Introduction

As mentioned in Chapter 1, attitude datives (ADs) are interpersonal pragmatic markers that deal with interpersonal attitudes and relations. Interpersonal attitudes may be broadly defined as ‘perspectives, usually value-laden and emotionally charged, on others that are mediated by interaction, including generosity, sympathy, like/ dislike, disgust, fear and anger’; interpersonal relations deal with ‘mutual social connections among people that are mediated by interaction, including power, intimacy, roles, rights and obligations’ (Culpeper and Haugh 2014: 197).

When a speaker uses an attitude dative construction (ADC), she presents the hearer with two entities: first, the AD, including her evaluation of its referent; and second, the at-issue content of the ADC (also known as the main message or propositional content) and her evaluation of it. The two entities are interrelated. The speaker's evaluation of the AD referent involves managing (for example, maintaining, redefining) the identity of the referent or aspects of it that are relevant to the main message of her utterance within the context of interaction. The AD in its turn functions as a perspectivizer, a la Verhagen (2005, 2010), through which the main message is evaluated. By using an ADC, the speaker instructs the hearer to view the propositional content and her evaluation of it from the perspective she identifies via the use of the AD, and invites the hearer to agree with her evaluation. If the AD refers to the speaker or hearer, the evaluation of the AD referent may go beyond managing identities and into managing relationships.

These two functions of ADs are not surprising, given their attitudinal/evaluative nature. Thompson and Hunston (2000: 6) highlight three functions that speakers use evaluation for, two of which pertain to interpersonal pragmatic markers. These are:

• to express an opinion about certain entities or states of affairs, and in doing so reveal, confirm, and/or redefine personal and communal value and belief systems

• to establish, maintain, or negotiate identities (own and hearer’s) and interpersonal relationships.

The purpose of this chapter is to identify the main factors that are pertinent to the analysis of ADs within their social context and that can help us understand how these ADs are exploited in different types of interaction.