Explicity and implicity in the context of the category of evaluativeness (based on British sports discourse)

The article deals, firstly, with the phenomena of explicitness and implicitness with regard to the category of evaluativeness, secondly, with the theoretical distinction between «explicit evaluation» and «direct evaluation», «implicit evaluation» and «indirect evaluation». The problem of this distinction is relevant as these terms are often confused and used interchangeably. The research is based on commentaries made by British sports commentators during international figure skating competitions broadcast on British Eurosport Channel in 2005–2019. The research included two stages: 1) analysis of principal features of explicitness and implicitness based on examples of explicit and implicit evaluation in sports commentaries; 2) comparison of various types of evaluation – explicit, implicit, direct, indirect – for the purpose of eliminating any terminological ambiguity. According to the research, the notion of explicitness is characterized by clearly marked content and a high degree of meaning specificity. Besides, the meaning of an explicit statement can be deduced from the words composing the statement. The main feature of implicitness, on the contrary, is the occurrence of hidden, implied meanings. Thus, explicit evaluation is a type of evaluation in which evaluative meanings have formal expression and can be easily interpreted by the recipient of the text, whereas implicit evaluation is a type of evaluation meaning which may be comprehended with the help of the context and background information. When contrasting categories of implicitness and indirectness, it was shown that implicitness alongside with explicitness is an important feature of the language. Terms «direct» and «indirect», on the other hand, can be used as a characteristic of ways of transferring meanings. Therefore, explicit evaluation and direct evaluation are not the same terms and indirect evaluation is not always implicit. As a result, three groups of evaluation were formed: 1) explicit direct evaluation; 2) explicit indirect evaluation;3) implicit evaluation which is always expressed indirectly.