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McCarthv. Michael 1 9 47 -Discourse analysis for language teachers. - (Cambridge language reaching library).1. Language. Discourse. AnalysisI. Title415

ISBN 0 521 35541 4 hard coversISBN 0 521 36746 8 paperback

l

i.t

CopyrightThi iaw allows a reader to make a single copy of part of a bookfor purposes of private study. It does not allow the copyin-g ofendie books or the making of multiple copies of extracts. Writtenpermission for any such cJpying must always be obtained from the

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LL

lI

j

I

1 What is disc:ottrse artalysis?

There are fearurcs which carr be ha'cilecr by trre sincrair_coulthardexchatrge structttre m<rclcl (the l..ru*rlr'inow, at the encl seems to be aypl._.] bounda,rynarker, an<J.l,i,l;;;ir.r'rt.,. u.fi,r,;;,;;ir,. r",...rrabe seer as a foll.w-up to the ,,,,.I.nr,, ,"nrri;, b;; ;ir;;; ,." nrrn,conrplications. fhe stujerrt ,hn .rk, "lror-,tanswer fru,n th" l.:ri.,:r, a'cr, if arrythirrg, iT*[tli:"ffi:::;i,i:i::

barnrarr comes i'arrcr t.risrrrpts tr',"..r,rti,,,ltv "r,r,.i.r-r,.,,i, li.1r. n.,,,,,three people arc rarki'g

"i ,r,r.". l;';i;;;'r;.r. a crassroonr, ma.v wourdco'sider that the lecturer ha. lost "rr

."lrrrrr ,".;;il;^j;;r..l,,lna *.,people were behaving .out of turn,.cornplicatio.s of rhis ki'cr have reci marry discourse arralysts to devotetheir a*entio' more t,, olrr".ui,rg fr.*"i;";,f" b"1.,"*

-rirJ"lJ* ,n.ycooperate in thc nranagemenr of dl.ourr.j."ir,". ,rrr,-' a "'.i*J", *ir*,building elaborate rnoJels

"r,rr,,.rr.".'irJ. r_.uinru,r 19g3: 2g6). observ_irr61 co'versationar behaviour crose ," i;;; b..;;-;h; pr...*niii"'n of asclrool crf analysts roughry gr,rup.J,"ra.. irr. r'tante etrtnonrrtioiotogirtr,th.Lrgh sociologists, rirttr.Jporigi;r; "t;; isvchnrogists rrave arso madesigrrifica't co.rributions. rrii. .1ip."".];l;; t";, fi;;L;,i,r, ,io,".*.r"r_

lv1lr' an Arnericalr phcrronrc'or1 a'd it has c.rcerrt.atcd o' areas ofl1::-.::l

suc.h as.how pairs of u*eri.ces ,.1.t.,tu. o'e a.or'er (the study ofddJacettcy pairs), how rur'_rakirrg is rnaragecl, lr,r; ;;;;;;;.i;;;;i "0.,r_ir61s and closi'gs .T-..11..r:d,'irr* ,"lri* e'rer a.d disappear fronrconversatiou, and hc

r1..-p1.,.,*;'.,,.,,i-,.'1'"1-til.'r,ili:: j;lij'l,?tj;,'".,,,',: j,tjlf',jllobservirg how peorrle.orient t<-r,rr. a.'^"a, of the speech event. we shalllook rrrore rlosrllv ar this kirrcr <,r;;;;;;nar.arrarysis i' chapter 5, butthc strrde'r -lcctrirc,- ,tr,. .**^.,-;b;;;;;;,,,.,1ifi.. :;,;,;';'i,,.' *ry, i,,wlrich data can be clealt with.

Because t'e lecturer and'is.group are not i'tlre crassro.rn, studenrs, aswell as le*urer, feel free tc, raiie new topics. S1 asks .t",rf ,t. ,i"ii.lub,bLrt he is hesitant' ancl stutters sonrewhat in rris cluesti'n; such hesitancy is asignifica.nt detail' a.d is a typicar rigtt"t uia.r.rence. The re*urer feers freeto overlap with his rnr*.. befoie the rr;l;;;;l;.r"n,rii.i'r0".'ir.,"r.Tu.r-taki.g rights are excrcised, with p.r;,r.-i"ki,rg rurns at tark w^hen theyfeel they iave the rigrrt t. ,"y .onr.t.,img. For example, the ba'nanco'siders his right to continue ,ir. pu..fr^riig rransactio' to override thegroup's conversariou, and the three stu.rerrtr'"lr f..i ;il, L""1" .o"rrright to conrme,t on the'lectur.r'. ,.,',r.r-k'riour rtr" price of the drinks.However, we nright arso orrserve ,tr.r rtr. ,.rtls alr directeJ^iir.l.lr"..r,rather rhan rtuJ.,'t to stutrent. r*irir l;;;;rr. rhe re*urer is seen as'dominant speaker', a rrangover from the .irrr.oom, whicrr the group haveonly recently left? It is ro a.swer su.h questio,rs that.;i;;;;;;ffillogir*exami'e large amounts of data tu obr.ru. ..gul., p";r;;;;';;';iri"i,"r.that mighr i'dicate adhere'ce a

""J..iyiug"irorn.,, or .rures' of conver-

24

1.8 Written discourse

,sation. In Chapter 5 we shall look at some of their findings concerning thejssues our extract has raised, as well as others of a similar type. This is notto say drat such findings must automatically have any implications for

i. language teaching, but some of them rnay.

1.8 Written discourse

"With written texts, sorne of the problems associated with spoken tran-scripts are absent: we do not have to contend with people all speaking atonce, the writer has usually had time to think about what to say and how tosay it, arrd the sentences are usually well formed in a way that the urterancesof natural, spontaneous talk are not. But tl.re overall questions remain the

I same: wlrat norrns or rules do people adhere to when creating written texts?': Are texts structured according to recurring principles, is there a hierarchy

of units comparable to acts, moves and exchanges, and are there conven-tional ways of opening and closing texts? As with spoken discourse, if wedo find such regularities, rnd if they can be shown as elemenrs that havedifferent rcalisations in different languages, or that they may presenrproblems for leamers in other ways, then the insights of written discourseanalysis might be applicable, in specifiable ways, to languag'e teaching.

In Chapter 2, we shall consider some grammatical regularities observablein well-formcd written texts, and how the structuring of sentences hasimplications for units such as paragraphs, and for the progression of wholetexts. 'We shall also look at how the grammar of English offers a limited setof options for creating surface links between the clauses and sentences of a

text, otlrcrwise known as cohesion. Basically, most texts display links fronrsentence to sentence in terms of grammatical features such as pronominali-sation, ellipsis (the omission of otherwise expected elements because theyare retrievable from the previous text or context) and conjunction ofvarious kinds (see Halliday and Hasan 1976).The resources available forgrammatical cohesion can be listed finitely and compared across languagesfor translatability and distribution in real texts. Texts displaying suchcohesive features are easy to find, such as this one on telephones:

(1.23) lf you'd like to give someone a phone for Christmas, there are plentyto choosc from.Wbicheueryou go for, if ll's to be used on the BT

, [British Telecorn] network, make sure lf's approved * look for thelabel with a green circle to confirm lbis. Phones labelled with a redtriangle ere prohibitcd.

(Wlicli Decenrber 1989: 599)

The italicised items are ali interpretable in relation to items in previoussentences. Plenty is assumed to mean 'plenty of phones'; yoll in the first andsecond senteuce are interpreted as the same 'you'1 whicheuer is interpreted

25

1 \\hat is discourse analysis?

as'whichevcr rclcphone'; it is.rrcrerstor,,cr as trre tercprro'e, a'd trtisas.thefact that it is.ap.proved'. These are features ,,i gr",rr,r"ti.ar co'esio', butthere are fexical clrrcs too: go, [,,1 ,k. a.synorrynr of cltctose, arrd there islexical reperition o( phone, aircl of lalrcl. -")

Reoder octivify 6 rOPick out the cohesive iterns. between crauses arcr serrtences in this rextextract in the sarne tvay as was done for the telephone **r,

-"

(1.24) British r'en are a pr*ry.traditi.'ar bqnc', wrrerr ir c.nres to shaving;two out of threc use a blacle ",.,d

,.,"1,, rather than ,,'' "i;;.;i;;;".,Which? readers are r.nore co'ti'e'ral irr their ,".r.r, "rn,,nJ'nrf f ,fy0u use an erectric shaver, ab.ut the sal'e pfoportrorr as irr the rest oft u rope.

For wornen, s.having is by far the nrost popular nrethod ofremovirg body_'air. g5 per ce'r <>f tl.re W'hich? *unr",l ,"nJ"r, *t,,,rcurovcd bocly hair told us that they used a shaver.(W/rlrlri Deccnrbcr I 9g9; 6 l3)

N.ticc that, whe' talkirg of corrcsion irr the tcrcpho'e text, we spoke .ftnterpretirrg itenrs a'd understa'dirg theln. r trrs rs 'nportant because theco'esive itenrs are crues.r sig'als rito r',o* rhe texr,i.,;;l; L.";;i, r1.,.,are not abso.-rtes. The. pro'tun it onry gives us the inforr'atio' that a

'o'-hunran entity is beirig referred to; ii,r-o.. ,rot necessariry teil us whichorre. l, coLrld pote'tially have r"f.rr..i ro Cltr.istntas i,r,ti.;i;;;;i.*r, Uu,that would have produced a'i'coherenrr.n.iing ofthe text. so cohesron iso.ly a guide ro coherence, ancl cohererr.. ir runrJtrri,rg .;^;;J;,, ,rr. L"a*ir the act of reading the rext. c.herence i, ,1.,. r..ii,rg-rrr"i "'r*i i""g,together, that it makes serrse, a'cr is_ not ;'ust a ju'rble of ,.nt.n.., 1r..Ne.uba.uer 1983:7). The se'te'ces'crare rrves p'tatocs. srre was born i'Irelandj are cohcsive (crarershe), but are

"nly .oh.r.,r;'ti ;;; Iir.rayshares the srcreorype ethnic associ"ti,r,r b1t*..r being t.irrr""nd..iouingpotatoes' or rs prepared to assume a cause--effect relatiJnship u.t*..n tt .two sentences' so cohesion is o'ry part of coherence in reading and writing,and incleed i' spoke. language too, for trre sa're processes operate there.

1.9 Text and interpretation

Markers of various kinds, i.e- the linguistic signals of sernanric and dis-course functions (e.g. in Engrish the -ed"on th. uJ.b i,,"r;;i.;;;iprrii.rrr,are very much concern.ed with the surface

'f the text. cohesive markers are

26

1.9 Text and interDretation

.i'no exception: they create links across seutc.ce boundaries and pair andi'chain together itcms that are related (..g.by referrilrg to the same entity).i' But readi'g a text is far more complex than that: we have to interpret thei ties and nrake se'se of thern. Making sense of a text is arr act of interltreta-

tion thar clcperrcls as nruch on what we as re aders bring to a tcxt as what theauthor puts into it. Interpretation can be seen as a set of procedure-. and theapproach to the arralysis of texts that emphasises the mental activitiesinvolvecl in intcrpretation can be broadly called ltrocedural. proceduralapproaches ernphasise the role of the reader in actively building the worldof the text, based on his/her experience of the world and how states andevents are characteristically manifested in it. The re ader has to activate suchknowledge, make inferences a,d consrantly assess his/her interpretation irlthe light of the situation and the aims and goals of the texr as the reader

.- perceives thern. The work of De Beaugrande and Dressler (1981) is centralj to this approach. If we take a rexr which is cohesive i' rhe sense described

above, we can see that a lot more mental work has to go ou for the reader tomake it coherent:

(1.25) 'Ihe parents of a seven-year-old Australian boyweke to find a giant python crushing and tryingto swallow hirn

The incident occurred in Cairns, Queenslandand the boy's mother, Mrs Kathy Dryden said:'lt was like a horror movie. It was a hot nightand Bartholonrew was lying undcr a mosquito

. net. He suddenly started screaming.'We rushed to the bedroom to find a huse

snake trying to strflnglc him. It was coiletlaround his arms and neck and was going downhis body.'

Mrs Dryden and her husband, Peter, tried tostab the creature with knives but the python bitthe boy several times before escaping.

(front'l'he Birmingham I'ost,'12 March 1987, p. 10)

This text requires us to activate our knowledge of pythons as dangerouscreatures which rnay threatcn human life, which strangle their prey and towhose presence oue rnust react with a certain urgency. More than this wemake the cognitive link between 'a hor night' and the time of the event (thisis implicit ratl.rer than explicit in the texr). The boy's screaming must. betaken tn be a consequence of the python attacking him (rather than, say,prior to the arrival of the pyrh<in). The 'creature' must be taken to be thepython rather than the boy (which 'crearure' could well refer ro in anothertext), since parents do not normally stab their children in order ro save dreirlives. All this is what the reader must bring ro any texr. What we are doingin making these cognitive links in the text is going further than just notingthe semantic links between cohesive items (e.g. credture: general super-ordinate, slafrs : genus/superordinate ,ltython = species/hyponyrn); we a re

27

1 What ii discourse ahalysis?

creating coherence (see De Beaugrancle aricl Dressrer r9g1: G-r2,31-47). Thevarious procedures that rnecriat"e berween cohesion a'd coherence wiil bererrrrrredtoingreaterdetair inse*iorrs 6..4J,asthir"..",rft.*-i a-iarysisisobviously crucial in a'y cliscot,,..-b.J approach to reading a'd writi'g.A'othcr level of irrerprrerariorr whicrr wc arc irvorvecr i,,;;; process' texts is tlrat of recognisil4;, / extudr pdrturr,r. c".r"in patrerls irr text reoccurtir.e and tirne asailr ,,rd't.come i".piy]tgr"i.ed as part of our curturark'owledge. These patterns are manife.r.a i,, regurarry occurri'g functionalretationsh ips betwien ?l:i "t,t .,.ri. i',";; ;?;';y; oi.llo'.lr"r.r,sentences or groups of setttences; we shall refer to them as textual segnrct tsto avoid confusion with gr',r."ti."t

"i.,rr.,,;;;J ;il# "r".t"rion,within clauses and sentences. A segment rnay sornetimes be a crause,sometimes a senre'ce,.somerimes a w'Lole paragraph; *lrrt i, l.Jorrrn, i,that segments can be isolatecl ,ri,,g

" ;, .li r"E.iJ ;;;;;;;';,lii. ,., .rfunctio'al relations rhat ca. o..i. Lr.-r*"..r .rlly rwo bits of text. An

:l-1ll-'plr of scg're'rs coi.cicriug *irh s",rtcnces are rhese rwo senre'cestrom a report oll a photographic exhibition:

(1'26) Thc strcss is on docu'rertary ancr rightry so. Arty prrotographs are abore.

('f he Guudian,2T October l98g: 24)

' The i'terpretatior that_ makes nlost scrse is tlrar the relatio'srrip betwee'tlre seco'cl se'rence and rhe first is trrar tl. r".ona provides a re(tsonfor the6rst. The two segl.re'ts are thereforetr-r-^"pir)r.,orretrct1-reasorxrelatio.shipwith o'e another. An exanrple of . ,"g,;; co'srsring of more r'an oneserrence can be seen in exrracr (t.27),i"h"." th.,.1;;l;,;il;li,*J.n,t.first segnre't (se'rence r).ancr the r..;trJ;;;;re'r (se'rences 2-5) is one ofltb.enomenor-exan.4tle; all of serte'.-es;:;i^". ,o b. .."J

", p"., .f rf,.act of exemplification for the text to make serrse.

(1.27) Naturally, the more.pe.ple pay for their 'rouses,

rhe more rhey wantro rename their neighbourhoods. Suppose y<r_u,ve iust .ough.i up{2s0,000 for an unspect".ula, h.rur. u,;;; f;;;;. ;i';o,i;;:: : ""area with loads of cachet. The estare ayo u, ve pa i d a H igh ga,e p,i... i-',.;., ;i,'illl ::

y.i';:i [*','iHn',,'that it's in Crouch Errd.

