goal of this book is to go beyond past work on meaning and social relationships by considering comprehensive developmental data at each phase of life that was not previously available.

This chapter provides an in-depth analysis of the strategic use of negative evaluations in the Twitter campaigns by the Republican and Democratic candidate for the US presidency in 2020. The study combines a corpus-linguistic method (key semantic domain method) with Martin and White’s Appraisal framework to systematically capture and compare the dispersion, frequency and contextual use of negative evaluations by Joe Biden and Donald J. Trump. The study shows how corpus-linguistic methods can be usefully employed to systematize the quantitative and qualitative exploration of attitudinal evaluations in mid-size language corpora. Further, results indicate that Donald Trump’s targets and objects of negative evaluation in 2020 have broadened compared to his previous Twitter election campaign. This is likely to reflect Trump’s new official status as leader of the government, needing to defend his actions and decisions. In turn, Joe Biden’s negative evaluations on Twitter criticise such government policies with the principal aim to present Biden as a challenger of the status quo, fighting to create new jobs for the ‘ordinary man’. This constitutes a clear change in campaign policies of the Democratic party compared to their Twitter campaign for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

This chapter explores the cultivation of the value of unity in a secondary school history textbook in China by examining the chapters on the founding of the Yuan dynasty in the thirteenth century by the Mongols. The study draws on the system of FIELD in register and APPRAISAL in discourse semantics. As for FIELD, in establishing static relations, the textbook applies shifts in the assigned temporal properties, which affords the reading of a continuous development of history made possible by geo-political unity. In construing dynamic relations, the historical activities are presented as linear, culminating in the unification of the Mongolian steppe and the whole country. In addition, activities are organised in linear series to construe assimilation of the various ethnic groups. As for APPRAISAL, the textbook positively appreciates the activity of unifying the Mongolian steppe and the country, and negatively appreciates wars and disunity. The analyses presented in this chapter show the crucial role of ideational resources (i.e. FIELD), as well as interpersonal resources (i.e. APPRAISAL) in aligning textbook readers into a community of shared values, which is an important aspect of representing minority history in a multi-ethnic country like China.

‘What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?’ In using this phrase (a reappropriation of one written by Kipling), the pioneering postcolonial historian C. L. R. James synthesised his interpretation of the vital significance of cricket for the growing West Indian nationalism of the twentieth century (James, 1963). Yet for those not familiar with this work, the phrase likely gives little of this meaning or reveals any of its significance. This chapter explores how particular terminology, ways of speaking, and phrases such as this come to be imbued with deep uncommon-sense and values-based meaning in history. Through analysis using a developing model of tenor in Systemic Functional Linguistics, the chapter argues that such axiologically charged rhetoric functions in the humanities in ways like that of technicality in science. Using texts from James’ memoir Beyond a Boundary, it explores how a range of rhetorical strategies draw on the discourse semantic resources of CONNEXION that links stretches of text and APPRAISAL that evaluates and positions meanings in order to synthesise meaning and help transport it to other texts across contexts.

This chapter explores how emoji can function as a resource operating in the service of ambient affiliation, which unlike the dialogic affiliation explored in the previous chapter, does not rely on direct interaction. The chapter analyses the role of emoji in finessing and promoting the social bonds that are tabled to ambient audiences in social media posts. It also investigates their role in calling together, or convoking, ambient communities to align around shared values or alternatively contest those values. A specialised corpus of tweets about the NSW state government’s COVID-19 pandemic response in Australia is used to show how emoji both interact with their co-text as well as support the tabling of bonds to potential audiences or interactants. The analysis reveals how emoji tended to both buttress and boost negative judgement by adding additional layers of negative assessment as well as to muster communities around the critical bonds which they had helped to enact.

This chapter explores the interpersonal function of emoji as they resonate with the linguistic attitude and negotiation of solidarity expressed in social media posts. We have introduced a system network for describing the ways in which this resonance can occur, making a distinction between emoji which imbue the co-text with interpersonal meaning (usually through attitudinally targeting particular ideation) and emoji which enmesh with the interpersonal meanings made in the co-text (usually through coordinating with linguistic attitude). We then explain the more delicate options in this resonance network where emoji can harmonise with the co-text by either echoing or coalescing interpersonal meaning, or can rebound from the co-text, either complicating, subverting or positioning interpersonal meaning. Following this traversal of the resonance network we considered two important dimensions of interpersonal meaning noted in the corpus: the role of emoji in modulating attendant interpersonal meanings in the co-text by upscaling graduation and emoji’s capacity to radiate interpersonal meaning through emblematic usage as bonding icons.

This chapter explores the role of emoji in the negotiation of meaning in exchanges in TikTok comment feeds. It draws on a model of affiliation, together with the emoji text relations of concurrence, resonance, and synchronicity developed in the three previous chapters, to undertake detailed analysis of the social bonds at stake in these exchanges. Affiliation is a framework developed within social semiotics for describing how language and other semiotic resources support both social connection and disconnection, and aid in the construction of social relations more generally. The corpus used for the analysis undertaken in the chapter is a specialised dataset of TikTok comment threads made on a video series reviewing the food delivered during hotel quarantine in New Zealand in 2021. The TikTok comment exchanges featured users negotiating social bonds about food, daily life, and the pandemic. Most exchanges involved convivial alignments around shared values, with the occasional heated discussion about whether quarantine was a justifiable approach to the pandemic.

