‘Dog-whistle politics’ is a phrase that has recently been coined to capture a form of covert evaluation. This is where political communication seemingly uses neutral meanings but where in fact a negative message is likely to be ‘heard’ by the target community (Manning 2004). This article explores the use of dog-whistle journalism in the British popular tabloidThe Sunby examining a news report published in it on May 1st 2004, the day that 10 new countries joined the European Union (EU). In order to systematically account for the positioning effect of this form of covert evaluation we suggest that it is useful to combine an APPRAISAL analysis of the May 1st text with an APPRAISAL analysis of a corpus of related news articles published in the run up to EU enlargement. As further substantiation, we interrogate the 45 million word corpus ofSunnews texts in the Bank of English. The combined method, we argue, provides an empirically-based, systematic account of how the May 1st report is likely to positionSunreaders to see the new EU citizens as a threat to Britain’s lifestyle and welfare system — despite the fact that there are no directly inscribed wordings stating such a viewpoint.

FINDING THE GLOBAL GROOVE:Theorising and analysing dynamic reader positioning using APPRAISAL, corpus, and a concordancer Within critical discourse analysis (CDA), there has been onBoinB interest in how texts position readers to view social and political events in a particular way. Traditionally, analysts have not examined how positioninB is built up dynamically as a reader proBresses through a text by tracing how earlier parts rif a text are likely to affect subsequent interpretation. This article shows how APPRAISAL tools (as developed within the systemic functional tradition) can be usifully employed within CDA to do this. Using a storyfromThe Sun newspaper website as illustration, we show how due to a cumulative Broove l!f' semantic patterning, the reader is dynamically positioned to interpret a seeminBly neutral statement at the end rif the story in a neBative way. We show how potential analyst 'over-interpretation' can be checked throuBh the use rif a concordancer. We also demonstrate how a specialised corpus can BO some way to BroundinB the APPRAISAL analysis in terms rif the context C!f the tarBet readership and the meaninBs they are routinely exposed to. This we arBue faCilitates an explanatory critique rif the wo/ in which a text is likely to be understood by its tarBet readership in relation to the socio-politicaleconomic context.

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In James Joyce's short story, 'Eveline', a young woman is thinking about a new life away from an unhappy existence which involves caring for a violent father. In the story, Eveline is to elope with Frank to Buenos Aires, but Eveline fails to join him on the night boat. This story has attracted much critical attention. In particular, commentators have picked up on the faint clues throughout that Eveline is not going to leave her home. It is as though Eveline's subconscious is communicating this while she is consciously reflecting on whether to elope with Frank. But how can such clues be identified in a systematic way whilst responding to the familiar charges made by Stanley Fish that stylistic analysis and interpretation is arbitrary and circular? In this article, I perform a corpus-informed stylistic analysis of 'Eveline' in order to reveal some of these subconscious intimations whilst reducing as much as possible arbitrariness and circularity in analysis and interpretation. To do so, I build on formal insights into 'Eveline' provided in Michael Stubbs's corpus-informed analysis by proceeding to a more functional exploration of the story.

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