- )

(Simon Hoggart, The ()bseruer Mdgdzitrc, 1l March 1990: 5)

The interpretation of rerations between textuar segments is a cognitive acron r^e parr of ttre reader:If o,:licl,, b. ,,;;;.;.{i; |l';riil;1?;l',11,,, o,the text as it unfolds, such as (for extracr't.zq - the stress is o, documen_tary; why?' L.r this sense, reading dre texr is rike a dialog". *irir'ri. ""rrr".,and the processing of two segments courcr be seen as anarogous to thecrearion of an exchanee in spoken discourse. \flh;;;;i;iil[*"i'*i,r.,

the author is a reality o"r an analyticar construct ls not a question that can beeasily answered here, but a model w6ich s,--qests this kird of interaction

28

1.9 Text and interpretation

reader and text or author might be able to capture difficultiess experience in text processing and offer ways of attacking them.

;i'The approach to text analysis that ernphasises the inrerprerive actsinvolved in relating textual segments one to rhe other through relationshipssuch as phenonencsrx-redsorx, cduse-consequertce, instrument-achieuenrentand suclrlike is a clause-relational approach, and is best exemplified in the

of rrVirrter (1977, 1978) and l{oey (1983). The lthenontenon-reasorT:elation which united the two sentences of extract (1.25), along withiiulse-consequence and instrument-achieuement, can be brought unler the

neral heading of logical sequence relations. When segments of a texr arepared <rr contrasted with one another, then we may talk of matching

Ielations, wlrich are also extremely common. Logical sequencing andmatching are the two basic categories <lf the clause-relational approach.

is view of text is dynarnic; it is not just corrcerned with labelling what aretimes called the illocutiondry acts (a bit like speech acts) which

individual clauses, sentences and paragraphs perform in a text, but isrred with the relationships the textual segmenrs ellrer inro with one

l ,ir It would of course be wrong to suggest that all texts are like the twosenrences fronr the photo exhibition text ancl tl-rat the whole operation ofreading was some sort of perverse guessing-game where authors made lifedifficult for readers. Texts often contain strong clues or signals as to how

li:we should inte rpret thC relations between segments; these are not absolutelydeterministic, but are sultporting euidence to the cognitive activity ofdeducing the relations. For example, we may find in a text a senrence suchas: 'Feeling ill, he went home', and here we would note that the sub-

rl ordination of one element to another by the grarnmatical choice of joinirrg ai main clause to a subordinate one is a characteristic device of cause-i' consequeuce relations; it is a signal of the Iikely relation, which would have

to be reinterpreted if the sentence were 'Going home, he felt ill'. Equally, anauthor might help us with a con junction 'Because he felt ill, he went home',

ii or else use items of general vocabulary to signal the same relation:'Thereason he went ho,me was that he was feeling ill'. Other rypes of signals

:* include repetition and syntactic parallelism (using the same syntax in twoor more different clauses to draw attention to a comoarison or contrast. for

,r, example). ln the sentence 'The politicians were in a huff, the industrialistswere in a rage, the workers were in the mood for a fight', the parallelism of

;; the 'subject * be * prepositional phrase' underlines the comparison.,' between the three groups of people. The clause-relational approach takes

all this evidence into account in its analyses.

29

1 What is discourse analysis?

Reoderoctivity 7 *4Here are sorne extracts fronr_rear tcxts. Decicrc what ki'cr of reratio. existsbetween segnlerrs separared t; ; ,l;rii'i;'1,,

"".h ..r", ;;rJ.;;;r.- "n,supporting evidence such as syitactic p..ril.lirur.

i. The BBC has put off a.rew corporate atlvertisirrg carrrpaign due to beaired this m.rrtlr; ext"i'g trr. ui.t,,", arrcr varues of both televisicrnand radio. / A BBC spuk"inr"n .l.ll."t.iy suggests that this may norbe tlre rno.st appropriate tirre to be teiling trre autlic'ce howwonderful tlre Bceb is.

(The ()bscruer, l5 Novcrr:bcr 19g6:,12)

2' In llritarr' the porver 'f t'e u'io's adcrer{ arr cxrra dreacr, / whichr'acle llri tish politics a. special .^r",, .;;-',rr". c",,ii n",, r,. il;;:il-hatcher was regarded

^. ,.r,r,"thi,rg uf'" r"u,,."t,rry expcrinrerrt.rar'er like a carrary

'ur dow'

" ,rri,,".lri.,"fr . ;;; ;;i, ;iil.r;;.,.,(tltr.srttrtl,ry fintcs Mj,tgrzirrc, jU l)r.ccrrr[cr ltt79: 14)

. " " "&'

1.10 Larger patterns in text

The clause-relatio.ar .approach to text also co'cerns itserf witrr largerpa*er's whicrr resularly occur in rexrs. lf w. .onsider a simple text like thefollowing, which is cor.rco*ed for the ;.k; ;;lii;;;;li:';.:1,'r, ,..

"lil:::: ^.:l:lci',q whic' is found i' tru'drecls .f texts i,r;;;;

"r.i.,y .rsuDlect areas arrd culltexts:

(1'28) lMosr peopre like to take a carnera witrr them when they travelabroad. But,all airports nowadays have X-ray security screening andX ravs can damage fihn. one soiution ,u ,hitp.out.ni i, ,.-#lr,.r.a specially designed,lead_lined pouch. Th.r. ;.;;;;aJ:;.prorect film from all but the strongest X rays.

The first sentence presents us with a situationand the second se'tence withsome sort of complication- or problem. The third ,.";;;;;;;;riU., ":i^t!1::t

to rheproblem and the hn.l ,.,.,t.n.| gives a por'r;rr-ri)iiio, ,ttlle response' such a sequence of rerations"torrt'^"'j)'otir*lr"t"r,r"pattern' and probrem*sorution patterns aro extremery common in texts.Hoey (1983) a'alyses .uch t.*ts. i" ;.;;^;;ril, as well as some orhercommon rexr parre-rs' some of which'we shalr reiurn ;1" ci.pi.. e.These la.rger parrerns which may rr" r"n"J ln texrs (and indeed whichmay constitute the whole text) aie the obyects.,f i";;;;;;;i"""Uu rr,.30

1.10 Larger patterns in textI

reader, just as the sn.raller clause-relation were, and in the same way, areof.rcn signallcd by the sarne sorts of grarnmatical and lexical devices such assubordination ancl para[lelisrn. In our coucoctccl tcxt, for instance, we havca conl'urrction (but) indicating an aduersatize relarion, backward lelicalreference to 'this problenr' (darnage caused lry X rays) and a forwarclreference to thc solution (lead-lined pouches). Iloth readers and writersneed to be aware of these signalling devices and to be able to use rhe rn wheunecessary to process textual relations that are nor imntediately obvious arrdto compose text that assists the reader in the act of interpretation. Thelarger patterns such as the problerrr-solution pattern are culturallyingrained, but they are often realised in a sequence of textual segmenrswhich is uot so straightforward as our concocted rexr suggesrs. Thesequence situation-froblem-response-evaluation may be varied, but wedo normally expect all rhe elen\en;s to be present in a well-formed texr;where the sequelrce is varied, signalling plays arr even more important partin signposting the text, that is, showilrg the reacle r a way round it.

Reoder octivity B r.O

Identify the elements of the problern-solution pattenl in these extracts fromadvertisernents and note any signalling devices.

1. DAMPWAtUi, F[A](II{G PAII{T,PEEII]{G WAIIPAPER, MUSTY SMETLS

;iifl Rising DampRising damp, if not treated effectively could in time cause extensive damage to the

structure of your home, ruin decoration and furniture. Damp also causes repugnantmould and mildewy smells and could be a hazard to health.

Doulton Wallguard guaranteeto cure rising damp

Doulton, the internationalspecialists in ceramic technology have

developed a unique ceramic tubethat when installed in walls drawsmoisture out and ensures it stays

out for good. This tried and testedprocess requires no structural work

and is usually installed in just one day.

>>

.1 I

Guaranteed for 30 Years

\ilhat is discottrse analysis?

2. In enginrering jargin rhere is aphenomenon known as N.V,H. Itstands for noise, vibration and harshness.

Yorr carr easily tcll ltow barlly yorrrcar sullcrs litrrr N.V.ll. by tlrc volurrrcat which you have to play yorrr radioand thc way rhat. you fecl a{icr a lorrgjourney. It's very tiring.

-I'he rudirrrentary crrrc is to fill thc

. car with sound dearlcnirrg rrratcrial.Everybody tloes tllis to solne exrent,cven Ford.

But we believc tlrat preverrtion isbetter th:\rr cure. Aftcr all, with thetechnology that we have at our disposal,

::ilil ;lilicientinc waYs or'

At t Irc lror<l rlesigrr arrrl<lcvclopnrclrtccntl c wc havc ;r r<xrrn wlriclr is krrolvrras tlrc arrcclroic cltarrrlter. It's here, orrthe rolling road, that our acousticscngincers explore rrew techniques insound pt oofilrg.

-fhe rcsult is a car tlrat rrever fcclsas i['it's tryirrg. Evcn at Arrtobalur speccls,lvith the srrrrxrth V6 errgine ancl allrourrtl indcpentlcirt suspension, tlrcperforrrrance is ef lirrtless.

(f ront The Sttnday Timcs Mtgazine, -10 l)ccenrbc r 1979, pp. 42,49)

1.11 Conclusion'We

have seen in this chapter that ciiscourse analysis is a vast sutriect areawithin linguistics, enconlpassing as ir does the ."+;, "i ,r"i..,, ,,rawritten la'guage over and above conce.rs sucrr ,, ,1r;-r;;;i;i'of tr.,.clause or senre.ce. I' this brief introdu*ion wc hr". l;;k;.r ,ilu-rr"ro,rr"

:^1f ",f erelysirg spcech.arrd writirrg ard iusr ,u,,,. "rf.or'oi,hrr.partlcr.lrar *lodels we heve choserr to highlight. Tlrere is of course a lot rnorero rooK at. tor example, we have trot corrsitlered tlrc hig question ofdiscourse i' its social s+qing. In subseclue't chapters we sharr return ro thisand menrion the Hallidayan rnoder of language as sociar action (seeHalliday 1978), looki'g at types of rneani'g i,riiriourr. "nJ

,iJ. ..r",i""-snrp wrrn tre uotron of register, the li.guistic features of the text that reflectthe social conrexr in whicfi it is producJcr. rt,i, rna further ai*"rri"n or rrr.approaches ourlined here will fornr the background ro a reas;;;.iri

"r rr,.

f-tt':t "j,language teaching as trrey are cJnve'tionaily understood: the

teueLs or Ianguage description (gramrnar, lexis and plronology) and the

:f]l/r,:f.1""*uase usc (reading, *iiti,,g, lisieni'g

"na ,p.rt iqg-llifr*. *iffalso De suggestlons concerning teaching n-raterials a'd proceduies whencverit seems that discourse analysis ha, soi.,. .iirect bearirig;;;d;;;;;;.r.

JZ

r l.LL Concltrsion

Further reading

Coulthard (19ti5) is an indispcnsablc introduction to discourse arralysis, as is Stubtrs(1983).

Brown and Yule (1983) is a thorough and detailed survey, but is harder goingbecause of its less obvious structure.

Van Dijk's (198.5) collcctiorr of papcrs covcrs a vast rangc of arc;rs within discourseanalysis; the introcluction scrs tlre sccne, arrd the plpcrs carl be tlippcd irrtoaccording to arca of intcrest.

Levinson (1983), although concerned with the broader field of'pragmatics', pro-vides a balanced criticisnr ofthe British, exchange-srructure school as against theAmerican convcrsation analysis.

G. Cook (1989) is x nrore recent book at an introductory level.For the original Birmingharl discourse n.rodel, Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) is still

unsurpassed, thotrgh extensiorrs and rnodifications as described i1 C<lulthardand Morrtgomery (1981) and Sinilair and Brazil (1982) should also be consulted.

Further extensiorrs and moclifications are to be found in Carter and Burton (1982),Francis and Hunstorr (1987), and, specificaiiy orr the follow-up move, Hewrngs(987\.

More introductory reading on acts and communicative functions, as well as onspeech ancl writing may be found in Riley (1985).

Schenkein (1978) is a serninal collection of American corrversarional analysis.On written text, I{alliday ancl l-lasan (1975) is esserrtial for the notion of cohesiol,

De Beaugrarrde arrd Drcssler (1981), though difficult in placcs, expands on theprocedural approach, while Winrer (1,977 and 1978) and Iloey (1983) are the bestworks for the clause-relational rnodel.

Hewings and McCarthy (1988) offer a summary of the clause-relational approachwith s6rme pedagogical applications.

Halliday (1978) contains much discussion on language in its social setting.Widdowson (1979),De Beaugrande (1980), Van Diik (1980), Neubauer (1983) and

Tannen (1984) are all useful soLrrces on cohesion/coherence.Reddick (1986) argues for the importance of personal interpretation in the analysis

of text structure.

-t.t

2 Discourse analysis and granunar

second sentence. \ff/here referenrs are withhercr in this way, we can tark ofcatapltoric referencr. r-his is a crassic ,r"ui.. fu. .t,g"gilrg ,rr.'r."d..,,atrentiou; refercnts ca' be withhelcl for q.ite long srretches of text.I-OOKING IJACKWN IID: ANA PHO ITIC IT ETII IT I]NCI]Exercises which i'volve r'oking back i' rexrs ro firrcr the refere'r of, forexal'plc, a Irro,o'., havc_l'rrg'i-,"",., ..rr.,r,.,r,r'.ia first

",ra .".u,rJ"i",,gu"g.teaching a.d testirrg. Usualry iie.rs suc-rr

^r"hlrrrrr, <.tr thetttca, be decodedwithout major difficulty; oiher items such as i, arcl rlr;r,rr"y-d.,r,o..

troublesome because of their abirity to refer to longer stretches of text a'dcliffuse prt-rposiriorrs rror rrecessnriti 1.,"r.1,1,,..."b1.'by .;;;;;r.., i""r",i.,,from the text' problenrs ca' arso aiir. *h.r. lower-rever lea.rers are soengaged in decoding the individ.ar "rr.r"".., crause or ,.'ri.,r.. irr", ,rr.y

f ose sight of the links back to earrier .r*r. nr; evicre'ce of locarcrifficurtieshirrdering global proc.essing at given points in the unfolli;;;;r;rr.r.should rror :rutonratically be'read'"r i'trir"nr a,rn."iii*'r"iil';:;;;,r,

",the discourse level. onlyif inrervenrior.r ar tr.," ro.al rever fails ti s;i;;]".g..processirg proble'rs mig.ht we bcgin to co'sider interve'tio' i' the forrn oftraini.g'discourse skills'to build-up rhe sort of p.rgnr"ti.;;;;;;;;'", ,.how refere'ces are decoded, which murt, .fr., ail, be the basis of effective'reading/liste'ing'in the.rearner's tirrr lrngu"g. too. Nonetheless, trrere wiilalwavs be cases where first ra'Fuage rkiil^i .r..lr.ki"g r; ,t;;l;;.i"p.a, ,"ateachers r.ay find thenrselves ii.uLg to irrrervene ttirnake up r,,iirno.r-conrings. That, 'however, is a prohienr area beyo'd ttr. puiui.* of thi,book.

Grammar teaclrers have lo'g been arvare 'f recurrirg interference factorswith pronouns and reference,iLrch as the Japanese teridency to.onrr'r. rr"and she, the Spanish tende,cy ro confuse tii, ar.rd yorrr, urJ'Ju"", ,rra ilr.*is rot much discourse analysts. can say to .rr. i.,or.'.u.;;;;;;;.r.

lvhil 9an be (and often is not) directly i"rght abour a sysrem such as that ofEnglish rs the different ways of refeiri'g"to tn. air.o'urr. ilii ;; "r. oritems such as it, this and trtat, which- clo 'ot seem to translate in aone-to-one way to other languages, even where these ,.. .lor.ll fogn"r.(cf. cerma', Fre'ch, sparrish). sonre e x:rrnples'r lrow ref ere'ce iterns referto segmenrs of discourse foilow in (2.3-5); the 6rst i. o". gi"." uyHalliday and Hasan (1976: 52):

(2.3) It rained day and night for two weeks. The basernent flooded andeverything was under water. It spoilt all our calcularions.