The ICC expert, especially the court lawyer, combines their everyday international legal work with the managerial work of having their performance appraised, committing to the court’s core competencies, and assisting with audit exercises. Indeed, the very process of applying for and getting a job at the court is guided by management ideas and practices. Throughout their ‘career’, from the moment they begin to apply for an ICC vacancy until their departure from the court, the ICC expert is mediated by a range of human resource management techniques. This chapter traces that professional journey into, through, and up the court organisation and the consequences of such identity work for the professional imagination of the international criminal lawyer. By engaging with management’s principles, models, meetings, forms, and reports, the ICC expert makes court, and self-optimisation, a lodestar of global justice.

This brief chapter examines how narratives are useful in work psychology. Narratives can be used for everything from career planning to worker relations and ideas around job identity. People often want to identify with the organisation they work for, and successful identification can be positive in terms of satisfaction and productivity. If there is a shared narrative between workers and managers, then the organisation is likely to be more successful. Narrative is a useful device for examining the nature and progress of careers, and activities such as appraisal can enhance these narratives.

This chapter focuses on the use of clichés for negotiating interpersonal relationships in organisational spoken discourse. The chapter conceptualises clichés as im/politeness strategies in the expression and management of evaluative meanings regarding an interactant either directly or indirectly. The study of clichés as interpersonal devices as explored in this chapter encompasses a multidimensional investigation co-deploying two complementary approaches: a systemic functional approach, utilising the appraisal framework, and socio-pragmatic approaches, namely im/politeness and face theory. These are applied to spoken data collected in an organisational setting. The findings demonstrate that, given their reliance on socially shared knowledge as carried by their formulaic nature, clichés allow the conveyance of evaluation of people or situations whilst also enhancing or mitigating the impact of such evaluation on facework.

This chapter conceptualises clichés as socio-cognitive representations in advertising and branding discourse. It draws on social cognition and argues that clichés are useful resources for the construction of brand identity. Two current UK print advertisements and a corpus of UK corporate mission statements are analysed combining corpus linguistics tools and textual analysis of cliches and their collocates using tools from SFL’s transitivity system, social actor theory, appraisal theory and conceptual metaphor theory. The findings demonstrate that, ideationally, cliches are used to construe an ideal self for the brand evoking models of superiority, difference and wholeness and interpersonally building a relationship of trust with the customer or stakeholder who is the ultimate addressee of the mission statements.

This chapter discusses stimulus evaluation theories (SETs), which foreground a process of stimulus evaluation (or appraisal). A first brand, called evaluation-first SETs, include appraisal theories in psychology and (quasi-)judgmental and perceptual theories in philosophy. Theories in this brand differ in the role they confer to stimulus evaluation (constituent-only, causal-only, constituent-causal), the granularity of the output of this process (molar, molecular, molar-molecular), and the system required to produce it (in terms of representational format and Attitude, operations, and operating conditions or automaticity). The transition from stimulus evaluation to the other components is accounted for by evaluation-response links that are innate—in the biological version—or learned—in the non-biological version. The latter version splits again in a summary and elemental sub-version. A second brand, called embodied SETs, postulate that stimulus evaluation acquires its heat after bodily responses set in, or they assume an indivisible evaluation-response connection. SETs outperform the previous theories in their capacity to account for the (world-directed) Intentionality of emotions. Most of them can also account for ontogenetic and phylogenetic continuity (except judgmental theories), phenomenality, bodily aspect, heat, control precedence, and irrationality. Molar SETs deliver discrete emotions, purely molecular SETs do not. Empirical research that tests SETs is discussed.

This chapter covers three areas of research of interest to those in assessment: the accuracy and usefulness of others’/observers’ reports, namely references and testimonials; appraisals and reports by people at work who know the individual (boss, colleagues, reports, customers); and the electronic surveillance at work and home. Each method relies on observer reports which are often considered to be superior to self-reports, though they are highly reliant on both the observer’s actual ‘data’ on the individual, as well as the extent to which they are honest. One of the oldest, most established but least validated of methods is the use of personal references/testimonials by supposedly a person who knows a candidate well and is prepared to be honest. The second which comes from the USA more than 70 years ago remains very popular as much for development and training as assessment: similar ratings from different people at work on the same individual on various different aspects. The third area is perhaps the most controversial: the monitoring of individual through a variety (mostly electronic) means on all sorts of their behaviour at as well as to and from work. The newest method, namely wearables, is also discussed.

After discussing normal initial responses, real-life cases (Charles, Katie, and Martin), and core concepts, the chapters offer several practical suggestions to help new authors publish better and more review articles: write a good-quality review article as the first effort toward journal article publication; studying the 27 items specified in the PRISMA statement; selecting one of the 14 types of literature review based on our own specific research needs; searching and reviewing whether reviews have been published and how these reviews contribute to the literature synthesis; making sure to specify and justify new and substantial contributions that your review will make; writing a strong Method section to demonstrate the rigor and thoughtfulness of your review efforts; developing and presenting insights on future research directions, reading more good review articles and using these as guiding examples, and knowing good journals that publish reviews frequently or exclusively (e.g., Annual Review of Psychology, Psychological Bulletin, and Review of Educational Research).