Peter R.R.White

Dr Peter R. R. White teaches linguistics with a socio-semiotic orientation (e.g. applied, appliable, educational, discourse analytical etc.) and journalism studies at the University of New South Wales in Sydney Australia, having previously taught at Birmingham University in the UK, the University of Adelaide in South Australia, the University of Sydney and Wollongong University. He is one of the architects of the Appraisal framework, an approach to the analysis of evaluative language. [See Language of Evaluation website for detailed information, contacts, bibliographies/links and an introductory course.]

In addition to his work on the language of evaluation, his research interests include the discourses of mass communication (verbal and visual meaning making in journalism, politics, advertising and public relations), educational linguistics (literacy development, including literacy in indigenous education, genre-based pedagogy, journalism education), translation studies, contrastive linguistics, argumentation theory, corpus and computational linguistics, the language of science and technology, and new developments in Systemic Functional Linguistics. He supervises PhD candidates across this range of topics.

Previously Dr White worked as a journalist, sub-editor and editor for two of Australia's leading metropolitan daily broadsheet newspapers, the Adelaide Advertiser and the Sydney Morning Herald. He also acted as journalism trainer for Australia's multicultural, multi-lingual broadcaster, the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), which broadcasts in more than 60 languages.

He currently performs on saxophone and keyboards with the Travelling Circumstances, a jazz and blues combo of (mostly) linguists.

For more info and contact details see his UNSW webpage.

White, P.R.R. 1997. 'In the American Spirit From a Functional Linguistic Perspective', Ways of Seeing - Looking at Models of Exhibition Critique. Papers From the Museums of Australia Inc (NSW) 1996 International Museums Day Seminar, (ed.) Landman, P., Sydney, Museums Australia Inc (NSW). [Download scan of "In the American Spirit..."]

White, P.R.R. 1997. 'Death, Disruption and the Moral Order: the Narrative Impulse in Mass-Media Hard News Reporting.', in Genres and Institutions: Social Processes in the Workplace and School, Christie, F. & Martin, J.R. (eds), London, Cassell: 101-33. Download as chapter 4 from Genres and Institutions   [Download as chapter in Genres and Institutions Chapter 4 "Death, Disruption and the Moral Order..."] or as Microsoft Word file, chapter only [Download WP file of "Death, Disruption and the Moral Order..."]

White, P.R.R. 1998. 'Extended Reality, Proto-Nouns and the Vernacular: Distinguishing the Technological From the Scientific', in Reading Science - Critical and Functional Perspectives on Discourses of Science, Martin, J.R. & Veel, R. (eds), London, Routledge: 266-96.[Download scan]

White, P.R.R. 2000, 'Dialogue and Inter-Subjectivity: Reinterpreting the Semantics of Modality and Hedging', in Working With Dialog, Coulthard, M., Cotterill, J., & Rock, F. (eds), Tübingen, Max Niemeyer Verlag: 67-80. [Download to be available shortly]

White, P.R.R. 2000, 'Media Objectivity and the Rhetoric of News Story Structure', in DISCOURSE AND COMMUNITY. DOING FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTCS. Language in Performance 21., Ventola, E. (ed.), Tübingen, Gunter Narr Verlag: 379-97. [Download WP file of "Media Objectivity..."]

White, P.R.R. 2002. ‘Appraisal - the Language of Evaluation and Stance’, in Verschueren, J., J. Östman, J. Blommaert, & C. Bulcaen (eds.) The Handbook of Pragmatics, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins: 1-23. [Download published copy, 2011 reissue: "Appraisal"]

White, P.R.R. 2003. 'Beyond Modality and Hedging: a Dialogic View of the Language of Intersubjective Stance', Text - Special Edition on Appraisal 23 (3): 259–284. Download published copy: "Beyond Modality and Hedging..."

White, P.R.R. 2003. 'News As History - Your Daily Gossip', in Re-Reading the Past: Critical and Functional Perspectives on Time and Value, Martin, J.R. & Wodak, R. (eds), Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins: 61-89. [Download proofs: "News as History..."]

White, P.R.R., 2004, 'Subjectivity, Evaluation and Point of View in Media Discourse.', in Grammar, Text & Context: A Reader, Coffin, C. & O'Halloran, K. (eds), London & New York, Arnold: 229-257. [Download WP file: "Subjectivity, Evaluation and Point of View...]

