Evaluative Language in Engineering Writing

Evaluative Language in Engineering Writing by Dr Claire Simpson-Smith examines strategic language use in professional engineering written reports, illustrating how writers create a persuasive stance within an objective style.

It describes engineering writing through a close analysis of interpersonal language, using Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), complemented with quantitative corpus linguistics methods and interpreted through concepts drawn from Legitimation Code Theory (LCT). This work demonstrates how engineering writers have a strong preference for a certain type of evaluative language, with a dominant stance focused on the worthiness of things and processes.

It also demonstrates that engineering writers make strategic choices in their use of interpersonal language towards a certain aim, particularly in documents written to gain approval of a project by a regulatory body.

This research is focused on engineering writing in the Australian context, but given the globalised nature of the engineering profession, it also has relevance internationally. The creation of an objective stance in writing is also relevant to other disciplines.