Evaluative Attitudinal Presence in Primetime TV News Presentations in Ghana

This article explored the presence of evaluative attitudinal resources in primetime TV news presentations in Ghana and linguistically shed light on professional practices in news presentations for the purpose of meaning in the news. An inquiry into attitudinal resources in news presentations is useful for understanding how subjects of primetime news bulletins manage and send reports on local and international happenings using evaluative attitudinal resources. The focus is on the linguistic resources that are attitudinal in nature. In doing this, I situate the analysis within the sub-systems of Appraisal theory, developed by Martin and White (2005) in discussing the presence of attitudinal resources employed in the news and their relevance. The data presents reasons to prove the use of evaluative attitudinal resources to construe different forms of emotions in the news reportage. It was also observed that the emotions are attributive and not subjective.


Introduction
The dominance of research into written and broadcast news has been largely spearheaded by Martin and White (2005), Merminod and Burger (2019), Montgomery (2007), and Thompson and Hunston (2006).These studies have made valuable contributions to the discourse of broadcast news (Montgomery, 2007), evaluation of language in written news (Martin & White, 2005;Thompson & Hunston, 2006) and linguistic narrative experience of the process of broadcast news (Merminod, 2018;Merminod & Burger, 2019).Unlike the pre -20th century, where studies of broadcast news focused on written news, researchers, such as Arackal (2015), Bednarek (2010) and Montgomery (2007) have explored spoken and broadcast news, specifically, radio and television discourses in the European contexts (Merminod, 2018;Merminod & Burger, 2019).In the African context, scholars have investigated language use in both electronic and print media from their various societies.Nwaneri, Mann, Niekerk and Dieperinle (2014) for instance, studied the use of English language in electronic media and how it is used in accordance with South Africa's language policy.It was obvious in this study, like many African countries that English language is the preferred language in presenting news and other information on radio and television broadcasting networks in South Africa, which is contrary to South Africa's language policy.
In Nigeria (arguably the most popular African country), Agu (2015) pays attention to one of the issues that unfortunately, makes Nigeria popularcorruption.Agu (2015) explores linguistic features in three daily newspapers that make journalists in Nigeria nation builders.He investigates linguistic features in the reportage of a 300-million-Naira scandal that had to do with the daughter of Nigeria's former president, Obasanjo.Interestingly, while some journalists reported objectively by distancing themselves, others reported this same scandal story from emotionally biased point of view.Like Agu's (2015) study, the current study, examines evaluative resources that subjects of news employ in Ghana's primetime news that make them report objectively by distancing themselves.However, unlike Nigeria, as reported in Agu's (2015) study, instances of emotional biases are not used in Ghana's primetime news, which suggest a difference in linguistic choices in electronic and print media within different African countries.In Ghana, studies on language of the news have examined segments of the news.Boamah (2016) analysed language use in Ghana's sports news segment.Other scholars such as Amadu et al. (2018); Davor (2015); Nyarko (2016); Sikanku, (2011) have paid attention to written news in Ghana's print media.These studies (Agu, 2015;Amadu et al. 2018;Nwaneri et al. 2014;Sikanku, 2011), predominantly adopted a narrative ethnographic approach to the study of language of the news at the expense of Appraisal, which reveals how the textual voice positions itself with respect to other voices and other positions in the discourse (Martin & White, 2005).In this light, this study ought to be viewed as a contribution to studies on nonnative spoken news, concentrating on significance and meaning.Unlike Sobeng's (2016) study that paid attention to attitudinal resources in the comments of judges of Ghana's most beautiful show, this study focused on attitudinal resources in primetime TV news presentations.It is against this background that this research is conducted under the guidance of the research question: what evaluative attitudinal resources are present in primetime TV news presentations in Ghana?
This research is valuable to media practitioners working with transmitting of news and information to the public, including journalists, editors, broadcasters, and news presenters.Theoretically, the study has implication for research on other versions of the English language, as suggested by Martin and White (2005).White (2000) noted that research in this area is an on-going project which still needs to be extended to other discourse domains and developed through the exploration of many more linguistic domains.In connection with the above, the study contributes to the growing body of studies in Appraisal Theory.

