English and Slovene Football Match Reports Through the Lens of Appraisal Language

The study aims to compare the occurrence and use of attitude, more precisely, of its subcategories, as well as of their status and realisation in the selected English and Slovene football match reports published by online print media. Attitude constitutes one of the three primary categories within the evaluative discourse-semantic system known as appraisal (Martin and White, 2005). It encompasses language that conveys feelings, judgement of behaviour, and evaluation of things. To explore and compare attitude, the appraisal model developed by Martin and White (2005) was applied as an analytical tool, along with quantitative and qualitative research methods. The analysis reveals that both sets of reports employ all three attitudinal subcategories, express attitude both explicitly and implicitly, and use both positive and negative status. However, there are similarities and differences in the distribution of subcategories, and their status and realisation between both reports. Furthermore, findings indicate that both sets of reports frequently utilize distinct lexis to convey attitude, alongside the shared lexis.