The Lexis and Grammar of Explicit Evaluation in Academic Book Reviews, 1913 and 1993

Evaluative genres can be interested or disinterested. The difference, for example, between blurbs (Cacchiani, 2007; Gesuato, 2007a, b) and reviews (Motta-Roth, 1998;Gea-Valor, 2000;Hyland, 2000;Salager-Meyer et al., 2004, 2007; Romer, 2005, 2008) is that, although both evaluate a book, blurbs adopt an interested stance, clearly intending to promote the book, while reviews adopt a disinterested stance, intending to give the reader an honest, if personal, evaluation. Blurbs are written to maximize sales, whereas the recipients of reviews may justifiably expect them to give impartial advice. Of course an individual review text may have any sort of private purpose (Bhatia, 2004), but in the English-speaking academic world (Moreno and Suarez, 2008) the genre is read as disinterested, and a writer who is somehow involved with the book reviewed is expected to declare an interest.