Theoretical Approach
The Appraisal Theory describes language employed in communicating evaluation, explaining how users of English language convey attitude through speakers' emotions, judgement of people and appreciation of objects, engagement (assessment of the evaluations of other people) and how writers modify the strength of their attitude/engagement (Read, Hope & Carroll, 2007).Martin and White developed Appraisal Theory, as a model of evaluation in Australia (Martin, 2000).The theory is useful for tracking the choices speakers/writers (in our case, subjects of the news) make or employ to encode attitudinal meanings, to adjust degrees of evaluations and to contract and expand dialogical space (Lancaster, 2011).The Appraisal Theory has three interactive subsystems -Attitude, Engagement, and Graduation.What this means is that at any instance of appraisal, a text has the capacity of conveying these three important meanings, considered as the subsystems of the Appraisal Theory, as presented in Figure 1 below: The authors explain that any kind of symbolic meaning derived from a text, due to the source and target in the interaction, depends on the previous knowledge on the context by the audience.The Affect subsystem deals with resources for construing emotional reactions, which Martin and White further categorize into three forms: un/happiness, in/security, and dis/satisfaction.Judgement looks at meaning, clarifying our attitudes to people or entities and the different ways they behave.Under judgement, the emoter's attitude to other people and their behavior is what matters (Sobeng, 2016).Martin and White (2005) consider two major sub-categories that give meaning from the behavior of interactants: judgements of social esteem and judgements of social sanction.Appreciation, the third category under Attitude subsystem, involves evaluation of objects, process and natural phenomena and state of affairs like abstract 'things."Appreciation, therefore, is for the "appraised" and not the "appraiser".Engagement connotes linguistic resources such as projection, modality, polarity, concession, and comment of adverbials that positions the speaker or writer to the value position.This position becomes what the speaker advances, concerning potential responses to that value position, by quoting or reporting, acknowledging a possibility, denying, countering, and affirming (Martin & White, 2005).Additionally, Engagement deals with the linguistic constructions by which authors construe their points of view and the resources used to adopt stances towards the opinions of others.This resource considers how speakers acknowledge alternative positions to their own.Engagement has expansive resources that are heteroglosic in nature.The Engagement subsystem acknowledges that readers of a text could get used to a listening or viewing position either hesitantly or passively.The final subsystem of the Appraisal Framework, Graduation, plays a dialogic role by ensuring that speakers present themselves as strongly associated with the position communicated by the text or news.Graduation therefore shows the extent to which any evaluation is valued along a range of intensity.Graduation is a general property of both Attitude and Engagement.With attitude, authors can convey greater or lesser degrees of positivity or negativity.Graduation, thus, explains how Engagement scales authors' conviction in their utterance (Read, Hope & Carroll, 2007).The position of authors in utterances is measured under Graduation.Under the Graduation subsystem, the degree of an evaluation, when focused on gradability is adjusted (that is, how strong or weak a feeling is).Martin and White (2005) call this kind of graduation, force, which refers to realizations including intensification, comparative and superlative morphology, repetition and various graphological and phonological features alongside the use of intensified lexis.The concepts of appraisal (attitude, engagement, and graduation) have emotional, stance taking and grading value capacity, which when enacted in news texts, directly influence news language positively or otherwise.In this study, primetime news texts enacted attitude, engagement, and graduation resources in proportions that reflect objectivity and seriousness on the part of news subjects (editors, reporters, and news presenters).By attitude resources, affected news lines are projected as emotional though attributed to named personalities in those news lines.Engagement resources, which were frequently used in news, gave presenters the opportunity to take a stance either in favor of the news line or otherwise.While the graduation resources expose the grading systems associated with news language, such that the subject of the news could indicate the level of seriousness, formality, certainty, or deadliness of situations surrounding the news bulletin being presented.I weave these three unique, though interrelated, subsystems of Appraisal Theory together to explore the distinctness of linguistic practices in primetime news presentations.

Evaluation
The concept of evaluation has attracted interesting views from a number of scholars.Bednarek (2010), Thompson and Hunson (2006), and Wu (2013) describe evaluation as speaker or writer's view, feelings, opinions or stance in context expressed through language.This view is held by scholars who have extensively studied the language of evaluation, such as Bednarek (2010, p. 15), who defines evaluation as the "expression of any speaker/writer's opinions through language."Thompson and Hunston (2006, p. 5) note that evaluation is "the broad cover term for the expression of speaker or writer's attitude or stance towards, viewpoint on, or feelings about the entities or propositions that he or she is talking about."Evaluation is, thus, positive, or negative view, a writer, or speaker takes concerning participants, actions, happenings and state of affairs (Wu, 2013).Evaluation has a major role to play in valuing and taking a position in relation to both entities and propositions (Hood, 2010).The American Evaluation Association (2014) asserts that all of us have conducted some sort of evaluation, whether formally or informally.This association argues that individuals undertake evaluation almost every day when decision is made on what to wear, or how to prioritize the various pending tasks.Evaluative resources in language of news are when through language, news presenters show the attitude, viewpoint, or feelings (Thompson & Hunston, 2006) embedded in the content of the news they present.