Martin, J.R. & P.R.R. White, 2005, The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English, London & New York, Palgrave/Macmillan. [Download sample chapter 3 (Engagement and Graduation)]

White, P.R.R. 2006 'Evaluative Semantics and Ideological Positioning in Journalistic Discourse', in Image and Ideology in the Mass Media, Lassen, I. (ed.), Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins: 45-73.[Download WP file: "Evaluative Semantics..."

White, P.R.R. & Sano, M., 2006, ‘Dialogistic Positions and Anticipated Audiences – a Framework for Stylistic Comparisons, in Pragmatic Markers in Contrast, Aijmer, K & Simon-Vandenbergen, A-M (eds), Frankfurt, Elsevier: 189-214. [Download scanned copy: White, Sano...]

Simon-Vandenbergen, A-M, P.R.R. White and Karin Aijmer, 2007, “Presupposition and ‘taking-for-granted’ in mass communicated political argument - An illustration from British, Flemish and Swedish political colloquy”, in Fetzer, A. & Lauerbach, G. (eds) Political Discourse in the Media, Amsterdam & Philadelphia, John Benjamins. [Download proofs: "Presupposition..."]

White, P.R.R. & Thomson, E.A., 2008, ‘News Journalism in a Global Society’, in Communicating Conflict: Multilingual Case Studies of the News Media, Thomson, E.A. & P.R.R. White (eds.), Continuum International Publishing Group, London. [Download WP file: sample chapter "News Journalism in a Global Society"]

Thomson, E.A. and White, P.R.R., (eds), 2008, Communicating Conflict: Multilingual Case Studies of the News Media, Continuum International Publishing Group, London. [Download proofs "Communicating Conflict..."]

White, P.R.R., 2008, “Praising and blaming, applauding and disparaging – solidarity, audience positioning, and the linguistics of evaluative disposition”, in Antos, G & Ventola, E., (eds), Handbook of Interpersonal Communication, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin & New York: pp 542-567. [Download WP file: "Praising and blaming..."]

Thomson, E.A. & P.R.R. White (eds.), 2008, Communicating Conflict: Multilingual Case Studies of the News Media, Continuum International Publishing Group, London. [Download proofs: "Communicating Conflict"]

Thomson, E.A., Nagisa Fukui and P.R.R. White,2008, “Evaluating ‘reporter’ voice in two Japanese front page lead stories”, in Communicating Conflict: Multilingual Case Studies of the News Media, Thomson, E.A. & P.R.R. White (eds.), Continuum International Publishing Group, London

White, P.R.R., 2009, “Media power and the rhetorical potential of the ‘hard news’ report - attitudinal mechanisms in journalistic discourse,”, VAKKI Symposium XXIX, University of Vaasa, Finland. [Download published copy: "Media power..."]

White, P.R.R. & Thomson, E., 2010, "Objectivity" and "Hard News" Reporting Across Cultures: Comparing the news report in English, French, Japanese and Indonesian journalism”, in Richards, J.E., (ed.), Language and Journalism, Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, London and New York, pp.61-77. [Download published copy: "Objectivity and Hard News..."]

White, P.R. R, 2010, “Taking Bakhtin seriously: dialogic effects in written, mass communicative discourse”, Japanese Journal of Pragmatics, v. 12, pp. 37-53. [Download WP copy: "Taking Bakhtin seriously..."]

White, P.R.R., 2012, “Attitudinal meanings, translational commensurability and linguistic relativity”, Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, University of La Laguna, Canary Islands, pp.147-162. [Download scan: "Attitudinal meanings..."]

White, P.R.R, 2012, “Exploring the axiological workings of ‘reporter voice’ news stories — Attribution and attitudinal positioning”, Discourse, Context & Media, Elsevier 1(2-3),pp. 57–67. [Download published copy: "Exploring the axiological workings..."]

