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Given and news: Evaluation in newspaper stories about national anniversaries

Abstract This article describes how national holiday coverage in newspapers attempts to align citizens by valorizing certain kinds of holiday activities and behaviors. In a study of evaluations used over a period of over 150 years in news stories about US Independence Day (the Fourth of July), it finds that chief loci of evaluation are the concepts of impressiveness, appropriateness, restraint, and particularly the emotion and enthusiasm of the audience. From its footing as an authority and general critic, the newspaper defines a standard of public behavior for anniversaries, built around attendance at and to the occasion, and display of affective capacity. In the context of national holidays, a certain amount of ‘flooding out’, as long as it does not physically endanger others, is considered supportive of the social structure rather than disruptive of it. The organizers of the events may also be evaluated from the newspaper’s footing as an independent critic of the government. The systems of evaluation are seen to be integrated with the system of news values, since they highlight information that is important and new. In addition, the results are compared with the APPRAISAL framework in systemic functional linguistics, and some difficulties in using the framework with this material are noted.