Subjects of news contents (editors, news presenters, among others) depict specific attitudes by the linguistic resources they employ, conveyed to viewers by news presenters.Hyland and Diani (2009) believe that evaluation operates both as statements, which display assessments of value corresponding to opinions along a good-bad axis and those concerning the likely accuracy of claims, resembling the linguistic choices in news content.Scholars prefer to use terminologies such as stance (Thompson & Hunston, 2006), appraisal (Martin & White, 2005), attitude and metadiscourse to define the concept of evaluation.Stubbs' (1996) view on what evaluation is, captures what the concept of evaluation represents, thus "whenever speakers (or writers) say anything or write, they encode their attitudes towards it" (p.197).This study investigates linguistic resources in news content that suggest encoded attitudes in primetime news presentations.Researchers of language of evaluation explain how people take a position on something (in this case, the content of primetime news) and work at positioning others or viewers to do same.Taking a particular position on an issue indicates a person's "stance".News presenters who present primetime news on TV stations express attitudes, views, or feelings as they present the news.This research, firstly, identifies the evaluative resources used in the language of primetime news.Thompson and Hunston (2005, p. 5) maintain that language of evaluation in academia performs three functions: i.It expresses the speaker's or writer's opinion, and in doing so reflects the value system of that person and their community; ii.It constructs and maintains relations between the speaker or writer and listener or reader; and iii.It organizes the discourse.
The diverse terminological referents associated with evaluation are obvious in the literature.Hyland and Diani (2009, p. 5) claim that evaluation operates on two levels: 1) statements: they display assessments of value, roughly corresponding to opinions along a good-bad axis, and 2) accuracy of claims: relates to judgements of probability.The different terms scholars have given to evaluation include stance, appraisal, attitude, meta-discourse, among others.However, the common aim that runs through the definitions, aligns with Stubbs' (1996, p. 197) view of evaluation: "whenever speakers or writers say or write anything, they encode their attitude towards it".This means under evaluation; researchers explore how speakers and writers take positions on something and work at positioning others to do the same.Thompson (1996) explains evaluation as the indication of whether a speaker thinks that something (a person, thing, action, event, situation, or idea) is good or bad.Evaluation represents the positive or negative views a writer or speaker takes concerning participants, actions, happenings, and state of affairs (Wu, 2013).Hood (2010) suggests that evaluation deals with valuing and taking a position in relation to both entities and propositions.Bednarek (2010), a leading researcher on language of evaluation (besides scholars like Thompson & Hunston, (2000); Martin and White, (2005)) posits that language, which is evaluative in nature with its concomitant parameters, has different terms by which the same meaning can be understood.Clearly, the different terminologies (evaluation, appraisal, stance, and evaluative parameters) used by scholars to explain language that is evaluative in nature, convey similar if not the same meaning.Thus, researchers, under evaluative attitudinal resources, explore how speakers and writers take emotional positions on something and work at positioning others to do the same.

Methodology
The research design used for this research is qualitative content analysis since it deals with techniques for systematic texts analysis (Mayring, 2000).Babbie (2001) sees content analysis as "the study of recorded human communication" (p.304).Major features of content analysis are recording, downloading, and coding, which prominently featured in my data gathering process.To achieve this, I prepared a list of evaluative resources guided by Martin and White's (2005) Appraisal Theory.Words, clauses, and statements that construe Attitude, Engagement, and Graduation, as evaluative resources, as stipulated in the Appraisal Theory were recorded.Based on the list, content analysis was conducted to establish the use of these linguistic resources in the news language.I used simple counting and frequency of occurrence of key evaluative resources from the news to explain the significance of absence and presence of evaluation, semiotics, and ideological positioning in primetime news presentations in Ghana.Instances of happiness/unhappiness, satisfaction/dissatisfaction, security/insecurity, as "affect" of the Attitude subsystem.Language in news presentations that construe "assessing behavior" was categorized under "judgement" of the Attitude subsystem.Linguistic resources in news presentations that showed assessing the value of things were classified under "appreciation".These resources express feelings and are termed Attitude (Martin & White, 2005).Instances of linguistic resources in news presentations that expressed disclaim, proclaim, entertain, and attribute were grouped under Engagement.I finally searched for key words, clauses, and statements in news presentations that portrayed quantification, intensification (Force), upscaling and downscaling (Focus) and placed such linguistic resources under Graduation.To ensure reliability and validity in this thesis, frequency of the inter-rater agreement yields a score of 80 to 95%.The units of analysis were words, clauses, and statements.Additionally, I calculated the frequency of the absence or presence of evaluative resources by observing key words, clauses, and sentences in the data.I have ensured that my participants (subjects of the news or news presenters) were protected in this study.I gave newsreaders codes to avoid mentioning their names in the discussions, which is presented in the next session under analysis and discussions.The data for this study are primetime news presentations from four TV stations in Ghana.The primetime news, constituting the data for this research were selected from Ghana Television (GTV), TV3 Ghana Limited (TV3), JOY NEWS (Joy News) and Citi Newsroom (Citi TV).The TV stations are among the most influential TV stations in Ghana according to GeoPoll research institute, 2019.News items were coded as GTV PR1, PR2 (GTV Presenter One, Two); TV3 PR1, PR2 (TV3 Presenter One, Two); Joy News PR1, PR2 (Joy News Presenter One, Two); Citi PR1, PR2 (Citi Presenter One, Two); MN1 (main news bulletin one), BN (business news segment) for easy referencing and effective discussions of observations from the data.