Here l, seems to 'rea.

'the events of two weeks,, or ,trre fact that it rainedand flooded', thar is, the situatio. ",

. *hol. .ar'rr.. ,r-,"" r"y "". ,p..in.aentity in that situation.

3537

2.2 Grdmmatical cohesion and textualitt

Reoderoctivity 1 r'O'What

docs i/ rcfcr to in these short extracts: a noun phrasc in thc text, or a

situation ?

l. A pionccring 'school-based rnanagement' progranr in Miarni-DadeCounty's 260 schools has also put some budget, salary and personneldccisiorrs in the hands of local councils, composed largely of teachers.'ll's a recognitiorr that our voices and input are inrportant,' says

iunior highschool teacher Ann Colman.

(Newsu,ee k, 17 October i988; 23)

2. Like thc iclea of deterring brrrglars with a big, ferocious hound * butcarr't starrd dogs? For around {45 you can buy an automatic dogbarking unit - Guard God, or the Bostorr Btrlldog, both available byrnail order from catalogues like the ones you're sent with credit cardstatenrcnts. You plug it in near the fror.rt door and its built-innricrophone detects sharp noises.

(WDirDi Octobcr 1988: 485)

Matters beconre rnore conrplicated when wc look at tbis and that indiscou rse:

t) 4\ You may prefer to vent your tumble dryer pernranently through a

non-opening window. Tbis isn't quite as neat, since tlre flexible hoseremains visible, but if does save knocking a hole in the wall.

(Which? October 1988: 502)

Only a hanclful of satellite orbits are known to be changing. Suchchanges are usually subtle and can be detected only by long-termolrservations. One exception is the orbit of Neptune's large moonTriton, which is shrinking quite rapidly, That is because it circlesNeptuue in the direction opposite to the planet's revolution,gerrerating strong gravitational friction.

(2.5)

(Netu Scientist,23 January 1985: 33)

These are written examples, but speech abounds in the same choices of i/,this and lbat. Surprisingly, conventional grammars do not give satisfactorydescriptiotrs of such usage (e.g. see Quirk et al. 1985:858). Discourseanalysts have touched upon the area (see Thavenius 198! 167-9), and theinsights of different analysts have a certain amount in common.

It is helpful, for a start, to return to the notion of discourse segments as

functional units, rather than concentrating on sentences (or turns in

2 Discourse analysis and grammar

speeph), a'd to see rhe writer/speaker as faced with a nr-rrnber of straregrcchoices as t. how t., ,.late.seg,nerts to o,r. ,.nurtr". .,rJ I;;-;r''..r.n,t'em to rhe receiver' A sinrpre Jrnn,pr" " iira"'r trctsii"";;r:*J# i".how people reacted when asked to iescribe tlr.,. np..tn-,erts. srre observedthat there. were sig'ificant differe.ces in the iirtributio' of lr a'd that inpeople's descriptio's. oue room or area *", "l*.y,, .*..,rr'.?"."r.rattentior', i.e. was the c'tity being tarked abour, ,lr"iolrir-"i).r'p.irr."l".

mome't; pronouri'al refere'ces to the focus of atte'tio' w.re al,nosralways made wirh rr, lvrrile refcrences ,..,rr, ,iiff"r.ut focuses of attenrionused tbat:

(2.6)

(2.7)

Ancl.the livirrg roor, was a very sr':rll ro.nr with tw. winclows thatwouldn't operr and.things rike thar. A'cr it rooked'ice. L had at]ea[rttful brtck well_

You entered into a tiny littlc lrallway and the kirchen was off that.Extract (2.6) is all within ore focus of arte'rio. (the rivirg roonr), while(2'7) refers across fro'r one focus (the kitchen) ro anorher (the halrway).This is nor ro say Linde's con.rusions sorve the *rr"i. .l'irr.?..,ru.r.reterence problem; it is sirnply to. make the point ,t., ..'1 u,r"n.*...agranrrnarical questions ca' be resolved ar the iir.ourr. l.u.l,

"nJ inoi nru.tgood discourse analysis recog'ises the ri'ks berwee' .liscourse o.e"nlrrionard granrmatical choice. As such, discourse-lev"l inu.rtigrii-.,r'".."orr.n

invaluable readi'g for teachers'l*ki;;" f".Iarswers to grammaticarproblerns.

An example of an err.r i. discourse reference frorn a 'o'-rative speaker

mav help us ro resolve the stiil u'concruded irru. oi;1,'irr ii)ili'iii,.rn,writer is givirrg a chapter-by-chaprer sunrmary of his "'i"..liiy

jirr..-tation, starting with the introducti-on:

(2'8) Introduction: It traces the dcvelopnrcrrts i' crialcctorogy in rece'tyea rs.

(Author's data 1989)

English here denrands ,Tbis rraces ...' or rhe full noun phrase Thelntroduction repeated. Neitrrer it nor that wilrdo. Ir;;.;;;i;riii^.." ""ry|. :::-O,li.l.n entity lras already beerr marked r. th. f*u, of .ii.nrion,usua'y Dy uslng a derctic word (such as a, the, or nxy, or thisltbat),so thatversions such as (2.9*11) are acceprable:

(2.9) The introducion is lengthy: ir covers 56 pages.

(2.10) This introduction is fine. It is brief arrcl precrse.

(2.11) My introduction was too short. It had to be rewritten.'we can now conclude that it can'ot be used to refer back to a, eutity u'lessit is already the focus of attenrion, but this,

", i,r rh. .o..*i.J'r.iri"" "r

38

2.2 Glammatical cc>besiott and textuality

(2.8), can nrake an entity into the focus of attention and create new fociof attention as the discourse progresses. That, as in Linde's explanation,can be used to refer across foci of amention, and, as is suggested by (2.5),can push a propositiou our of central focus and marginalise it in someway.

The discussion of this one questiorr of discourse reference has beenlengthy i' order to exernplify the type of apprclach discourse analysrs taketo grarlmar, in that they look for patterned recurrences across differentdata and try to rclate rlre separate levels of analysis in a meaningful way.Individual grarnrnatical choices are seen as significant in the staging andorganisation of rhe discourse as a whole, and not jusr as local problems tobe resolved within the bou'ds of the capital letter and the full stop. And thesame approach is valid not only for questions of reference, as we shall seewhen we look at worcl order and tenSe and aspect choices,

Reoderoctivity 2 t4 ,

collect sorne examples of lf, this and that used as discourse reference itemsafter the fashion of the examples discussed in this secion (any English-language r)ewspaper should provide plenty of data). Do they fit the generalconclusion drawn above as to their usage in discourse? lf not, try ro'rewrite' the rule.

LOOKING OU'TVARD: EXOPHORIC REFERENCE'We have mentioned the possibility of referring 'ourward' from texts toidentify dre referents of reference items when backward or anaphoricreference does not supply the necessary information. Outward, oi .*o-phoric reference often directs us to the immediate context, as whensomeorre says'leave it on the table please'about a parcel you have for them.Sometimes, the referent is not in the immediate context but is assumed bythe speaker/writer to be part of a shared world, either in terms of know-ledge or experience. In English the determiners often act in this way:

(2.12) The gouernment Are to blame for unemployment.

(2.13) She was using one of those strirnmers to get rid of the weeds.

It would be odd if someone replied to (2.12) with the question 'Whichgovernment?'. It is assumed by the speaker that the hearer will know whichone, usually 'our goverrrment' or 'that of the country we are in I are talkingabout'. The same sort of exophoric reference is seen in phrases such as lleQueen, the Polte, the army, and in sentences such as '\i7e always take the

2 Discourse analysis and gratnnur

car sirrce wc carr jusr put the kicls, the dclg a'd the luggagei'to it.' A learnerwnose Lr llas 'o exact equivare'r t. F.ngrish the rrny nced to have thiscc'tral use of the articlc_taught explicitly..'orr thc othcr tr.,J,-.p"it .r, orInrrgLragcs witlr exterrdcd rrsi.,f .refirirc :rrticrcs ,u ."r",. 1",,.r.i ,''"r,,, i,,situatio's whcre these rv'ultl rror be nrarkerl as definire in n,'ntirr., ,,rnr"_tir'es produce

'tterallccs wlriclr, t. thc rlrrglish car, sce' t.rir" -n.ki,rg

exophoric refcrence, srrch as'Do you likc thofolk,.r-,uri.?'*tr.n,ro,rruri. i.to be heard (cf. 'Do you like folk nrtrsic?').

- Exophoric refererrce (especiaily in thc press) is ofre' to a 'worrd ofdiscourse' con'ected with the cliscourse ,rf t1.,. ,,ro,rr.nt, but rrot directry.Brtish,popular newspaper headlines sonretirnes

'rake refererrces such as',1 hat 'Jress. Queerr sc.lds princess Di'. Here the reader is assumed to have

followed certai' srories i' rhe press, and the refere'ce i, rik;-; i;;;:rr,,g.anaphoric one' to a text separatecl in tinre arrtl space f.u,n ilr.'Jr.r.,rr.Native speakers ofter lrave difficulties with such refereuces

"u.n'ii ,lr"yhavc o'ly bec' away fro.r the papcrs arrcl raclio .r televisio' for a week ortwo; the foreigu learrrer nray experie'ce eve u greater clis.rientatio'.

An exanrplc of a tcxt refe rrirrg to srrch a,r ,rssi,nred s[arcd worlcl is exrract(2'14), which talks <tf ,'the e'ti,re privatisation programme,; readers areassumed ro kuow that this refcrs ro ihe British governrnent,s sell-off i' l9g9of the entire public rvater service into private i.,",r.1s,

(2'14) L,ighty per cenr of Brirair's sewage works are breaking poilutionlaws, accordirrg to e refort to lre published this week.''. l"he c.st.f f.lfillinlr a govcrnrlcrrt pro'rise r. clcau trrc'r up willrrrr irrr. billiorrs, a'd put the entirc priuatisatiotr prograntnrc at risk.(l lte C)bseruar,4 l)cccnrbcr l ggg:

-1)

Exophoric refere'ces will .ftcn be t. a w.rld shared lry se'der a'drecei'er o_f the linguistic nressage, regardless of cultural br.lgro*rd, butequally often, references will bc cr.rlture-bound antl outsicle tlr.'.*p.ri.n..,of tlre language learner (e.g. British refereuces to the city, tr,e ciarirrilor,and so on). Irr these cases the learncr will

'eed rn.on.ul, run.,. rorr.. of

encyclopaedic infor'ration .r ask an i'forma.t. This aspect of l;;g;;;;learning is a _gradual farniliarisatio' with the cultural conrexr it rz.Language teachers and materials writers will need to r'onitor the degree ofcultural exoph'ric refere'ces in texts chosen for teachirrg to ensure tff"t th.referential bLrrden is nor roo sreat.

Reoder octivity 3 r.0Find exophoric references in the followiug extract andthey are likely ro create culrural difficulties for a learner

4o

consider whetherof Errglish.

2.2 Grammatical cohesion and textualitt,

King trial iuryadjourns withtranscriptDonnls Johnson

tflll, JURY in the trial of threeI people accused of conspiring to

rnurder the Northern lrelandSccrctary, Mr l'om Kine, adiournedlast night after rnore lhan ,"u"nhours' deliberation.'ilrey sperrt the niqht withinWirrchester crown court buildings,where the trial is takihg place. Fivehours after they retired to considertheir verdict, the judge recalledlhcnr L) answcr a question they had[)ut to hrn tn a note.

1'hat question was "Can weconvict if we think the inlormation

(front The Guardian,2T October

collecting was for several purposes,or does the one whole aim have tobe murder?"

the judge said the Crown had toprove an agreement to murder sothat the jury was sure. It was notsufficient to prove it as a possibilityor probability, but it must be proveibeyond reasonable doubt.

1988, p.20)

Exophoric ,peference directs the receiver 'out of' rhe text and into anassurnecl slrared world. This idea of a sltared world overlaps with the ideaof a shared world built-up by sender and receiver as any diicourse unfolds,and for this reason, some lirrguists see no real distinction between ana-phoric and exophoric reference (e.g. Brown and yule 1983: 201), since bothproceed on tl.re basis of an assurnption by the sender that the receiver is, arany poirrt in time, availed of all the k'owledge necessary to decode anyreference iterns. But for practical purposes the distinction may be a usefulone to retairr as it enables us to evaluate to what extent anr discourse isself-containecl, supplying its referents internally, or to what extent itdepends heavily on external, culture-specific real-world referents.

LOOKING FORWARD: CA'|APHORIC REFERENCE

Consider these opening lines of a news arricle:

(2.15) she claims Leo Tolstoy as a dista'r cousin. Her grandfather wasAlexei Tolstoy - the fanrous ,Red Count' who sided with Lenin'srevolutionaries. Now, Tatyana Tolstaya has put pen to paper, in hercase to demonstrate that sonleone frorn the family can writecornpactly. In her stories of ten to twelve typewritten pages, ,l

41

2 Discourse analysis and granunar

::ir^"]l,l* try to show thc wlrolc lifc of e Person fronr birtlr to death,,slle savs-

lNerunueek, 2l Scptcrlbcr l9U7 : 12)

we do nor esrablish wlto she is untir thc sccorrd scurc'ce. Forward-rookingor cataphoric rcfere.ce of this kirrcr oftcrr irvorves p.o,r,r,,rrr-i*i"i, ."ni'volvc.thcr rcfcrcrrcc iterrrs t'., such as thc clef ite article:(2'16) 'I-he tiyt would hardry Irave bee' noteworthy, except for tbe ntanwlro nrarle it. In ilid_July a powerful Amcricarr fiuancier flew to

Mexico city for a series of tarks rvitrr high-rever g.ru..nnr.,.,t oli.i"rr,incltrding presiderrt Migucl cle la M:rclrii a'd lrir-iin"n." ;;i;,;;;;Gustavo petricioli.

(Netustt,cap, 2l Septcrnbcr l9g7 : 44)

Iloth exarnples of cataphoric refere'ce were fou'cl in the same issue ofNewsweek, which u'derlines the mosr clraract"ristic fun.iio" ;i-.;;;;"".refe.rence: to eugage and hord the rearder's

"rr.*i.rn with a 'read o' a'cr findour'nressage. Irr ncws stories arrcl irr literaturc, exarrlPlc,5 of cataphoricreferetlceareoftetrfoundirttheo;lerring,.,',..,'..,.,i,h:;;;.

Reoderoctivity4 *.0 '

Identify the cataphoric reference iter'a'cl its referc't in this extract:It lras often b..n.onlp"r"cl to New Orlcans,s Marcli Gras as anoutdoor celebrati<rn. Certainly Ncrv york,s Mulberry Street and

. surrouncling blocks have been as crowcled over tlre l"st f.* .1"y, ",' I{oyal and Bourbo'srreers in thc Frcnch (]uarter are for the _Mardi

Gras.. More than thrce nrillion people are estimeted to havecelebrated the 6lst a.'rral Feasi crithe San Gerrrraro ao*,., iiGreerrwich Village since it lregan on Thursclay.

('fhe Guordiau, 15 Septcnrber 19g7: 23\

cataphoric refgrence is the reverse of a'aphoric reference and is relativerystraightforward, but language learrrers roay la.k aware'ess or confidence toput it i'to use in constructing t.*tr,

^,r.i 'ray need to have the fearure

explicitly taught .r exercised. 1h... ir, too, trre danger of it, ou..ur. o, it,use in unnatural coutexts. As always, it is a questioriof traiuing the learne.to observe fearures of language above serrence rever *h.rl ,i*1 n-,i*i-', no,necessarily be automatically transferred from Ll, especiaily rii.., inEnglish, reference often ir.rvorves the definite articre ani a.n-,onrirrnu.r,which do not rranslate easily into many other languages.

4)

2.2 Cranunatical cohesion and texhulity

2.2.2 Ellitsis and substittttion

Ellipsis is the ornission of elements rrorrnally required by the grammarwhich the speaker/writer assumes are obvious frorn the context andtherefore rreecl lrot be raised. This is not to say that every utterance which is

I not fully cxplicit is elliptical; rnost messages require some input frorn thecontcxt to tttakc scttsc of tlrcnr. Ellipsis is clistirrguishccl by tltc structtrrc

' having sclme 'nrissing' elemenr. If two people have to stack ancl label a pile,of items aud one says to the other 'you label and I'll stack', the fact thatI "^ .''"'"

