RECOGNIZING ATTITUDE AND POLARITY OF WORDS IN REVIEW TEXTS: AN ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SOFT AND HARD DISCIPLINES

The present study aims to analyze book review as a written discourse in order to follow the move structure (Motta-Roth, 1995). It also distinguishes words that convey evaluation of an item, as well as the evaluation polarity (positive or negative) in English Soft (Literature and History) and Hard (Math and Computer engineering) disciplines. 120 book reviews (60 of each) were selected and scrutinized to classify move structure (Motta-Roth, 1995), the expressions of Attitude (Martin & White, 2005), as well as to reveal Polarity. Most of the data used in this study were downloaded from the well-known book review websites. The reviews were published within the years- from 2000 to 2013. It is necessary to mention that Persian reviews were lengthy. The chi- square results with 0.05 level of significance indicated that there were some similarities and differences in applying moves, steps, attitudinal expressions and polarity through two corpora. In a total comparison of soft and hard disciplines moves 2 (Outlining the Book) and 4 (Providing Closing Evaluation of the Book) showed significant differences. In terms of attitude, Chi-Square results indicated that only in total comparison of Hard and Soft group, affect and judgment had significant differences; affect and judgment expressions were used more by Soft group. In terms of polarity, both English Soft and Hard reviewers apply positive aspects of evaluation several times more than negative aspects.