Analysis and Discussions Attitudinal Resources in TV News Presentations
Attitude has been explained in line with the values by which speakers associate emotional responses with participants and processes (White, 2001).It again construes feelings in texts (Martin & White, 2005).Hence, words which depict or portray feelings of speaker (s) are attitudinal resources in that text.As discussed earlier in this research, the Attitude sub-system of the Appraisal theory consists of three strands: Affect, Judgement and Appreciation (Marin & White, 2005).Affect resources represent emotional reaction; Judgement resources are for assessing behaviour; while Appreciation reflects assessment of the value of things.Linguistic resources in the data that construe Affect are presented below.

Affect realizations in Primetime News
The data for this study unsurprisingly, exhibited few instances of affect, suggesting that in news presentations, circumstances that require the use of affect are not often given space.Thus, in news, resources that construe emotions, which are termed as affect are not usually employed because, news presenters are to present news contents given to them devoid of their personal feelings.Affect, according to Ngo and Unsworth (2015), refers to the language resources for expressing emotions.Wu (2013) believes that Affect resources are negative and positive feelings.It is not surprising that in Sobeng (2016), Affect resources for assessing contestants of Ghana's Most Beautiful shows' (GMB) performances were numerous since judges employed linguistic resources such as "well done, I like…that, thank you" and "what I was expecting was…; Did I hear you say mobbing?It is mop, mop, so take note of that".In the current study, circumstances such as the one just described, that offered the judges of GMB show the platform to employ affect resources do not necessarily exist in primetime news presentation, except for a particular news item in which a number of affect praise resources are employed by the head of a committee to validate the choice the committee made.The news item that exhibited this praise resource is presented below: "Mr.Owusu said the committee observed that given his high standard of competence and integrity (.) forthrightness (.) astuteness and indebt appreciation of the law he exhibited before the committee and independence of thought (.) the nominee qualifies to serve as Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana…" (GTV, 24th December, 2019) In this example, we observe the use of about seven praise resources in describing the selected Chief Justice.The Chief Justice in question is said to be of "high standard" "competent", possessing "integrity", exhibits "forthrightness", "astuteness", "indebt appreciation of the law" has "independence of thought" and then "qualifies to serve as Chief Justice".These are resources for admiration and character validation, explained as praise and admiration by Martin and White (2005) and Martin and Rose (2007).The praise resources employed in this news item places some level of value on the chosen Chief Justice, which makes him the preferred person instead of his competitors.Interestingly, unlike my observation with the comments of GMB (Ghana's Most Beautiful) judges, the praise resources used in the news item is attributed, in that, members of the committee are the ones showering the praises on their preferred Chief Justice to justify their choice of selection.The news presenters, in this case, are only reporting the emotions of the committee members and not theirs.According to Song (2019), by using affect resources in a text, speakers are practically speaking from an emotional point of view.This observation aligns with Martin and White's (2005) view that all affect resources are mainly emotional.In the news presentations used for this study, news presenters employed attributed Affect resources to avoid personal emotions.The following are a few of the instances of news stories from the data that illustrate how affect resources are realized in clauses, phrases and words.The highlighted portions are Affect resources.