:, label and stack are usually transitive verbs requiring an object in the surfacestructure is suspendcd because the context 'supplies' the object. Anotherway of sayirrli tlris is, of course, that structures are only fully realised when

f, they need to be, and that el[ipsis is a speaker choice made on a pragmaticassessment of the situation, llot a compulsory feature when two clauses arejoined together.

!fle shall coricentrate here on the type of ellipsis where the 'missing'element is retrievable verbatim from the surrounding text, rather in the waythat anaphoric and cataphoric references are, as opposed to exophorrcreferences. For example:

(2.17) T'he chilclren rvill carry the small boxes, the adults the large ones.

where 'will carry' is supplied from the first clause to the second. This typeof rnain-verb ellipsis is anaphoric; in English we would not expect:

(2.18) "'fhe children the srnall boxes, the adults will carry tlre large ones.

though sonre kind of analogous structure does seem possible in Japanese(sce Hinds 1982: 19 and 48). Ellipsis as a notion is probably a universalfeature of languages, but the grammatical options which realise it indiscourse lnay vary markeclly. For instance, English doeshave the kind ofcataphoric ellipsis suggested by our rejected example (2.18), but usuallyonly irr fr<rrrt-placed subordinate clauses (see Quirk et al. 1985: 895):

(2.19) lf you could, I'd like you to be back here at five thirty.

English has broadly three types of ellipsis: nominal, verbal and clausal.Nominal ellipsis often involves omission of a noun headword:

(2.20) Nelly likcd tlre green tiles; myself I preferred the blue.

The Rornarrce and Germanic languages have this kind of nominal ellipsisand it should not present great difficulties to speakers of those languageslearning English.

Ellipsis within the verbal group may cause greater problems. Two verycommon types of verbal-group ellipsis are what Thomas (1987) callsechoing and auxiliary contrasting. Echoing repeats an elemenr from theverbal group:

.t-)

!i

2 Discourse analysis and grammar

(2.21) A: Willanyone be waitirrg?l3: Jim arrl/, I should think.

Contrasting is wherr the auxiliary changes:

A: I Ias shc rcmarricd ?

B: Ncr, but she u,ill one clay, I'm sure.

Fle said he,uvould take early rcrirerncnt as soon as he could antl hehas.

Thomas also rnakes the point tlrat in E'glish, varyi.g dcgrees of ellipsis arepossible within the sarne verbal group:

(2.23) A: Should ar)y one have been told?I): John ; should.

I should have.

I should have bcen.

These varianrs are rlot directly trarrslatable to other la'guages and will haveto be learnt.with. clausal eJlipsis in Engrish, i'dividuar clause erements rnay be

omirred; . especially colnnlon are subject-pronoun omissions (.doesn,t

matter', 'hope so', 'sorry, can'r herp you', erc.). whole stretches oi .inu.rtcomponents rnay also be onrittec{:

(2.221

(2.24)

For this type of scntence, many.languages will require at the verykind of subsrirute for the main verb-ard a,., otject pro,,u,-,,.,'produce a form roughly equivalent to .He said h" woulclretrrement as soon as he could and he has done it.,

Ellipsis not o'ly creares difficulties in learni'g whar strucural omissionsare permissible, but also does not seem ro be readily used even by proficientIearners in situatio's w^here native speakers naiuralry ,.rori i,-i, 1r..Scarcella and Brunak l98l).

least somesuch as totake early

Reoderoctivitys *.O

Identify exarnples of ellipsis in these extracts:

1. Most stucle'ts start each terrn with a'awarcl cheque. Buf by the tlmeaccommodation a_nd food are paid for, books are bought, trips takenho're and a bit of social life lived, it usualry rooks pretty .ma.i"t.d.(Advertisement for Barcrays B',tk, Uniuersity of Birnringhan Builetin,5 December1988:5)

2. 'You like watching children . . . ?' her tr.e see'red to say: .you,relike a child yourself.'

'Yes. Don't you?' His clreek was full of cheese sandwich. She

44

2.2 Grantmatical cohesion and textuality

dirlrr't answer; only looked at the swings with arixiety.'l sometimes wish,' he said, trying hard to ernpty l-ris nrouth, .I

could ioin irr rnyself.''I3ut yon wouldrr't?''Wlry not?'

I-le saw thc sudden clrallenge in lrer eycs. And was that r srnilcsonrewlrcre in that lreld-aloft face?

'Well, if you fcel that rvay . . . ?'

' '- rvhy dof t yo:u?''Why clorr't l?'

(Grrhrrrr Srvift, Tbe Su'eet Sbop Otrnrr, Pcnguin Books l-inritcd, 1986: 27)

other aspecs of ellipsis that are difficult for lear'ers occur in rhe areawhere ellipsis overlaps with what is often treated under the grammar ofcoordinatiort (e.g. 'goats' milk and (goats') cheese', 'he fired and (he)missed the target', etc.). Once again, specific rules of realisation may noroverlap between languages.

Substitution is sirnilar to ellipsis, in that, in English, ir operares either atnominal, verbal or clausal level. Thc itenrs conruronly used for substitutronin English are:

One(s): I offered him a seat. He said he didn't wanr one.Do: Did Mary takc that lctter? She rnight have done.Solnot: Do you need a lift? If so, wait for me; if not, I'll see you there.Sante: She chose the roast duck; I chose the same.

Most learners practise and drill these items in sentence-level grammarexercises. They are not easily and directly translatable ro orher languagcs.Many common, everyday substitutions tend to be learnt idiomatically (e.g.responses such as'l think/hope so'). While it is easy to formulate basic rulesfor substitution, at more advanced levels of usage, subtleties emerge thatmay be rnore difficult to explain and present. For example, there arerestrictions on reduced fornrs which might otherwise cause stress to fall onthe substitute do, which is normally

'ever prominent when it stands alone,

as opposed to auxiliary do in ellipsis, which can be srressed (e.g. 'Did youwin?''Yes. I DID!'):

(2.2s1 A: Will yor-r unlock the gate?

B: I HAVE done already.'r I've DONE already.

Where the speaker does wish to give prominence to the substitute do, thenso is used as well:

I went to lock the gate. When I got there, I found somebody hadalready DONE so.

(2.26)

45

2 Discourse analysis and granunar

our exanrl'rlqs of c'rripsis ancr substit'tir. have irrcrucle.| a'umber ofspoken excharrges. This is because elipsis .n.l ,u',rtiiutr-r'^rr,,".,. " r",ll:: * cortcxr; thcy pr.ceccr orr rrrc

'basis thar t>nritrccr arcl substiruredelements irrc easily recovcrable, arrcr arc trrcrcf<lre r.'"*..r i,r-'rp...r., ,rru_ations where a high degree of c.'tcxruar su'p.rt is avairabre. we shailreturn,to thcrn bricfly in section 5.9, whe' wc cliscuss ,.rir"r-.o,rrrirur.,natural specclr.

It is sonretinres difficult to scparate thc vari.us types of c.hesio', ard itrnay seenl questi'rrable at.tirrres why lirrguists scparflte such w<lrcls as thepronou. it arrd the s'bstitute o,e. f'heie.r.,r""..r,r. for suclr."t.go.i 1

satio.s: for exanrple, s,bstitutes ca. be rnocrific.d.('a *.i;;"', ,;;r;',urf il, ,n.ycorner') and as such nrc true sulrstitutio,, whire p.o,.,.r,,n., ,,,rJi" I rr.ynrodified in this way, (,, ,a red it', ,, .thc ir irr t'".corn er,) co_re[er[.,ut.lo ,,or1really substitute for'ou' prrrasc's t'ro*.u".,-rn lnng,,rg" iJ*rri"g,'irr.remay be good reas.'s t. briirg diffcrerrt catcg.ries t.gerher, for irsti.ce, tfcorltrasr backwarcl refererrce to arr i'dcf ii. "''t"..'.r.r;; i;; y., ,r."a

"pencil? Yes, I need one.') with reference to. Jelr'ite a'rececre't (,Do youneed the pencil? yes, I need ir.').

Reoderoctivity 6 ?-0The sertcrrce bclow occtrrred irr a rctter of rcfcr-errcc [or s'rrcrrre appryrrrg[or a job,,writterr by a'.rr-rrarivc spcaker. wlrat rrristake lras the writerma.de, and what explanation rnight a ranguagc reacher.rr.r r.'ir.rp rrr.writer avoid the error in future?

If you require furthcr inforrnatiorr on, tlre applicant, I would bepleased to do so.

(Author's data l9ll9)

2'.2.3 Conjunction'we. include conjun*ion here in our discussion of grammaricar contri-brtio's to.textuality even. though it is somewhat diffeienr r.on'-..r.r.n..,ellipsis a'd subsritution. A conjirn*io' croes ,ot ser off a search backwardor forward for its referent, but it does pre-suppose a textuar ,.+""..,

""asigrals a relationship between ,ugnl.nti uf t1",. ,rrscot,rs... Discourse aralysts ask the same sorts of questio's about conjunctions asthey do about other srammatical itenrs, what ,;i;;;;;i;; oi.,l r" .r.",r",discourse, do the categories a'cl realisatio,r, diff.. frfil-i";;;;;;; ,"

46

2.2 Grammatical cohesiott and texfiulity

language, how are they distributed in speech and writing, what restrictio.son their use are there which are not reflected purely through sentenceanalysis, and what fearures of their use are inadequately explicated in con-ventional grarnmars?

In fact it is uot at all easy to list definirively all the items that performthe conjunctive role irr English. Single-word conjunctions rnerge intophrasal ancl clausal ones, aud thcre is often little cliffcrcnce betwicn thelinking of two clauses by a single-word conjunction, a phrasal one, or alexical item sornewhere else iu the clause, a fact \rVinter (\977)bas pointedout. For exanrple, (2.27-30) signal the cause conse(1ue,rce relaiir.,n rnseveral ways:

(2.27) IIc was inse'sitivc to tlre gro'p's rreeds. C.'se4uently tl-rere wes a lotof bad feeling. (single word conjunction)

(2.28) Hc,,vas insensitive to the group's neecls. As d corceqt4ence there wasa krt of bad feelirrg. (adverbial phrase as corrjunctiorr)

(2.29) As a consequence of his insensitivity to the group's needs, there was alot of bad fceling. (adverbial plrrase plrrs norninalisation)

(2.30) -l'he bad fceling was d consqquerrcc o/his inserrsitivity to the group'sncecls. (lexical item within the predicate of the clause)

There are clearly differences in the way the speaker/writer has decidecl topackage tlre information here. Note how (2.29) and (2.J0) enable theinforrnation to be presented as one sentence, and how (2.30) enables thefront-placing of 'bad feeling', a feature we shall return to in section 2.3below. A true cliscourse grammar would examine the options for using'X isa consequence of Y', as opposed to 'Y occurred; as a consequence, Xoccurred'. We would almost certainly find ourselves in the realm of infor-mation structure and the speaker/writer's assessment of what needed to bebrought into focus at what point, and so on (see the discussion of themeand rheme below).

Haf liday (1985: 302-9) offers a scheme for the classification of coniunc-tive relations and i.clucles phrasal rypes as well as single-word everydayitems such as and, bnt, or, etc. l-lere is a simplified list based on Halliday'sthree categ<rry headings of elaboration, extensiott and enhancentent:

Typ" Sub-types Exantples

elaboration

extenslon

etrhatrcemerrt

appositionclarificationadditionvariationspatio-temporaIcausa l-conditional

in other wordsor ratherand/butalternativelythere/p reviouslyconsequently/in that case

47

2 Discottrse dndlysis ant! grammar

The full list appears in Halriclay (19g5: 306), ancr co'rai's over forryconjunctive irerns; eve. that is rrot exrrausrive. bo trrc task f;;;.,;i"ngu"g.teacher is rrot a snrall rrre. Iiowevcr, *tr",., *" ir,r['-.1^,*rrr^i'ta^r",especially .spoke', we sce tlrat a fcw conjurrcti.rs (arttl, bttt, ,o,

^ua tf rr|

1::^:"":*h.lrningly frcquent.'We can aisc, c,t,serve the wiie use of and,wrlere the rearrer/risteuer carr strppry acrditive, adversative , car-rsal ancltenrporirl

'earri.gs, dcperrclirrg orr cirritext'al i'forrnatiorr, .r'i,' iz.ii-:+1,

(2.31) She's irrtclligcnt. Arrcl she's very rcliable. (aclditivc)(2.32) I've lived hcre ren ycers rntl I'vc rrcvr-r h.arcl of that pub.

(adversative: lltl coulcl substitutc)

(2.33) He fell in thc river and caught a chill. (causal)

(2.34) | got up ancl mrcle nry lrreakfast. (ternporal sequcnce)

E9y"lly,- dre possible choices .f conju'cti.n will tfterr overlap in mea'ir.rg,with little overall cliffererrce:

(2.3s) A: Whrt aborrt this nrectingI3: I nray go, ancl

orbrrttlrorrglrthcrr

thcrr ?

I uray not; it all clepenr"ls.

Reoderoctivity 7 *4Look at the text on the,oppos.ite page ancl find conjunctions linkingsentences to o.e anodrer. using the sirnplified categorisaiio' below, basedon Halliday and Hasan. (1976), can you ,"y *lit type of .onyun.tiu.relation is beirrg signalled in each casei

Categories:

1. Adtlitiue (e.g. and, in addition)2. Aduersatiue (e.g. but, botueuer)3. Causal (e.g. becattse, consequently)4. Ten4)oral (e.g. then, subsequently)

4849

2.2 Grantmatical cohesiott and textuality

Wind power. Wave power. Solarpower. Tidal power.

Whilst their use will increase theyare unlikely to be able to provid6large amounts of economic elec-tric-ity. Generally, the,cost of har-nessrnS tnelr Power rs nu8e.

However, tlrere is a more practi-cal, reliable and economical way ofensuring electricity ficr the future.

And tlrat is through nuclearenergy.

It's not a new idea, of course.We've been using nuclear electricityfor the last 30 vea"rs.

In fact, it now accounts foraround 2O% of Britain's electriciryoroduction. And it's one of theiheapest and safest ways to pro-duce'electricitv we kndw for^theIuture.

What's more, world supplies ofuranium are estirnated to last lorhundreds of years, which will giveus more than enouRh rime todevelop altematives ifvie need to.

So, while some people might notcare about their chlldrin's furure.

We do.

(Advertisernerrt for British Nuclear Forum fronr'lhe Guardian, T October 1988,p. t7)

'When we look at a lot of natural spoken data, we find the basic corrlunc-tiorrs ald, but, so an,J, tben ntuch in evidcnce, and used not iLlst to liukindiviclual utterances within tunrs, bur often at the beginning of rurns,linking one speaker's turn with another speaker's, or linking back to arrearlier tun.r of the currcr.rt speaker, or else marking a shift in topic orsub-tcrpic (often with but).ln this sense, the conjunctions are better thougl.rtof as discourse nmrl<ers, in that they organise and 'manage' quite extendedstretclres of discourse.

An intere sting example of differences in data comes from Hilsdon (1988).She conrpared spoken discourse of adult native speakers, young narivespeakers and Zambian young adult learners of English, and found in herZambian subjects alrnost a complete absence of the use of and and but in

the characteristic ways we have just described that native speakers use

them. The reasons for the absence of this otherwise very common feature ofspoken discourse in her Zambian data may be cultural, Hilsdon suggests.

