The phrase "attitudinal signals" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used in contexts discussing nonverbal communication, psychology, or social interactions where attitudes are conveyed through signals or cues.
Example: "In her presentation, she emphasized the importance of recognizing attitudinal signals in effective communication."
Alternatives: "behavioral cues" or "emotional indicators".
Strategies by which writers frame utterances in such a way as to overtly signal they hold a particular attitudinal stance, but nevertheless refrain from anything directly attitudinal are covered in Fig. 2 by items (5) through to (8).
While invocations of attitude typically involve some signalling or flagging of an attitudinal value in the co-textual environment (Martin & White 2005: 66, Hood & Martin 2007) categorisation under the attitude framework is challenging on account of the fact that meanings are inevitably social, and thus also rely on intertextual references and shared assumptions from outside the text.
My reasoning arises from the observation that there is a notable rhetorical difference between utterances where the writer relies on the reader to make an attitudinal inference (evoking) and utterances where the reader is given signals that an attitudinal value is being offered (provoking).
The proposed array includes discursive strategies2 which may not of themselves activate an attitudinal meaning but which may nevertheless play a role in conjunction with other signals of attitude.
Other means of flagging Attitude may be more straightforward and local as seen earlier, counter-expectational signals, negation, comparison and parallelism may be variously employed in the co-text to set up attitudinal readings.
The example is excerpted from a lengthy post to the discussion (originally 34 sentences), in which each orthographically signalled paragraph of the text makes separate arguments that are nevertheless interrelated, and thus many of the attitudinal meanings of the piece are dependent on their location in logogenetic text-time.
Be attitudinal towards winter.
These attitudinal proclamations can be overstated.
Sometimes our biobigotry is merely attitudinal.
They are largely attitudinal and ad hoc.