Extract 1 However (,) after the performance of the two late chiefs of Dagbon and the subsequent installation of a new Yaa Naa (0.1) Abdul Yahil Moomen reports that the people of Dagbon are beginning to enjoy the dividends of peace (GTV, 24th December, 2019) It is important to note that the Dagbon community (in the Northern part of Ghana) had been characterized by series of conflicts, which prevented the inhabitants from experiencing peace.The main cause of the conflicts in the Dagbon area had been issues related to the death of the late Yaa Naa (their previous paramount chief) and the installation of a new one.In this news line, however, we see a change of events.The change of events in this news line is highlighted by the use of the Affect resource "enjoy", which shows that the people of Dagbon are beginning to experience fulfilment regarding the new conflict-free atmosphere in the area.The Affect resource used in this manner is what scholars like Bednarek (2010) and Martin and White (2005) call satisfaction.The semantic implication of the use of "enjoy" in this news line is a sense of fulfilment showing that the people of Dagbon are pleased with their current atmosphere and as such are Satisfied (Martin and White, 2005).
In this instance, the Affect resource, "enjoy", shows the emotional state of the people of Dagbon, as indicated in the news content here (Extract 1).Scholars such as Bednarek (2010), Hood (2010) and Martin and White (2005) have indicated that satisfaction and other resources under Attitude bring out the emotional position of the speaker concerning what is being described.Contrary to this view, the data for this study showed that the use of Affect resource could project the emotional state of another personality or group of people, depending on the text in question as seen in Extract 1.It is worth noting that the affect resources (satisfaction, dissatisfaction and insecurity) in the data for this study, do not reflect the emotions and feelings of news presenters, who are the direct speakers in primetime news presentations as suggested by Martin and White (2005).Similar observations can be made in news Extracts 2 to 5 below: Extract 2 Brigadier C. K. Aweti has also been promoted to the rank of a Major General (.)The statement said president Akuffo Addo expressed gratitude to Generals Ayando and Omane Agyekum for their dedicated service to the armed forces and the nation (TV3, 12th November, 2020.MN1, PR1) In this instance, the Affect resource employed is "expressed gratitude" represents another instance of satisfaction, as suggested by Martin and White (2005).This resource used in the news text illustrates the emotional state of president Akuffo Addo, in relation to the Army Generals Ayando and Omane Agyekum's dedication to their assigned duties in the Ghana Army.Now going into the polls on December 7 the Ghana Police Service has tasked some areas and all 16 regions of the country as flash points and will be monitoring them carefully to forestall any chaos (.) Now in the Bono East Region however constituents in some of these hot spots are convinced there will be no ↑violence in their localities (.) hhh Michael Tsatsu Aholu has more in this report.
(Citi TV, 30th November, 2020 MN3, PR1) As indicated earlier, instances of Affect resources employed in the data are few and can be seen in few news stories.This observation is partially in line with the observations made by Bednarek (2010); Martin and White (2005) and White (2016) in that, speakers employ Affect resources to exhibit their emotional position on a particular proposition.In this study, however, it is observed that instead of news presenters, who are the direct speakers in this context, there are different personalities in the news stories whose emotional states are portrayed using these Affect resources, as explained earlier, which is why the Affect resources used in the data for this study are attributed.
Another Affect resource, which occurred only once in the data, just like dis/satisfaction resource is in/security.The instance of insecurity, which is the expression, "felt unsafe", was noticed in Joy News' COVID-19 news story presented on 15th July, 2020.The news story that exhibited this insecurity resource is presented in Extract 6 below: Extract 6 And here at the Greater Accra hospital a clinical pharmacist has revealed some of her colleagues for fear of contracting COVID-19 withdrew their services over lack of personal protective equipment (.)According to Maame Ewurabena Ansah (,) health workers there felt unsafe and had to abandon some wards at the hospital.
(Joy News, 15th July, 2020.MN, PR1) In Extract 6, the news story presents health workers' grievances concerning their personal safety in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.These health workers were expressing how unsafe they felt working in the hospital on COVID-19 patients without personal protective equipment (PPEs).The clinical pharmacist, whose concern is captured in Extract 6 resorted to the words, "fear" and "felt" unsafe, to express the influence of the COVID-19 situation on their emotions.Due to this, speakers have evaluated the circumstance around them from an emotional perspective (Song, 2019).The use of linguistic resources such as "fear" and "felt unsafe", according to Martin and White (2005), depict a sense of insecurity, showing that the situation being described in this news story is one that is life threatening, such that health workers abandoned some wards at the hospital to "feel" secure.The insecurity resources observed in the data corroborate Thompson and Hunston's (2005) observation, thus, language expresses the value system of the writer (in this case, the speaker).