Because is very frequer.rt irr spoken English, not iust to express thecause-effect relationship, but also to express the reason relationship.and as

a speech-act marker signalling a 'this is why I am saying this' function, as inremarks such as 'this one's better quality, because we'll have to get one thatwill last', where the quality of the item being discussed is not an effect of thespeaker's need to buy durable goods, but is sirnply a justification formaking the remark. Firth (1988) made a study of the distribution of such'reason' markers in the speech of a mixed native and non-native speakergroup. He found that the non-native speakers exclusively used because tosignal the reason/justification relation, while the native speakers varied the

2 Discourse analysis and granundr

sigrral, using because,'cos,.lihe ancl sce, ^s

irr tlris extract fronr a corver-sation abour smoking ilr public placcs:

(2'36) A: orrcc yo, srarr irrfringing u1.r'rr rhc berrcfirs,f rrrc.trrcr pcoprc, that,swhcn yorrr pcrs.<rrral right is''rst. . . just /iirc, y,k;,;;,-;,.i,,1i";;'rights [rut yct y'know you c:r.rr'r kill arry_lrrdy .' . . !,nrirrrn ut urtl,,.tyit's.i.fringirrg,f(), s()rnc'()(ly clsc,s rig'ts.'. . y,,,,.1,;;;,;,;;:i;-rrrej.rity [.r s.rrrctrrir'l t() g() wrur]g. y,,r .rrry nt.t,J l srrr:ril ,,,i,',urity.. . sce, th:rt's rvhcrc I rnenrr tlr:rt's just rrot riglrt. . . ,.,rr.r,rr,rl"lur,fills tlre roorrr.

(lrirth 1988)

Differerces i' perfornrarrce data of these kirrcls are ofte, the reaso' lvhyeven cluitc aclvanced-learner outp.t ca, sccrll r.rrrratural. one of the rna.iorcontributions of clisc.tr.rse a'alysis rras bee' to c'rphasisc ,rr. .,rriyri, "rreal data, ancl thc sigrrificancc in cornnrurricativc tcrrru .f srnall words such

as comnro'.everyday nrarkers. Irr previorrs li.guistic ^ppru^.I.,.. tl;;;;;"r.too ofte, disr'issecl as u'ir'portarrt features .f .p".fo;"r;;;;.:"*ir,.n'air_

trected from dre business of iescribirrg u'dcrlyr'g 'c..rpererce,.

Reoder octivity B F.OCcrrljdcr the followi.g couversari.rrrrr exrra* fro.r trrc poi't of view of thellse or co''n(tn, evcryday t'.r jrrrrctirrrs. wlrnt roles d. tircy pl:ry i. orgarris_ing ancl rnanaging the drscourse ?

(A and l3 have .bcen

recourrting a scries of stories to C nbout gettirrglost rvhilc drivirrg.)

A: A.d arr.rrrer ti'rc, l forgct where thc viilagc was, but trrere was asharp turn at.the errd ,f this villnge, ,r,r.l

'i. r.yr'to hl,r.,-,ior-turrleft l-rere', so he trrrnc.l lcft, into a school vard.

I1: Up a roacl irrto l school yarcl . . . I they were all following rne.A: I it wasn,t so batl that, but theyall followecl behind us you sce.

B: Thcnr rhar were behind me followcd nre.C: Yeah.B: See I shoulcl have gone on rrrothcr

J twerrty yarcls.r\: I I]Lrt ir was getting back

into the traffic streanr tl.rat was the clifficLrltv.B: I should have gone a few yarcls furtrrer on and th"rr turned reft.C: Aye, aye.B: There's a T-roacl.A: Oh.B: And you see with thenr saying ,turn left,.C: Yeah (laughs).

' (Author's data 1989)

505l

2.3 Thenre and rheme

In this scctio' we I'rave c'r.rsiclered devices under a general heading ofgrammatical cohesion and textuality. other gralnmatical choices at theclausc lcvel havc inrplications for the organisation of the overall discourse,not lcast rhe ortlering of elernents in clauses and sentences, and it is to thiswe ll()w tunl.

2.3 Theme and rheme

Most lea.rers, when learning the granrnrar of a foreig. la.guage, spe'dtime assirnilating the structure of clauses i' that language, i.e. wheresubjects, objects aud aclverbials are placed in relatio' fo the virb, and whatoptions are available for rearranging the most typical sequences. Discourseanalysts are interested in the implications of rhese different srructuraloptions for the creatiorl of text, and, as always, it is frorn the examinatiorrof natural data that patterns of use are seen to emerge. sorne of thestructural options frequently found in natural data are ignored or under-played i' language reachi.g (especially those fou'd in spoken data, whichare ofte. clismissed as degrSded or bad 'style'), probably orving to thecontinued donrinance of staudards taken frorn the writren codi. If thedesire is to be faithfr"rl to data, grammar teaching may have to reorient sorneof its structural descriptions, while otl-rers already dealt with in sentence-level .exercises may be adequately covered in traditional teaching andsimply adjLrsted to discourse-oriented approaches.

English is what is ofte' called an 'SVo' language, in rhat the declarativeclause reqrrires a verb at its centre, a subject before it and any olriect after it.This is sir'ply a labelliug device which e'rables co'rparisorrs io be madewith declarative realisations in differenr languages, sorne of which will be'vso' or 'soV' la'guages. This pattern is ofte. recast in English, nor leastin i'terrogative strucures, where the verbal group is split by the subject('Does she /iAe cats?'), and in cases where the object is brought forward:

(2.37) l'he Guardidn, Joyce reads. OSV Object-fronted

There are in Euglish a variety of ways in which the basic clause elements ofstrbject, ue,rb, cornplenrentlobject, aduerbial can be rearrar-rged by puttingdifferenr elements at the beginning of the clause, as illustraGd in 037) 6(2.42). T'hese ways of bringing different elemenrs to the front are calledfronting deuices.

(2.38) Sornetirnes Joyce reads The Guardian.ASVO Aduerbial-fronted

(2.39) h's Tbe Gtnrdian Joyce reads.Ir * be * C/O + SV lt-therne, or cleft (The Gtrardian here seems roope rare sirnultaneously as complement of ls and as object <tf reads)

2 Discourse analysis and grdnunar

(2.40) What .foyce rcads is .f lte Guartlian.Iyh- + SV + be + Cl() Vlh-pseudo_cleft

(2.41) Slre reads 'I-be Guardian, Joyce.S(pronourr)VOS(nourr) Iligbr_tlisltloccrl stbiect

(2.42) Joyce, she rcacis 'I'l.rc Grtardian.S(noun)S(pronourr) VO Le[t_displocet! stiltject

strucrures-such-as (2.4r) a'd (2.42) arefar fro'r irfreclue'r i'spoker.r data,but are oftcn, for no obvi<rus rcaso'r, 'ot prese'tecr irr books .L"in,ng ,odes.cribe grammatical optiors for the 1..r,.,.r. other variatio's of wordorder, are also preseut

-in clata, though soulc. types uray be rarer (e.g.

:r"T.ll:lj,i,-^fl:lli,'g, ,rich they ,,,"y b!, t ut r.louiit,i,,[if,.y,* ir"ppy,l.ir

-we rooK agarr x[ our exam,res fro'r the point of view of how theinfornration in thenr is_preserrei, we can s"e how diff.r.nioptionr".nrbl.us to,focus. orr or highlig.t certai' elerne.rs: tZ.izi ,*,"."';;1; ;"r,"*sonrething 'abo,r' 'flte Cuardiarr rarhcr rhan labour,

.1.y." ti.Cl ^na(2'42) seern to be telli.g us sonrethirg 'about'J.yce. This .aboutness,

is thesort.f rotiou discourse a'alysts .r-..,r,,..r,i.i *itlr, fu. it"i.-" rp""t .vwriter choice made ind.ependeutJy of the propositional centent of themessage; dre speaker/writer decidc.s how to 'rt.g.' th. i,rf.;;;i;;;, irh.r.to start, so to speak, in presenting the rnessagc.In E.glish, what wc decicrc io brirrg_t,r'the frortt <-tf trre crause (by

wlratever means) is a signar of wrrar is to" be un<reistuo,r ", ii.. iii)*"rewirhi' which what we wanr ro say is to rr. "ria..ri.ra."rir.'..rr'"r,rr.clause can the' be seeu as tra's'ritting 'what we waut to scy withi' thisframework'. Itenrs brought to front-piace i' this *.y ;. ;i"ii-..l ,i,.

'!?*n: (or topics) of tlreir clauses. Iir what h"s b..n ."rr.J'ir-,. nr"g".

school of li'guistics, the relationship of rhe ther..e ro rhe resr of the sentenceis viewed as.part of comnunicatiue dynamism, trtati, tr.,.

"rr.rr"*ni'or rrr.exterr ro which each ele'rent co'tributes to the develop;.;;;;f ,ir;;"n-,munication (see Firbas.lgTz). Arterrrativcry, the th.,'...n u.,..n u, trr.'point of deparrure' of dre lness.ge (Halriday r9g5: 3B). For the nro,n.nr, *.shall take as tl.re the're of a clauie the subjcct ,.,ur,,-pi.,rrr., or, iiiiri.-i. no,initial' rhen we shall include wharever c,rmes befoie ir. ri .*.r-irr.i n*,position i' the clause is.importanr in rnany of trre worlcllr ir"gr"g*,

""athat creati'g a theme i' ihe crause is a univerr.l f."ior.,'irro'"g'r-' rr,realisations may vary from language to language.

Reoder octivity g *-{check that you are familiar with the devices for varying worcl order listedabove in examples (2.3742) by subjecting drese two senreuces to as manyof them as possible (an exampie is given):"

2.3 Tbeme and rheme

Bob takes the children out everv Satr.rrdav.Example: Bob, he takes the children o,.it .u.ry Saturday. (left clis-placernent)

The gardener lvauts to cut down thosc bushes this spring.

We uow turn to the relationship lretween these in-clause stnlctures and theconstruction of text. There are clearly restrictions on where and when thesedevices may be used when they occur in real discourse. Both (2.43) and(2.44) sorrnd odel:

(2.43) Q: What tirne did you leave the building?A: What I did at five thirty was leave the building.

(2.44\ Dear Joan,Me, I'm siming here at my desk rvriting ro you. What's outside rnywindorv is a big lawn surrounded by trees and it's a flower bed that'sin the middle of tlre lawn. rWhen it was full of daffoclils and tulipswas iu the spring. Here you'd love it. It's you who must come andstay sollretirne; what we've got is plenty of room.

Love, Sally

(2.43) is peculiar because 'leaving the building' is already 'giverr' in thcquestion; it is therefore odd that it should be 'announced' again in theanswer. (2.44) contains a string of grammatically well-forrned senrences burit is highly unlikely that such a welter of low-frequency clause patternswould occur in one srnall piece of text. Moreover, it sounds as if thepostcard writer is answering questions nobody has actually ever asked,such as 'lsn't it a pond that's in the middle of the lawn?' 'No, it's a flowerbed that's .', or else implicit contrasts are being suggested without anyapparerrt motivation: 'here you'd love it', as opposed to'somewhere whereyou rnight hate it'. Let us try getting rid of all the fronting devices andrewriting our postcard with subjects initial irr every clause:

(2.45) Dear Joan,I'rn sitting here at my desk writing to you. A big lawn surrounded bytrees is outside rny window and a flower bed is in the middle of thelawrr. lt was [ull of daffodils and tulips in the spring. You'd lovc ithere. You must conle and stay sometime; we've got plenty of room.

Love, Sally

Ve probably now feel that the text is bland, a sort of flat landscape inwhich each bit of information is doled out without any overall sense ofdirection or organisation, and with equal weight given to all the elements ofthe message. Language teachers might recognise in this jejune version someof the characteristics of low-level learners' early attemDts at letter- or

2 Discourse analysis and grantmar

essay-writirrg, hampered by irnpoverished granrnraticar resources, or thelack of confidence io tra'sfer featurcs f.omit. Wl,;; i; ;il;; f;; "",ll,l,^.:l r strategic,decisio.s to 'rrrg.; iir. i,rrornrario' and to put it intoa drscourse rramework with thc foregroundirrg clf ccrtai' .l.n.,euts, ,u.h ,sis fou'd ir

'arurar discourse. A thiicr u"r.i.l,i *i* Jiri.i,rri*ii",

"r. "rfronting, secrns rnore natural:() 4A\

(2.47)

() 49.\

Dear Joan,I'nr^sitting here at nry dcsk writing ro you. Outside rny window is abig lawrr surroundcd by trees,

^n.i i,, ih. ,,riddl;;f the lawn is aIlower bed. It was full of claffoctils ",,J,;,i;;;i;',l.," rpring. v,ru,dl've it lrcre. you r'.st co're a'd ,,"r r.rnr"',i,rr.r'*"",u" *o, plenty <lf

Lovc, SallyIn arry spatial descriptio'.of this kirr<.r, spatiar orierrarion of the reader/

l:t*l]:r is inrporrarrt'.and writers/sp."t .r. ii*,,ralry give prominence to thisfrrrcrio.. The see.rrrl serrerce in (z.co).Ju.s tl,i, dy-i;;,ir_;i;;; t.lrrionadverbials. Thc rcrnnirri,,g.",,,.,,..r r..,,.,,rr.t, with suhjects i, initialprsitio'' Li'cle and Labov's (r975) data .f peopre a.l..ifi,ri",r,.i,apartrnenrs also contain frecluen-t fro't-placr'gs of spatiar adverbiars,revealing tlre speakers' st"ging'rt.ri"gies.In spoken narrarives .nir

"ir...l,rt"-r, speakers wiil often frout-place keyorie'tational fearures for their listeners. i-h.r. ".. most obviousry tirne andplace rnarkers ('once ypol " ti,r,,..',,on.,i"y,, .rh.n,,rJJrrii,,^

",,t.co*er', 'nor far fronr here', etc.), but nr"y "iro tr. f;;d.;ii,rl .ir..yparticipar.rts and ir.rformation about th.,n f"lt to be irnportant for thelistener' This is particurarrv truti...br" l,r'i.ir-airpr*.#;;;r, "*t

i.t,are exrremely cornmon when a participant is being "r";;-rh.];.u, ofatte'tlor as a rnai. actor in the subsequint discclurse, as ir.r these extracts:

(The extracts are from anecdotes about coinciclences and from ghoststo ries. )

And the fellow who ranfl up from Spain that night, he,scoinciclerrce-prolre . . .

fhat couple that we k'ow irr Ports'routh, I do',t hear ofher fornrontlrs, and tlren, . . ,

(Author's data 1989)

But a'other versio' of left-dispracelnenr is also common: when one partici_pant is 'renrio.ed

in the themi-slot, but only to provide a link with a newparticipant who will take the,t"g. in t},..rtory (iee e^\ "na tZ.lOli fn.

'speaker can thus creare a t.t.* topi. or sub-toirc framework, by activatingdifferent elemenrs of the conrexi, a.cr using ihe theme-sro, i, t,;. *ry "rmaking a subject whar we haue .ril.,l t1.,. .fo?u,

uf "rr*ioirl, ,i. pr*."f

".topic being addressed at any one time. Here are some exampres frorn data:

54

(2.49\

(2.50)

2.3 Theme and rheme

One of the rnen, his wife was a swimming instructor, and she said toIlle.

This friend of nrine, her son was in hospital, and he'd had a seriousaccidcrrt, and he . . .

(Author's data 1989)

conce'trating on the thernes (.r topics) of clauses cloes not tcll us muchabout tlre rest of the clause, which may be called the rbeme or cornment ofthe clause. In fact, when rve look at themes and rhemes together inconnectecl text, we see further patterns ernerging. we can divide ourpostcard text into thenres and rhemes:

theme (topic) rhente (comment)1. I 'm sittir.rg here . . .

2. Outside my window is a big lawn . . .

3. In the nricldle of rhe lawn is a flower bed.4. This bed was full of daffodils . . .

5. You 'd love it here.6. Yor-r must come and stay;7. \Vc , 've got plenty of roorn.

Two differerrt options can be seen to be realised here: (a) the rheme ofsentence 3 contains an elemenr (the flower bed) which becomes the thente ofsentence 4; (b) the theme of sentence 5 is the same as the therne of sentcnce5. These two textual options may be expressed thus:

Option (a): tlrerner -----)rhemelthernez <

>- rhemez

tlrerire] 1r rrr.

Option (l'): thenrer -----r-l

tl.,ei.,r.t -,------>,J

tlrenle' ------------>

rhemel

rheme2

'We can see these options at work in real texts:

(2.51) As you will no doubt have been told, we have our own photographicclub and darkroom. The club is called 'Monomanor' and there is ananrrual fee of {,5. The ,noftey goes towards replacing any equipmentworn out by use, or purchasing new equipment. Monomanor runs anannual competition with prizes, judging being done and prizesawarded at the garden party in the sumrner term. Besides tbecctnrpetitiott, we also have talks and/or film shows during the othertenlrs.