White, P.R.R. (in press), “Evaluative contents in verbal communication”, Handbook of Verbal Communication, in Rocci, A. and de Saussure, L, (eds), Mouton de Gruyter: Berlin

White, Peter R.R., 2014, "The attitudinal work of news journalism images – a search for visual and verbal analogues" [Access open access journal for download]. Bologna: Centro di Studi Linguistico-Culturali (CeSLiC) e Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna. ALMADL - Area Sistemi Dipartimentali e Documentali, DOI 10.6092/unibo/amsacta/4110. In: Quaderni del CeSLiC. Occasional papers A cura di: Miller, Donna Rose. ISN 1973-221X. Or directly download [Download ]

White, P.R.R., 2015, “Appraisal Theory”, in International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction, Wiley-Blackwell: Hoboken, U.S.A. [Download published copy: "Appraisal Theory"]

White, P.R.R., Mammone, G., Caldwell, D., 2015, “Linguistically based inequality, multilingual education and a genre-based literacy development pedagogy: insights from the Australian experience”, Language and Education, Vol 29, Issue 3, DOI: 10.1080/09500782.2014.994527. ad published copy: "Linguistically based inequality...]

White, P.R.R. and Makki, M. (2016), 'Crime reporting as storytelling in Persian/Farsi news journalism–perspectives on the narrative function', Journal of World Languages 3: 117-138http://https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211695817300727

White, P.R.R., 2016, 'Evaluative contents in verbal communication', in(Eds) Rocci A, de Saussure L, Verbal Communication, Vol 3, Handbooks of Communication Sciences, DE GRUYTER MOUTON, Berlin, Boston - online at Link to chapter . And here's the link to the publisher's site.. Link to the publisher's page

White, P.R.R. (2016), 'Constructing the "Stranger" in Camus' L'Étranger - Registerial and Attitudinal Variability under Translation', The Journal of Translation Studies 17: 75-106. https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/landing/article.kci?arti_id=ART002156279#none

Jing, Y. and White, P.R.R. (2016), 'Why Audiovisual Translators Downplay the Interpersonal: The Case of "Interjections"in English-to-Chinese Move Subtitling', The Journal of Translation Studies 17: 107-142. https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/landing/article.kci?arti_id=ART002156280

Caldwell, D. and White, P.R.R. (2017), 'That's not a narrative; this is a narrative: NAPLAN and pedagogies of storytelling', The Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 40(1): 16-27.Link to paper on journal site.

Tavassoli, F., White, P.R.R. and Jalifar, A. (2018), 'British newspapers’ stance towards the Syrian refugee crisis: An appraisal model study', Discourse and Society, 30(1): 1-21.https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0957926518801079

Makki, M. and White, P.R.R. (2018), 'Socio-cultural conditioning of style and structure in journalistic discourse: the distinctively “objective” textuality of Iranian political news reporting', Discourse, Context & Media 21: 54-63.Link the paper on journal site

Blackwell, J. and White, P.R.R. (2018), 'The building blocks of speech: Spontaneity, pre-packaging and the genre structuring of university lectures', Text and Talk 38: 267-290.Link to paper on journal site

White, P.R.R. (2020), 'Attitudinal alignments in journalistic commentary and social-media argumentation: The construction of values-based group identities in the online comments of newspaper readers', In: M. Zappavigna and S. Dreyfus (eds), Discourses of Hope and Reconciliation: On J.R. Martin’s Contribution to Systemic Functional Linguistics, 21-49, London and Oxford: Bloomsbury. Download chapter here And here's the link to the publisher's site. Link to Bloomsbury page

White, P.R.R. (2020), 'The putative reader in mass media persuasion – stance, argumentation and ideology', Discourse & Communication, 40(1): 404-423 Direct download here And here's the link to the journal, Link to journal

White, P.R.R. (2021), 'Textual anticipation and the putative reader in persuasive discourse', Journal of Foreign Languages. Direct download here

White, P.R.R. (2021), 'Alignment, persuasiveness and the putative reader in opinion writing', Language, Context and Text, 3(2): 247-273 Download here And here's the link to the journal, Link to journal

Xu, Q., and White, P.R.R. (2021), '"My Husband Always Crosses the Line": Textual Identity and Presentation of "the Self" in Family Conflict Communication', Journal of Research in Applied Linguistics, 12(2), 52-73. Download here And here's the link to the journal, Link to journal

Zaidi,A. and White, P.R.R (2021), 'Attitudinal Positioning and Journalistic Commentary in Politically Fraught Circumstances: Editorializing About the Killing of Osama bin Laden' Journal of Research in Applied Linguistics, 12(2), 89-102.. Download here And here's the link to the journal, Link to journal

Unpublished

White, P.R.R., 1998 (unpublished), Telling Media Tales - the news story as rhetoric, unpublished PhD dissertation, Linguistics Department, University of Sydney [Download pdf]
- Appendices [Download pdf]