Affect resources in the news lines demonstrated in the extracts above illustrate context specific use of Affect in the data.Depending on the context of the use of Affect, the news line could be depicting happiness, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, or insecurity as realized in the data.These resources do not necessarily reflect how subjects of the news feel, as proposed by Martin and White (2005) but how other personalities mentioned in the news stories feel about the event being reported on.Hence, the Affect resources expressed in the data are not those of news subjects or presenters as earlier mentioned.The semantic relevance of the use of Affect as realized in this data could be seen as attributed affect.In the data, Affect resources, enjoy, expressed gratitude, convinced and willingness indicate what Martin and White (2005) explain as Satisfaction, as earlier mentioned.In the news story on the use of the satisfaction resource, enjoy, as used in the news line: …the people of Dagbon are beginning to enjoy the dividends of peace (GTV, 24th December, 2019) In the instance of the Affect dissatisfaction described above, Inusah Fuseini is seen not to be excited about someone's nomination in that news story.The semantic relevance of the use of expressed disappointment in this context is that of an unfulfilled expectation, which seems to have led to Inusah  2005) explain as Affect resources, where a speaker or in this case, named personalities express emotions concerning reported events or situations by using these linguistic resources known as Affect to express the emotional states of the named personalities in the news.Since the feelings expressed in the news are not those of the news presenters but a named group of people (such as health workers, Inusah Fuseini, President Akuffo Addo) the Affect resources in this data are mainly Attributed.Linguistic resources are attributed when the Affect presence in the text is not revealing how the subjects of the news or news presenters feel about an event but how other individual (s) mentioned in the text feel.This is rightly so, journalists, as part of their professional code of conduct, are not supposed to present their views or feelings (Affect) in news presentations, but the events scripted for them to report on during the news presentation.Table 1 below illustrates Affect resources used in the data and the individuals in the news who the Affect resources are attributed to.(Bednarek, 2010;Matin and White, 2005).Works on judgment in media texts have revealed that judgement resources are present in most texts, especially written ones (Bednarek, 2010;Fernandez & Jung, 2006;Hyland, 2010;Martin and White, 2005).The data for this study, however, reveal that in spoken news, rarely do news subjects employ judgement resources in news contents.In this study, the few instances of judgement were observed from two main news contents in the entire data of about 9, 875 words from GTV and TV3.The news story from TV3 that carried judgement resource is presented below: Extract 7 And↑ now child rights international said the decision to expel seven female students from the boarding house of Ejusuman Senior High School is inappropriate hhh (.) Executive Director Bright Appiah is asking the Ghana Education Service to reinstate them and help them with counselling (.)The students were expelled after a viral video of them in explicit sex language which caused public uproar (TV3, 12th February, 2020) In this news story, some senior high school (SHS) girls from Ejusuman Senior High School, a Ghanaian SHS are seen talking about sex with impunity having no sense of remorse or whatsoever.The different cultures in Ghana have a high sense of decency, reflecting what is said publicly.The conduct of these students was seen by most Ghanaians as indecent, contradicting the moral norms guiding most of the institutions in Ghana, including schools.This conduct led to the dismissal of these students from the school.This act of dismissal of the students attracted criticism from a child rights organization known as Child Rights International, who condemned in the sanction imposed on these girls by saying: …and now, the child rights international said the decision to expel seven female students from the boarding house of Ejusuman Senior High School is inappropriate… (TV3, 12th February, 2020) The word "inappropriate" used in the news extract falls under criticism, a sub-category of judgement, as aspect of attitude known as negative judgement.The judgement resource in this context is employed to provide an assessment of the act of dismissal of the Ejusuman SHS students.The judgement resources assess behaviour as moral or immoral, legal or illegal, as socially acceptable or unacceptable, as laudable or deplorable, as normal or abnormal.In this news context, the judgement resource, inappropriate, renders the act of dismissal of those students unacceptable even though the students' behaviour is considered immoral and socially unacceptable.The attitudinal sub-system of judgement, just like I observed with affect, is an attributed one.This judgement resource does not reflect the judgement of news presenters; instead, it reflects the judgement of the "Child Rights International".The final judgement resource I noticed in the data was the news from GTV presented on the 24th December, 2019.This judgement resource, unlike the attributed negative judgement from TV3, is a positive judgement.The positive judgement resources as can be seen in Extract 8 below, are all attributed Extract 8 Mr. Justice Yeboah (0.3) took part in the 2020 presidential election petition as chairman of the ethics committee of FIFA proposal for review of the constitution several areas (.)Mr. Osei Owusu said the committee observed that given his high standard of competence and integrity (.) forthrightness (.) astuteness and indebt appreciation of the law he exhibited before the committee and independence of thought (.) the nominee qualifies to serve as Chief Justice of the republic of Ghana↓ (GTV, 24th December, 2029) In this extract, the personality being positively judged is Mr. Justice Yeboah, who happens to be the president's Chief Justice nominee.In the data, one can observe about five different positive judgement resources used to describe the president's nominee.These positive judgements are "high standard of competence and integrity", "forthrightness", "astuteness" and "indebt appreciation of the law" and "independence of thought".White (2012) and Martin and White (2005) call such positive judgements admiration and praise.The semantic relevance of such positive judgement is to give committee members enough reasons to justify the president's nominee as the right person for the seat of Ghana's Chief Justice.It is worth mentioning that the positive judgement linguistic resources, just like affect and negative judgement resources examined above, are also attributed.Thus, in the data, judgement resources are linguistic resources (whether positive or negative) for evaluating people's behaviors as suggested by scholars such as Bednarek (2006), Hood (2010), Martin (2012) and Martin and White (2005).