(Advertiscment for studcnt camera club; autlror's data)

5.t

2 Discourse analysis and grammar

Exrract (2'5r) reflects ol-rl0r (a) quite srrorrgry, where erenrents of rhernesbecome t'emes of subseque'.t senterces lrelJvant items are in italics). Thenext extract chooses predorninantly opti.r,, iri.(2's2) lam f hate

Claudia Cassaigne Being badly dressedr 1ve Being broke

rue Marrel, paris My f;;i.,e islwork Femiriinein the centre of paris Light

I like Ve"ry chicClassical ballet Forihe eveninssSSlisn humour Cavale. Cti, fi"iCooking Chinese foodDrinking Champagne

H

-Al /n fKeep fit exercises - .ff 1, All //J I LTall men *i,'rr-g",^-""n "y",

3 \'Zl VflLLDressing up in the evening

(trorn Cosnopoliran, September 19g5, p. 5)

Looking back at tlre carnera club text, we sce that sentence s 2, 3 and 4 areslightly nrore c'nrplex rha' yf r,1ss.rr.a."irr. ,h.,-r. of (2) contains ra;oelemenrs (Monotianor and f5) *rrTh";;; ,rr..r, ,p'"riir#;il., ,k ,*"separate subsecluent sellteuces, giving us th. l^tt..n,therne2----------> rhemel

/"-/ -'--tltetrtert/-_+rlrernel theirca_---rlrer'ea

This third option is a rrierarchical pattern. For further exampres a'ddiscussions of thenre-rheme patterns see Danes (1974).But,are these patte.rs'ot simpry qr."i.". oi'rryi.'or ,rhetoric,? In away' they are, insomuch as they are not trury structural, since no combi-narions are specificallv forbidden by rule,,ni inJ..a,l;;;;;;# *",traditionally ielegated to rag-bag ;"*;i;;ch as 'styre, has been takenover as the province of discourse"anrry'rir. rt is-hoped ,rrl, ,r,. ii**rion ,ofar has irdicated the importan.e of ri,.rn.tisation ,, , ,n.rn, o?.r.rringtopic franreworks and as.an example of audience orientation. Furtherinvestigation would probabry also dir.ou., ilnr., u.r*..;;;; rrii..n,of theme and rherne and particula. *giri.^ t..g. nr"ni ;;;l;;;;il

"r.the option of rerurning to tlr. ,"r. ,f;.,*, ,]r,i.flt ,h;;il;;;ffi;56

2.3 Theme and rheme

l

Reoderoctivity 10 *.O

vhich pattcrn(s) of thernc and rhemc sequc'cing are preclominant in theseextracts? consider too the author's choice in terms of topic frameworks,and the purposc and register of the tcxts.

at.

Cost ofacid cleanup doublesFred Pearce

RItITAIN'S privatised clcctricityIJirrdrrstry will facc a bill for clearringup acid polltrtiorr frour its I'owcr statiorrethat is rrrore tlrrrr doulrlc that so [ar adrnit-tcd.'I'hc cost oftnceting an EEC dircctivcto cornbat acid rain, approved by rninis-ters in Junc, will approach ,t3 billion,according to corlsultants who rccenilypresentcd a strrdy orr strJtegies to rcduceacid pollutiorr to 1hs l)qoaittncnt of rheEnviionrncrrt (DoE).

T'he study fornls part ofa broad review

of technologies to conlbat acid rain, pre-parcd at tlte rcquest of thc DoE by'thcFcllowslriF of Engirrcerirrs.

_Tlrc arrt}or of t-hc stud;iis l,hilip Conrcrof Technica, a consultincy. He totd anrectiltg of thc Britislr' ConsultantsIlureau in Lorrdon last week that "withonly a nrodest irrcreasc ilr clectrical energyconsurrrptiorr, rhc DoE targets for pollu-tion abetcmerrt will rrot be mct . . , Thcrcis a divergence bctween stated policy andachievablc obicctivcs. "

(fronr Nerr Scicrttist,22 October L988, p.29)

z' The brain is our most precious organ -the one above all which allows us to behuman.

The brain contains 10 billion nervecells, making thousands of billions olconnections with each other. lt is th€most powerful data processor wsknow, but at the same tlme it is incredi-bly delicate. As soft as a ripe avocado,the brain has to be encased in thetough bones of the skull, and floats lnits own waterbod of fluld. An adultbrain weighs over 3lb and fills the

skull. lt receives one-fifth of the bloodpumped out bythe heart at each b€at.

The brain looks not unlike a hugewalnut kemel: it is dome-shaped witha wrinkled surface, and ls in two halvosjoined in the middle, Comlng out tromthe base of the brain like a stalk ls thsbraln stem. This ls the swollen top ofthe spinal cord, whlch runs on downto our 'tall'. Parts of the brain stomcontrol our most basic functlons:breathlng, heart beat, waking andsleeplng.

(from The Obseruer,l5 October 198S, p. 2)

57

2 Discourse analysis and grantnw.

P4tte,rns of secl.ercirrg of trrenre arrcl rherne lrc terde'cies rather thanabsolutes. Vcry fcw rcxrs (e_xcePr |crhaps highly rituaiir.J,r*r'rr.f-, .,religious.lirarric^s) rcpeat thc sar',ic ,ir",',.ii.i,rn parte.rs crdlessry. we havesuggestcd rhat iow-levcl lear'crs rniglrt bc tirpp"d i,, ,r,r,oiulrt nnrr.rn,.wirrg r. linritcd grar'r'aticar ."r.r,,rf", u. l^.k "r.u,rnJ.,r."l,, "

ir.* r_2,bur rrosr advanced lea'rers.are rikcry to r,au" "

gond feel for creating topicfra'rcworks ard orierrti'g their au.1ie'c". tlrr. gr:rmr.aticar structures thata re'rrderprayecr irr gra r'.rar b,.ks (e. g. reft .rir;] ";;,;;;r,'.il..i-r.",rri"grn'ray be procluced urcorsciousry by i..i,r.rr, trut awareness a'cr mo'itoringon the part of teachers.is

'b.esiary to .,rrrr.-rr.,.t .at.ral proclucti.n usrngthe wide resources of the granrnl", i, inJ."J i.ki,rg plr.".'s. far, we have co.centratecl o, therrratisi.g i, crauses, br-rt it should notbe f.rg.tteu.tlrat scque'ci'g choices ,rf .lrlur", withi' se'teuces, andseute.ces withirr paragra'hs are of the sa.re, air.ourr.l."i.*a'rrp.. f*insta'ce, it has been otrserved that firsr seutelrces otten telr us what thervhole. paragraph is about, n ,r.,..r,r_l"J frorrt_placing of a' elemenrsigrralli'g rhe fraurework of trre. mcssage. su.h ,.,it.,r..i".. .i""'."rr.atolti.c sentettces, ard are considerecr irinporra'r for ,kitl, srJ'r, ,r.i"r_reacli'g. Ir is often possible, just by ...a1,,f il.,.-nr., ,.ni.,,.", io ,r"r."*f,rr,paragraph is about (the paragrapi.t t6.ru.i trrough it i, ,roi ior.iL't.-ro ,rrr.

:lr:.,r:|1 text is sal,lrg abo,,t its th.n,. itlr. paragraph rheme). However,thls does scenl to lre an oversinrplificatiorr,-rn.l.-n",,,ny pr."g."ph, lr"u.irritial senterrces that clo r,tot tell.us what tr.'. p..rg,^1rr., ir.tr",f;.J'*.r r"a

Jo'es.'s (198.5) study of cleft arcr pscuclo-crcft se.tences i. discourse showsthat the pleserlce of a clcft structtue, eve' if ,ru, p"rrg..ph-i.itial, is ofterr amore reliablc sig'al ,f paragrap' topic,. a'd i,,y*ry, rclativeiy tittt" i,known.about why writers ,n.k..p.r.gi"1rh r.liuiriun. *fr.* iL*/ j"."'. Finally,.ideally, we should

"liu .u,,ri.r.r serrc.ces trrat contain moretha' o'e elenre.r other tha' trre subject b.o,,gi.,t ,o r.unafir.., ,".i, ,, ,rri,very serre.ce you are re:rding. The first fro'ted eleme'r \fnal'ly) o.g.;,ir.,the texr sequentially and tell.s you trrat the section is conring t. a crose (atextudl furrctio'); ideally.signals my attitude towards ,h"ti t ou.-io'rny,and has an interpersoial fJnction.'The next el.ur.',r, ,*, ir';;; Jf *.co'tent or ideational r'earrirrg of rrrc r'essagc, or, as Halliclay (19gi: 56)calls it, tl'te topicaltherne,.The u'nrarked 1'"ui, rr.qu.n,r

"r1.. i.l.#rr*

rhemes carr rhus be stated as textudr + inierltersor;;r-*';i;;r;;;;i,""^"t

Thetnes Textual Itilerpersonal Ideational

Examples nloreoverlikcwisefor instance

frenklyobviouslypersonally

JoeSrnith...burglars. . .

I...(Adaptcd fron: Hallitlay 1985: .53-4)

5B

2.4 Tense and aspect

A natural cxanrplc <lf this orderirg is seen in this sente.ce from a studentcssay on language ancl gerrcler:

(Z,S:) Corrve rscly, tr-xrssi['ly, [crnalcs fclr rrrore ar casc responding to a

trorr-spcci{ic fenrale address.

(Atrrhor's data 1989)

:)' The noti.n of theme and how it is realised in L,'glish is an area wheregrammatical strLlcture and discourse function seenr most closely allied. and.if discourse nrrnlysis is r. lrave arr irrfluerrce or how lnng.agc is'taught, rlreri

ivays of presenting variations in clause structure irr relation to dis.o.,rr..functions may be a good place to start. In the past, emphasis on inventedsbntences arrd o' writi'g (in both theoretical and applied Iirrguistics) hasled to the relegation ro the fringes of some structures found in natural talk.But natural data show thar variations of standard svoA order are muchmore frequent than might be thought. Furthermore, languages vary in howthey deal with thernatisation: Japanese has a parricl e wa, widely r.rsed totopicalise elements in clauses (Hinds 1986:157), and Tagalog (the languageof the Philippines) apparently ropicalises ar rhe end of clauses (Cieidir1979). Other languages arc sirnilar to English; Duranti and Ochs (1979) giveexamples of left-displacemenr in Italian speech and discuss its functions indiscourse managernent. Mixed nationality groups of learners may thereforepreseut a variety of problerns at various levels, just as is the case irr

i conventiorral grarnrnar teaching.

2.4 Tense and aspect

A great deal of attentio' has recently been paid to the relationship betwee.tense-aspect choices and overall discourse constraints. By examinrngnatural data, cliscourse analysts are able to observe regular correlationsbetween discourse types and the predominance of certain tense and aspecrchoices in the clause. Eclually, the emphasis irr discourse analysis oninteractive features of discourse such as speaker/writer perspective andstandpoint, and the focusing or foregrounding of certain elements of themessage, has led to reinterpretations of conventional statements abouttense aud aspect nrles.

An example of the first type of approach is Zydatiss (1985), who lookedat a number of text types in English where present perfect is eitherdorninant or in regular contrasr with past simple. Zydatiss observed thatthree basic functions of the preserrr perfect, all unde r the general heading ofcurrent releuance, frequendy recur over a wide range of text types. Henames these functions: (1) conveying'hot uews', (2) expressing experiences,and (3) relating to present effects oI charrges and accomplishments.

'Hot news' texts are mostly found in broadcast and written news reports,

59

but are also common i' everyday speech. An exampre (taken from Britishtelevisiorr rrews) is: 'Tlre governrri.ni ro, n,rr.,ourrnri ^,""r,i-.lrri.,-, oounasclrerne to rerraiu the u'enrployed, but u"iurr .tri.r, ir:;;,';'pi;;;;; i'tt-ou,oppositiorr to it.'l'lris choice of tclrsc:ln(l asl)ect will u..ur,i,r,?

"nd"tirn.agairr, a,d carr Itc tnPltcd ns a riclr s()rrrcc.f iilustrntiv.,,,^"rlrr r",la.g,'nge teaclrirrg (sec f<rr.examplc, Swa' arcl Walter 1990: .!0, *ho urajust such rews everrs ro.iilrstrare prescrr pcrfect ,r"r"l. i"rri.-i" ,rr.-editor and ago.y-colunr'lerrers, Zyciatiss.r"inrr,.ont.I.,'r,.qu.nipr...nt

f:l:::: ryf"rr'ing the 'experierrces' a.cl .clrangcs o',d

"..o,irflird*ntr,rurlc'or)s. r' hot rews texts, rxesent perfect regularly .out.rrt, with pastsim.ple in the same text, where.ihe topiialising serre.ce

'ses present perfect;

while the details of rhe .arrative are in p^rt ,In,pr., f;;;;;,i;il;^jatgrrrrrr,

2 Discourse analysis and granunar

Reoder octivity 11 r.Oconsider this sentence taken from dte end of au essay by a learner ofEnglish. In what way is her use of rense and aspect inappropriatel Howwould vou corre* it and what rule or gui.reii'e;";i:';;r;";i". rr..regarding tense a.d aspec in differe't sectiJns of r.rd.,.i. .,.;;;,!

-

ConclusiortIn this essay, I try to discuss the different types of informatio' whichthe matrices give about words. Arso .,r,r.,. oth", inforr'atio' whichrnatnces can convey are suggested in the last section.

(Author's data 19g9)

source of this shift of ten.e. zydatiss rists many rexr'rypes which seem rohave such c.rrelarions. The usefurness of such i'";.;i;rri;r^ir'""i ,r,r,they necessarily tell language reachers anything th.y ,.ri.i,,oi "i.;;i;ir"*or might conclucle fror. intuition, but that thJy ofi". "

,ir.rr-.", i,l ..,..r,,rdata sourccs and statistical back-up to intuition.-l'specialisr and acadernic rexts zuclias scientific arricres, correrations areoften observable betweerr discourse ,.g,rr.ntr.nd t.,rr" ,,rd ,rp..i'.i"i.*.

Medical research articres in jour'ars ii,.h a, tt , iriiiri u))Irt' j.,)r"rt,for irstance,.regularly use pasr sinrple ir., tt.. oirtro;;r;.;;;;;';;;a'lfrif, .predominantly present p.rf..t i' tite introductiott sectio', at the end ofwhich there is a shift back to pas.t simpre where the ii;;;,,;;.'l;g"ins irs'narrative'^of the particular reseirch experi.rerrr reported. Also in ".iJ..i.texts, one finds interesting correlation. i,.t*..,., th. t.,.,r.s ,r;J ;; .i"lrfr.,authors and the currellt author's standpoint: orre rnight.orprr.

"lt..,orru.citations.such as'Johnson (1975) stiggests/has rugg.rt"i/r,,gg.rr.J/h"dsuggested that. . .'.

fi i m h a s t a n.d e d.. r,,, g., r.l q pr; ;;;; ;J ;;';; ;;ffi :J ;Ji' ff :,.; f iiirneeting today i'Lo'don.'Biographical sketches a.d obitr-rarier-r?. "lro, i

605l

2.4 Tense and aspect

'A particular day-to-day conrexr worth noting is the telling of stories, jokesand anecdotes. Schiffrin's (1981) data shows regular correlations between.disco.urse segnre.nts a'd rense and aspect choices. schiffrin considers prin-'cjpallf the shifts frorn 'historic' presenr (i.e. using rhe presenr terrie todescribe actio's arrcl evenrs i' the past) to past sir'ple in Euglish oralanecdotes. Shc takes a rnodel of narrarive based on Lal:t>v (1972), in whichthe mairr elernents arc orientatior (establishirrg time, place and characters),comltlicating actiorts (the main evenrs rhar make the story), resolution (ltowthe story reaches its end), and eualuatiorr (comments on the events).Historic present tense verbs cluster in the complicating action segrrrcnts,and, withiu those segments, particularly in the middle of the segmenr, andnot typically irr the inirial or final clause. Historic presenr is also sometimesaccompanied by changes from simple to progressive aspect where the timesequence seerns to bc broken and a particularly strong focr-rs is given toactions. In the following extract, the speaker is recounting a ghost srory;note tl.re shifts in tense and aspecr at crucial junctures:

(2.54) A: Not all that long since, pcrhaps ren years ago, this friend of rnrne,licr son was in hospital, ancl hc'd had a scrious accident and lrewas urrcouscious for a long tirne. . . anyway, slre werrt to see himone day ancl she said'Has anybody been to see you?', and he says'No, but a right nice young lady came to see me,' he said, 'shewas lovely, she stood at the foot of me bed, you know, she . . .

hacl a little word with me.' Well eventually he came home, andthey'd a lot of the family in rhe house, and Emma, this friend ofmine, brought these photographs our, of the family through theyears, arrd, passing them round, and he's looking at them and hesaid 'Oh! tlrat's that young lady rhat came to see me when I wasin bed.' She'd died when he was born . . . so.

