Understanding the language of evaluation in examiners’ reports on doctoral theses

Despite their high stakes nature, examiners’ reports on doctoral theses are a relatively unexplored genre. Very little work has been done, further, on how evaluative language constructs meanings in the reports. To better understand the evaluative language used in the reports, this study analyses the examination criteria established by a university in New Zealand and draws on the appraisal framework to examine 142 examiners’ reports from that...