Appreciations in Primetime News
Being the last sub-system of the attitude system of the appraisal theory, appreciation emphasizes assessing performances, products, and processes.While judgement resources evaluate human behaviours, appreciations typically add value to individuals' performances, texts, such as content of news, humans, among others.In the data, words of appreciation employed are qualifies and quality from GTV and TV3.The examples below illustrate how appreciation is used in news stories.The highlighted portions are the focus for the discussion.Extract 9 Mr. Osei Owusu said the committee observed that given his high standard of competence and integrity (.) forthrightness (.) astuteness and indebt appreciation of the law he exhibited before the committee and independence of thought (.) the nominee qualifies to serve as Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana↓ (GTV, 24th December, 2019) As discussed earlier under affect resources, "high standard of competence and integrity, forthrightness, astuteness, and indebt appreciation of the law as well as independence of thought" are praise resources in Extract 9 used to validate the selection of the Chief Justice.Besides playing the role of praising the character of the chosen Chief Justice, these affect praise resources complement and enhance the appreciation resource, "qualifies" in this news item.Extract 10 And talking about more pump stations (,) TOTAL Ghana has also opened its renovated service station at pig farm junction here in Accra (.)The retail outlet powered by solar energy is to render quality petroleum and other services to its clients (.) Well that's it for business tonight remember you can get... (TV3, 12th February, 2020) The instances of the use of appreciation resources in the data as seen in Extracts 9 and 10 above enact a sense of value for what is being appreciated.In Extract 9 for instance, GTV news attributes the appreciation resources, high standard and qualifies, to a named individual "Mr.Osei Owusu" as seen in the news line.
The news line in Extract 9 demonstrates an instance where linguistic resources are employed in the data for the purpose of appreciation.The semantic implication of the use of appreciation lexis in this extract is to place value on the nominee who is said to be in a good position to serve as Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana in terms of qualification and character.The appreciation resources, high standard and qualifies, give the nominee an added advantage and value above any other personality who contested that same position with him.Moreover, by the use of these appreciation resources, the members of the committee that sat to select the nominee are justifying the reasons why he was the one they selected.It is important to state that the appreciation resource was employed right after positive judgment resources were used to give the candidate credibility as discussed above.As seen in the Extracts 9 and 10, appreciation resources used in the data are only two, besides, they are not employed by subjects of the news per say but are attributed.The resources are used by a named person in the news story (Mr. Osei Owusu) to put value on the personality and character of another personality (nominee) in the news as illustrated in this news extract.Appreciation resources in the data for this study are also attributed.
Unlike the situation with judgement resources discussed above, where both negative and positive judgement resources were employed in the data, the two appreciation resources used are positive, even though they are attributed.The use of positive appreciation resources, in Thompson and Hunston's (2005) view, construct and maintain relations, in this case, between the individual who the appreciation resources have been attributed to as well as committee members and viewers of the news.Moreover, by positive appreciation, the position and stance of the committee on Mr. Yeboah's selection has clearly been stated as suggested by Stubbs (1999).In Martin and White's (2005) view, Appreciation resources are employed to place value on the person or entity being appreciated.In the next section, I pay attention to engagement resources in the data.

Findings and Results
It was observed in the data that Joy News employed the highest number of Attribute expressions in their news contents, followed by TV3, Citi TV, and GTV respectively.This indicates that Joy News lines employed linguistic resources that construe the emotions of the named personalities.It also became clear that attitudinal resources in Ghana's news are attributed, unlike what Martin and White (2005) suggested in their appraisal theory.