B: Good God.A: He'd rrever seen her.B: No...heavens.

(Author's data 1989)

Note how 'he says' prefaces the significant evenr of the appearance of the'lady'. Historic present occurs again, accompanied by progressive aspecr(he's looking) at the highest moment of suspense in the tale.

In Schiffrin's data, historic present often occurs in segments where theepisodes are understood by the listener as occurring in sequence and in thetime-world of the story; therefore, to some extent, the grammaticalmarking of pastness may be considered redundant. Schiffrin compares thesesegments of narratives with sports commentaries, recipe commentaries (thespeaker describing the process as it happens) and magicians' commenrarieson their tricks. The historic presenr ih anecdotes is really an 'internalevaluation device', focusing on the events that really 'make' the story.

2 I)iscourse tumlysis artd grannnar

The data for tense and aspect we rrave ro.kecr.at ca' ail be interpreted inthe light of the speaker/writer's p.r.p..riu.-"'d as projections of shiftingperspectives' The te'ses and aspects io '<-,t

seenl so ,rrui-, st.i.rly Louna totime as to issues suclr as the sender's p,,.pur., the focus on differentelerncnts of the rrressagc, ancr trre pr,,jccti.l,r ,rf a sharecl franrcw'rk withinwhich the receiver wili unclerstau.1 ,1.,. n,*rr.g".'I-ense a.cl aspcct vary rrotori.usry [r,rrrr r,rrrguage.to Iarrguagc and aretradirional stumbling-blocks for learners. Tsuch as tl,. sl.ui. iSngues.r.ake ch.ices ,,i7jliT,',ir'^i:;*,,r';::i:f;1,aspe*s.which are <;uire at odds with, the E.gliih ,ioriu,,

"r a-.*.ill,! or*eve'rs in rernrs 'f 'r'w-releva'ce' (preseni-perfect) a'J .rr.*r. ,riii, ,rr.prese't' (past si'rple). ljowever, son.,e featur.s, for exarnpt" ir,. ur. orhistoric preserr in anecdotes, ,..n, *ia.ty ;;;;.i;,,;;; ;;;ri'iil;'.j.. 1,nEurope the Nordic a'd the Romarrce l.,,gurg.. .il;;il; ;;;"..j1 rfri.rr.,.,or nor such fearures are rrarsferre,l by l..rn.r, without .riffi;;it'i, ,nort.,rnatter' a.cl .'e w.rthy of cl.se observatio'. certai'ry i,., ,rr;;;1r;;;p..ific

occurrerces srrcrr as trrc 'redical articles disc.sse<i "t";., l.;;;;r

t",".-trmes experience difficurties or sholv ,uawareuess of th. .oiru.,riir". .r,rr.gelr re.

2.5 Conclusion

This chapter lras taken .a selection of gr:rm'raticar concepts and hasattempted to show how discourse analysii' has co'tributed to our under-standi'g of the relationship betweerr local chorces withi' the clause andsentellc€ ancl the organisation of the disc<l,rse as a w'ole. wtr.,rlo.lt.r,ill. *.ji::Lr-ire protlrrcirrg discoursc, r^ey nrc,

"i,f,. ,^n,.'ri;;;, ,ily "r.Dusy constrrctrng crauses, nronitori'g the developr-.ent of the lareer dis_course' and their ch.ices at trre rocar rever can d ,;;;, ,;;r;J""."t*r, ,"reflect the concer's of the disco,rse as ar .-ttrrutartrg ;."J".i.,r, *rr-, ""audience, whe.ther prese't or projected. A discor"rrse-orie'ted approach to

gj:Tt:.IT"1ld suggest'ot o'ly a grearer emphasis on .onr."rriffiih"nrne senrence' bur arso a reassessment of priorities in terms of what ii taughtabout such things as word order, articies, ellipsis, ,.nr. ,na ,rp".f ,nasome of rhe other categories discussed lrere.

It granrmar is see'to have a direct rore i. weldi'g clauses, tur's andsentences i'to discourse, what of words tlre'rselves? wh"t' .oi.-ao.,uocabulary choice play in the discourse process? It is to tt,i, lu.rtion'tt"tlve turn next.

62b.t

2.5 Conclusion

:

Further reading

The most detailed work on grammar above clause level is Halliday (1985), butsome prefer to treat this as a reference w<-rrk rather than as reading.

Monaghan (1987) is arr interestirrg, though sonrerimes clif6cult, collection of paperson diffe rerrt aspects of grarnmar arrd cliscourse,

For a dct:rilecl tlcscription of cotresion in English, Halliday and Hasan (19761 isunsurpassed, though Hasart's (1984) revisiorr of lexical cohesiorr shotrld also |ctaken into account.

The roonr descriptions in Dutch in Ehrich and Koster (1983) contairr furtlrerexatnples cornparable to Lincle's.

Another intcrcstirrg study of substitution is Jordan (1986).Ellipsis in conversation is cxamined in detail in Ricento (1987).More ou expressing cause ir.r conversation rnay be found irr Schiffrin (1985a).On the questiorr of the significance of front position in the clause in the worlcl's

languages, see Fuller and Gundel (1987).For word-orcler phenornena in various selected languages, see Giv6n- (1984).On front-placirrg in Spanish see Rivero (1980), ancl for Frcnclr, see Barnes (198,5).Kies (1988) contains a good discussion on variations of word orcler in English data.Discussion of the d ifferent theme-rheme patterns can be fou ncl in Da ne5 (1,97 4) , and,

further discussion of theme in P. H. Fries (1983).

For the distribution of thenre-rlrernd patterns in written rexts, see Eiler (1986) andFrancis (1989).

Topic serrtences irr paragraphs are discussed by Grellet (1981: 96-8).A good general survey of different treatments of 'giverr' and 'lrew' in relation to. theme and rheme may be found in Allerton (1978).

A conrbined investigation of present progressive, deicric tbat and pronominali-sation irr spoken technical discourse can be found in Reichman-Adar (1984).

For nrore on tense irr learned citations, see Riddle (1986).Aspect in the Slavic languages is exemplified in Hopper (1979 and 1982) rvith

referetrce to R.ussian discourse,Aspect and discourse in French is dealt with by Monville-Bursron ancl Var,rgh

(1985) and Waugh arrd Monville-Burston (1985).At the more advanced level, the papers in Schopf (1989) on rerrse in English are

worth pursuing.

I

I

3 Discourse analysis and vocabulary

'When / use a word,, HumptyDumpty said, in rather a scorn_ful tone, ,it means just what I

choose it to mean _ neithermore nor less.'

,The question is,' said Alice,'whether you can make wordSmean so many different things.,

Lewis Carroll: Through lhe LookingGlass

3.1 Inlroduclion

Brirging a discourse dimension into. language teaching does nor by anymea.ns imply an abandonment of teaching"uo.l"Uut".y. V""."fr"1"., #tt stittbe the largest single element in tackli'g r"";;;;:;. f* r#;.11. "nait would be irresponsibre to suggest tiat it wiil tike;r;.i;;r;il i,, ,o..ideal world where la'gu"g. ti".hing and rearnrng are discourse-driven.The vocabulary lesson- (oi p.art of

"'l..ro,rj will itill fr.". " of"J i"

"disco.urse-oriented svllabus; the chaile'g" i, to rr.in;;h;i;I# at-.n-sion inro vocabulary teaching alongsidJtraditionar i"a ..*"i, ,".1'.o,r,-municarive approaches (e.g. Gairniand Redman 19g6). Therefor., in thi,chapter we shall look at lesear.rr into vocabur"ry i,i .*t.uari-i*" i"speech and writing and. consider if anything can be usefully exploited togive a discourse dimension to vocaburary t."r.hing ",Jl..iu"iiry ".tiui_ties in the classroom-.,l4os.t are already in agreement that vocabulary

should,,,wherever. possible, be taught i''conrex"t, but .ont.*t i, lr"rfr*catch-all rerm and what we n..d to"do at this f oint is to rook at some of thespecific relationships berween vocabulary .hoi.., context (in th. ,.^. oftlre situation in which the discourse ir p.h..".al ar-rd co-text(the actuar rexrsurrounding any given lexical iteru). ihe suggesrions *. r1.,^il ,"r.. *irr u.:fj:::l_l: a supple'rent to conventional voJJulary,.;;G;;;h.r ri,"n

",a repracement tor lt.

64

3.2 Lexical cohesion

3.2 Lexicalcohesion

One recent attempt at studying vocabulary.patterns above sentence level isHalliday and Hasan's (1975) description of lexical cohesion. Relatedvocabulary iterns occur across clause and senteuce boundaries in writtentexts and across act, move and turn bourrdaries in speech and are a majorcharacteristic of coherent discourse. The relations between vocabularyitems in texts described by the Halliday*Hasan model are of two principalkinds: rei tera ti on and coll o cati o n.

It is debatable whether collocation properly belongs to the notion oflexical cohesion, since collocation only refers to the probability that lexicalitems will co-occr.rr, and is not a semantic relation between words. Here,therefore, we shall consider the term 'lexical cohesion' to mean only exactrepetition of words and the role played by certain basic semantic relatronsbetween words in creating textuality, that property of text which distin-guishes it frorn a random sequence of unconnected sentences. We shallconsequently ignore collocational associations across sentence boundariesas lying outside of these semantic relations.

If lexical reiteration can be shown to be a significant fearure of textuality,then there rnay be somethirrg for the language teacher to exploit. We shallnot suggest that it be exploited simply because it is there, but only if, bydoing so, we can give learners meaningful, controlled practice and the hopeof improving their text-creating and decoding abilities, and providing themwith nrore varied contexts for using and practising vocabulary.

Reiteration means either restating an item in a later part of the discourseby direct repetitiorr or else reasserting its meaning by exploiting lexicalrelatiotts. Lexical relations are the stable semantic relationshios that existbetween words and which are the basis of descriptions given in dictionariesand thesauri: for example, rose and flower are related by hyponytny; rose isa hyponym of llower. Eggplant and aubergine are related by synonymy(regardless of the geographical dimension of usage that distinguishes them).In the following two sentences, lexical cohesion by synonymy occurs:

(3.1) The rneeting commenced at six thirty. But ftom rhe moment it began,it was clear that all was not well.

Here, commence an<l begin co-refer to the same entity in the real world.They need not alwavs do so:

(3.2) The meeting commenced at six thirty; the storm began at eight.

In (3.2) cotnmence and begin refer to separate events, but we would stillwish to see a stylistic relationship between them (perhaps to create dryhurnour/irony). Decoding the co-referring relationship in (3.1) is an inter-pretive act of the reader, just as occurs with pronouns (see section 2.2).ln(3.3), cohesion by hyponymy occurs:

55

3 Discourse analysis and uocabulary

(3.3) There was:r. firre old rcching-chair that his fathcr trsccl ro sir in, ar/esk whcrc he wrote lcttcrs,'a rrcsr of snrall lrfrl.,,

",J .'a".i,"'irnposi.g bookcase. Now ail tris furnitttre rvrs to be solcr, a'd with irnls owlt Dast.

The supcrorclinate,eed'ot be a. imnrecliate superorcli.ate irr the fa'rilytree of a parricular w,rcl; it carr b. t g,rerar ,r,rrrr (r".rt;iiiJ;;",ri i,r.r.,1976: Ch.6). lnsteacl of funtiture wc io.ltl have ha.l .ll rl-'.r";ii,,r:rloirlurtrtthings,lvhich are exar''les of ge ,e.ral su;,crc,r.li,atc;. Ci;i;;;;;;;;;;rrr.r_ordinares,

-coverirrg huurir, ai.l abstraci areas, i'clucr , 1,ui[ir,')iorurr,idea ancl /act. Itcitcration .f this ki.cr is e.xtreurcry .o,rruiJ,r-i,, Engtirt,discourse;

've do .ot always"find direct rcpctitiorr of worcls,

",,a ".ry'orr.nfind corrsiderablc variatiott frou, ,",.,,",r." ,u se.tc.ce r. writing and frorntllrn to turn i. speech. such variati.' ca' adcl new dinre.sio,.,. "ii ,ruun..,to mea'ing' and serves to build up ar incrcasingly cornplex ."",.-rl ,i"..every

'ew word, eve. if it is essentially. r.p.^ti,rg o, p"..prr.^.ing d.,.semartics of arr earlie-r worcr, brirrgs *ith it lts ow' co'.otatiorrs andhist.ry of occurrerrcc. rn the case of ieircratiorr by .,up".urai,r"r", ;; .."ofte' sce a su.rrnarisi.g or ercar)s'lati.g furrcti,. irr tirc choice ui *u..rr,bringing various cle'rerts .f trre tcxt tiig.th",. u'crcr .'e, ,rrur.-g.n.."rterrn' Reiteration is uot a cha'c" "u.,it; writers

^n.r ,p..k*ro ."k"couscious choices whetlrer to repeat, or fincl a sy'orynr, or a superorcli.ate.,. Discoursc nnalysts Irnve rrot yct giverr us:lny corrvrrrcirrg rulcs or guide_lir.res as ro rv'e' or w'y a wrirer <ri speaker ,"igtr, .i.,.*i,ly"""ri, f..reiteratio' rather tha' repetitio., though ,un.,. ..r.r..1, ,ugg.ri;'" tinLbetrveen reiteration using sy'ony'rs an.lihe iclea ,f .r.-.nr.ri,ff i-.oorrrn,trpic w.rds i.to the discourse ar a later stage, trrar i, tu ,r/ brl,rgi,'"g rlr.,"back into focus, or foregroundi'g thern .g^i,., 1r.. Jorcla' tg'i).btherresearch clainrs correlarions bet*e.r, bourcl"aries uf .lir.;;;;..

-rug*'oir, 1^,.pposed to serterlces or paragraphs) arrd re-errtering of full noJr' phrases

instead of p.ronouns (see B. Fox 19g7). We nray .iro U. a.rli,r*'*irf, olexical parallel to the grarnmarical topicalisatio'ir.l,,rrJ-i,, il;"'i'.l.ln(3.4), we can observe the irnportlrrce of the worcls rotnte,,rJ -"yi" ,rr"foregrcrurding of the topi.c ir iJ,ir Lh,rrt exrracr, wlrich is hout to or"*'iy, ofgetting a contract, as indicated by the headline:

3.4\

HOWto get acontract

THE NORMAL route is tobuild up a following throughlive shows, send in tapes torecord companies and then waituntil someone "discovers, you.But there are other ways ...

bb

(fronr Neras on Sunday, l4 June 19g7, p. 22)

o/

3.2 Lexical cohesion

Such 'sage

as this is very common in English discourse. However, inpracticc, since our knowledge is inadequate, language teachers mustconteut themselvcs with observing each case as it-arises and, for themoment, work on raising an awarerlcss of such phenomena whereawareuess is lackirrg, and, most important of all, providing the lexicalequiprnent in L2 and pracice of the skills to enable learrrers to create rexrsthat rcscrr[rlc rraturally occurring ones theniselves. It means that it isimportarrt to nrake learners aware that synonynrs are not just ways ofunderstanclirrg .ew wurds when tl-rey crop up i. class, uo. ,r. they someabstract notion for the organisation of lexicons and thesauri, but they arethere to be usecl, just as any other linguistic device, in rhe creation ofnatural discotrrse.