Conclusion
In this article, I sought to examine evaluation in primetime TV news presentations in Ghana and presents the meanings associated with frequently employed evaluative resources under the auspices of Martin and White's (2005) Appraisal theory.The study presented how evaluative attitudinal resources under the Attitude sub-system of the Appraisal theory are employed in the primetime TV news presentation.

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: The Appraisal Theory (Adapted from Martin & White, 2005) Martin andWhite (2005) present three categories of feelings under Attitude (the first subsystem of appraisal theory): affect, judgement and appreciation.The authors explain that any kind of symbolic meaning derived from a text, due to the source and target in the interaction, depends on the previous knowledge on the context by the audience.The Affect subsystem deals with resources for construing emotional reactions, which Martin and White further categorize into three forms: un/happiness, in/security, and dis/satisfaction.Judgement looks at meaning, clarifying our attitudes to people or entities and the different ways they behave.Under judgement, the emoter's attitude to other people and their behavior is what matters(Sobeng, 2016).Martin and White (2005) consider two major sub-categories that give meaning from the behavior of interactants: judgements of social esteem and judgements of social sanction.Appreciation, the third category under Attitude subsystem, involves evaluation of objects, process and natural phenomena and state of affairs like abstract 'things."Appreciation, therefore, is for the "appraised" and not the "appraiser".Engagement connotes linguistic resources such as projection, modality, polarity, concession, and comment of adverbials that positions the speaker or writer to the value position.This position becomes what the speaker advances, concerning potential responses to that value position, by quoting or reporting, acknowledging a possibility, denying, countering, and affirming(Martin & White, 2005).Additionally, Engagement deals with the linguistic constructions by which authors construe their points of view and the resources used to adopt stances towards the opinions of others.This resource considers how speakers acknowledge alternative positions to their own.Engagement has expansive resources that are heteroglosic in nature.The Engagement subsystem acknowledges that readers of a text could get used to a listening or viewing position either hesitantly or passively.The final subsystem of the Appraisal Framework, Graduation, plays a dialogic role by ensuring that speakers present

Extract 3
We are still watching Citi newsroom on Citi TV (,) we are still staying on the nomination of Justice Anim Yeboah hhh now the ranking member on parliament's constitutional legal and parliamentary affairs committee Inusah Fuseini has expressed disappointment with his nomination (TV3, 2019 MN1, PR. 3) Another Affect resource used in Extract 3 is "expressed disappointment".This type of Affect is what scholars such as Bednarek (2010), Martin and White (2005) and White (2016) call dissatisfaction.It is an Affect resource used to project a situation in a text where the speaker is not pleased with a proposition (Martin & White, 2005).In this news line, we notice that the dissatisfaction, "expressed disappointment", illustrates a displeasure being expressed by Inusah Fuseini."Expressed disappointment" is the only Affect dissatisfaction resource observed in the data.Instances presented in Extracts 4 and 5 below illustrate other instances of the use of Affect satisfaction in news texts, as suggested by Martin and White (2005).Extract 4 Now as the police have identified 20 hot spots in Ejisu constituency (,) the leading candidates in the race John Kumah and George Kwanozey have expressed their willingness to commit to peace ahead of the 2020 general elections (.) hh Citi news' Edward Oppong Marfo has more on the following report.Extract 5 Fuseini's disappointment in the nomination procedure, leading to what Bednarek (2010), Hood (2010) and Martin and White (2005) will call dis/satisfaction.The observations made here corroborates what Biber (2006) and Martin and White ( 45. Wu, J. (2013).The study of competency-based training and strategies in the public sector:Experience from Taiwan.Public Personnel Management, 42(2), 259-271.

Table 1 : Attributed Affect in primetime news presentations
Martin and White (2005))ther written or spoken, portrays feelings such as happiness or un/happiness, satisfaction or dis/satisfaction, security or in/security(Martin and White, 2005).Affective positions often include positive or negative feelings (Wu, 2013).Moreover, Affect, as mentioned earlier in Chapter Two, interprets emotional reactions in texts like news stories, as is the case for this study.Linguistic resources that are Affect include processes of showing affection, which are usually attitudinal adjectives(Martin & White, 2005).Besides Affect, another dimension of the Attitude sub-system, according toMartin and White (2005), is Judgement.I pay a brief attention to the judgement category of the Attitude system and its presence in the data in the next section.