Another implication for language pedagogy is that material writers whocreate their own texts or who simplify naturally occurring ones shouldremcmber that disturbing the lexical patterns of texts may lead to unnatu-ralness nnd inauthenticity at the discourse level; simplificarion may meanan unnatrrrnl nrnount of |cpctition, [or exarrrplc, cornpared with the vari-ation bctween exflct repetition and reiteration by other nreans fourrcl irrnatural tcxts.

A' aralysis of the foll'wi'g newspaper exrracr according to Hallidayand FIasan's principles, shows lexical cohesion at work:(3.5) T) RITAIN'S green and Anti-hunt campaigners estimate

.fD tH;"'o#fl1"yi'ffi; !tll,.J;33' il"'":t:"i'",i:X" ;lt l;fields" with the start of the fox make the grade.cubhuntingseason. And many experienced hounds

More than 6,000 y-oung foxes will be killed because they are tooenjoying their first flush of life will old to hunt.be hunted down in the next three The cub hunting season isjust amonths to grve inexperienced curtain-raiser to the tradiiionalyoung hounds a blood lust. pastime of killing adult foxes.

But the dogs will also suffer.(frorn Naars on Sunday,2 August 1987, p. l0)

Fox cub is rcitcrated as the near-synonymous young foxes; young hounds isrepeated, but also covered by the superordir.rate dogs in the rhird para-Craplr. Destr,oyed and killed are also synonymous irr this context (para-gr:rplrs 3 and 4).

Lea*ing to 'bserve

lexical links in a text according to Halliday and.Hasan's model could be r-rseful for language learners in various ways. Forone thing,. it encourages learners to group lexical items together accordingto particular contexts by looking at the lexical relations in any given text.one- of the recurring problems for learners is that words presenled by theteacher or coursebook as synonyms will probably only be synonymous incertain contexts and the learner has to learn to oby'erve iust when and whereindividual pairs of words may be used interchangeably.

3 Discourse analysis and uocabulary

3.5 Vocabulary and the organising o, fext

A distirrctiorr is olterr rrrerl" 1..,,,,o^r

" n g u, g.. ii;, ;:HiI':1*, |; ffi 1,", ;J:,Iffi * ;l;].1#x3;, ;

j; Ico',te.ft worcls, or empty wurdr rrersus frrit *nrdr.The clistinctio, is a usefulone: ir errables us to separate off rliosc ,

2,s t e

ln 2i n ttr e I a' g u ag.. air d *l,i.i;, .; ;;'; rlill|i,,:l' :j:**:-::#::ftlrar beloug b ,rtitt sysren.,s arrd wrricrr iri;,,g ro the rnn jor word crasses ofrroun, verb, adie*ive ard aclverb. i:trir,-'iroi, thr.r, ^Jnl"

thoiri,r,nrgrirhbelong to a closed system (as-do the p.ouou,r, ",rcr

prepositio's) and carrythe grarrrrnatical,..rni,rg'ul ;il;;;il#; es,. Mortke,, sculpture, notse

?!,! t?"u,nit belong to opin-e.'clea ,"t., rlri.n are ofre' thougrrt of as the'creative' end of ranguage. Jn betweer ,i,".."r*o extremes is anither type ofvocabulary that'as-recJ,.,tly b".,, ,ru;;;ily ,lir*r".;;;;;l^,i." ,rn. ,rrr,:::]:T,::

s'are qualitie.s,o_f b.oth ,t,. op.n ,,1rA the closed_set *o..1.. L.t u,consrder a paragraph raken from an aiticle irr a learrred i";;;;1,.""(3'9) l,ere I wa'tt. spe'd s.r'e tirnc cxanriuirg.t'is issue. I-.irst I proposeto look briefly.at the lristory uf i,rt",l.rr r'r'c proble'r, t'e'srre'd

::j::lill,l; :i,:",i5::: l:Ii,:lf li,::i:i.l"J;:.,;::, r, :;,11 ",.,,,Finally, I warrt to have a short peek at p,r..ltrt" f,,",r. pr,#.r.

(W. J. Kylc, Annals of tba GGAS, University of t.{ong Kong, 19g4, no. 12: 54_66)$7lrat is this article abortt? co'tr,lri'g pcsrs. o. fruit trees? Designingexaminations for seconcrary schoors? fn? irrritritiries are counrress. wharwe are lacking here is the

,vocab'ra.v' ,[41. *our.t iJ.nti'ii'iii""iru ,tr,scourse. These se'te'ces telr us a rot "t "*'11. structure of the articre, butnorhi.g about the aurh'r's_ r,tt ;..i r,.rt".r. rr., telr Lrs that the tenor isrelatively fcr"al (it is hardly llk;t ;i,;;';hi, i, ,i,,,.",,. .roli,,u,, i"r.r_mally to a frie'd why he/sile l;;J ,;;;;.'l;ied Dorred eggs), but with anelcme'r of infor'raliru

,{'r rtror.1r...r.:1. irr"i'"rr us trrar a probrem and irspossible solurio's wili be exa'rinecr, nrr.r thar ore parr of the text wirr dealwirh rhe past, anorher with the f,,;,,,;.-S';'rl

quite a uii "ri*i."iivork (they ".;;;;;;.&;?'*'jjiiffTl,tT j:ofte'said to be), bdt. in anoth.ei r;;*;;;.-;.;d to seek ersewhere in the rextfortheircontent'wlratwe'r'.rr.'ri,r'.l-i,ii"i'"ii";'j;;;;;,.**-,,tlte this of 'this issue' tells

"r ,rr"i r. .rtr]ffi * the preceding texr to find iout what the issue is; the lex.icar .".r"i"g'rt issue teils us to rook for rsomething problematic, somethrng ,h"; : ,'n"rr.. of pubric debare, erc. ,.

'The problem' works in " rrnttt"? ;;;.'l;r;rr. ert w,r identify with a .portionofthetextwheresomethingis6ein;luag.aorevaluated;solutionwill be matter whicrr ca.n be counterposed t*o'the 'problem,, and so on. sothese words stand in pt^.. urr.g,rr;;r;";i;;, (iust as prorouns can); a isegment may be a senteuce' severar scrrences ui " *rri."prr"grJfh, o,74

;{tF

J.5 Vocabulary and tbe organising of text

more.' wc, the reader, (or liste.er if .ur example hacl been, say, a recture)match the

"v.rds with rhe segme'ts, a'd, if we have d..oi.d t1.,. ,.*,correctly, carr reucler a. accouut of what 'the problem' is, or *hri .r1.,.

prospects'nrc, acc.rclirrg to the auth.r. we shall call worcls such as isslre,problenr :r. rl rrssess,re nt,t! iscorrrse-organising words, since ii ;, ,r*i. ;"1, ,.organise arrcl structure thc argume.t, rathcrih^n

"nr*aa for its cortent crr

field. Thev arc examples of thi general phe'ome'o n of signailiifJir."...ain Clrapter 1. Further examples may be seen in this extrait: '(3.10) Week by week the amount of car traffic on

our roads grows, 13 per cent in the lastyear alone.

Each day as I walk to work, I see theludicrous spectacle of hundreds of com-muters sitting alone in four or five_seatercars and barely moving as fast as I canwalk.

Our traffic crisis now presents us withthe classic conservation dilemma _ toonrany people making too much demand oninadequate resources.

There are four possible solutions: One,provide more resources, in this case buildrnore roads and car parks; two, restrictthe availability of motorised transport byartificially raising the price of vehiiles andfuel; three, license only those with a goodreason for needing motorised transportand prohibit unnecessary use; four, reducethe average size of motor vehicles, espec_ially those used for commuting purposes.

(front Cantbridge Weekly News,22Septernber 19gg, p. 11)

. The rcacle r 'ray

be curious to k'ow what extract (3.9) was about: in.fhctit is.a study_of the poll'tion of Hong Kong's srreams, coastal waters andseashore. Pollution as a subject couldte preiented to the .erd., in . uor,.ryof ways;.the author rnight have p..r.ut.d a series of claims

"nd .ounr.r-.ltL.r about pollution, or perhaps a general sraremenr ,fro"i ,yp., "fpollutio' a'cl then details of these typ.r. bu. author chooses ,"f..rllii, ,,

a.ltroblem, witl'r -responses

('apprdaches') to the problem .nd "n

eualuation('assessmerrt') of responses, in other words as a problem-solution text (seesecti.' 1.10). ]-his is clearly signalled to the reader in our quoted exrrac. so,as lvell rs rt'Presentiltg text-segnlentst some of the ,liscourr._ur*aniunn

words we are exeminin€ additionalry .give us irrclicario's of the largertext-patterns the author.has ch.scu, and builcl up cxpectatio.s corcerningthe shape of the whole discourse.

From this accou't of the work of certair worcrs in organising discoursesit will be appnre.r that the langtrage lcar'cr wh,r l-,as'tr,rt,rri! *iJr" ,".nw_ords rnay be disadvarrraged irithi struggre to clecocle ,rr" ,rrror"-i."irl'e.fficie'tly as Prssible arr.l as closery as pJssiblc t, the:rurhor's desiens. lftlre tliscorrrsc-org;rrrisirrg wortls arc r.",i ., sigrrals,,r,t.,..,,tr,urk ;;;;;;the'inability to undersrantl thcr' r.rr rnisirrterpietatio. of them could causeproblcnts.-

But just how many s.ch words are rhere i' a larrguage like Errglish? \flhatis thc size of the task facirrg the reacher an.r lear.ei in lhis partici,lai lexicalarea? sorne linguists have attenrpted to provicre arswers, iu, p.ob"uty no

(3.11) achieve, addition, alike, attribute, basis, case, cause, change,compare, conclude, con6rm, consequence, contrast, cleny,-clepend,differ, disti'ction, effect, equal, exeinplify, explanaiio,r, f..,,'f.",r..,follow, form, gcneral, grounds, h"pp",r, i.,ypoih"ti.^I, i,r.,",r.",

--

irrst^rnrcrrtal, j'stification, kirrd, rcacl t(), *a.llcr, 'latter, rnea.s,

method, opposite, point, problern, real, reason, replace, respect,result, same, similar, situation, srate, thing, timc, trurh,'woi, .a.

Frarrcis (1986) focuses o' what she calls anaphoric rtoutts and, givesextensive examples of nouns that freque'tly occLri to refer back to chunksof text in the way that 'this issue' did in ou, hr* example. Here is one of herI i sts:

:I: ,i,1:-:"rlqil;d a co'rplete list. Wirier (1977 and lizsi'ti* pr."la.d ,checklists, which reachers a'd material writers ,r.,"y finJ u#;i,;ffi;;h;"

calls uocobulary 3, a precisely delirnited sLrb-set of thi't4"r uwLttuttrut.I.)., rr ['rccrsely oellnllted sllb-set o[ thls tnore general set ofdrscourse-orga'isirrg words. Here is a selectio' of the list Tror. \finter(re78):

frorn \Winter

3 Discourse analysis and uocabulary

(3.12) abstraction arralysis approaclrassurnption attitude beliefcontparlson corrcept concocuollconsideration deduction cliagnosrsdistortiorr doctrine clogmacvaluatiou evidence cxarrrrnationfalsification fantasy findinghypothesis idea ideologyillusion inference irrsiglrtinvestigation misinterpretation misfudgementllotloltpipedream ;::iJ;x ffi'jffi:"l,""rdalisation reasoning recoglitionscenario speculation supposition

76

assesslllen!classificationcon fusiondistinctiondoubtfabricationformulationidentificationinterpretationmisreadingpicturereadingreflectionsurmisal

3.5 Vocabulary and the organising of text

thinking viewtenetviewpoirrt

(Francis, l'lll(,: l -5)

thcoryvision

1. Another trscf'rrl source is Jordarr (1984), which bri'gs rogether a largeliumber of texts aucl has a vcl"cabulary index. These -orii, ...-good sourcesifor teachers ard nraterial writers interested in this area. but rnanv teachers:will find it as easy sirnply to collect exarrrples of suclr *o.dr frornit. fr..r,where non-narrative tcxts, of the type where the author is presenting viewsand arguments and where such vocabulary is most r."dily fou,id, areplentiful. Irr vocational/specialist courses, the best sources are learners' ownsubiect nrateria | .' It might, at this point, be worth reminding ourselves that discourse-orgarrising wor.ls operate pretlictiuely in text as well as retrospectively:if a discourse ilrganiser does 'ot already have its lexicalisation in theearlier text we cxpect it to come later in the text and are on the lookout forit, at least the cfficient reacler is. In (3.10) above, dilemrna and solutionspoint forward in the texr and are lexicalised in the subsequent dis-course.

Predictive skills are ofter.r emphasised in current reading skills materials(see, for example, Greenall and Swan 1985); the study of vocabulary anddiscour.se organisation offers the possibility of a more srructured approachto this kincl of teaching and practice activity.

Reoderoctivity 4 *4The italicised worcls in the following rexrs represent either preceding orsubsequent seglnenrs of the discourse. Identify those segments by undeilin-ing tl-re appropriate words:

L I am alrvays being asked ro agree with the proposition that the Britishare the nrost anti-intellectual people in Europe. What other Europeanlanguagc conrains that withering litrle phrase 'roo clever by half iWherc else do thinkers squirm when they are called intellectuals?Wherc clse is public strpporr for the institutions of intellectual culrure- the urriversities and the subsidised arts - so precarious?

Bel"tin<l these questions lies a deep-seared inieriority complex in the'post-irnperial British middle-classes about rhe parochial philistinismof their culture, . . .

(Michacl lgnarieff, 'I'he Obserug,r, S February 1990: l7l

7'he issues which emerge have beset the personal social services forgenerations - accountability, relationships with voluntary bodies,what their role is, for example, but the contexr is different.(Netu Sotiety,28 August 1987: ii)

L.

n

3 Discourse analysis and uocabulary

'winter's work, and irs exrensio' in that of Hoey (19g3), Jortra' (19g4) andFrancis ('|986), raises sorne irrrerestirrg qu.r,io,rr, First rhere is the questionof whett.rer it is prssibte t. delimit ^7;;r;;';r,ri;.;;t;i;;; "ir".Tr"i".ra,that would be usefur fot r."d...1*ril;";;;r a wide range of academicdisciplinesinvolvingvaried textual rutrl".rl."rr.rs and genres. The norlonot a procedural vocaburary is currentryund., ,l.bli. i,,"++ri"a'rin"firri.,(see Widdowsorr l98i:92-4; Robirrso,,'tcSS).'ft.,. proc"duraluo."biiary i,basically words that e'able us t<, ,/o thi'gs"#itr, trr'. .-,i*it.i.i,r"* *.ra,or schentatic vocabulary. Anotherun.nri"...j quesrion is what happens ifthe most cornrnor sigralring *"",1; ;;; ]ui unu*n by trre rearner? Iscoherent text-dec.dini, serioJsly rmpaired u.-rr" ,u.h words the icing onll:,::9::t_*ia,y i, ih...,. oi p.oiu.tio,,iil,t.;i;;'i"iiil,,r""r.,'r,",.:^1.,1 :..-""rganising vocabulary, can rhe reachrngzrearnrng process capital_tse on tratlster in some way? Are ,rere direct ani reliabli ir",J",i"r-, f",words Jike poi,!, argwnerrt', iss.ue aud fact r. ,,,A i..n, .ifr.rlr,rr"rr.rl O"lartguages with cognate *ord, 1".g.

'nr"".r, p'1,/drlc, swedis rt faktum,Spanish cuesti6n) haue an "aurnrrgE

n..., ..'al, *r., I*itr.r.irjr. ffiarlThese questions cannot at be aidresr.a i,rl bo.rk of ,r".lin-,ir.i'ri"p.,but the vocabulary reacher .na ,n. ,.".,r.r"."n embark on rheir ownresearch witlriu theirprocess. owlt sttuatron as paft of thc ,learning_to_learn,

Reoder octivity S r.OLook back over the lasr few pages of text and note how rnany times I haveused discourse-oreanisi'g word's to r,ru.iur. t"y text. were you consciousof my use of theriat the-tirne of first ..rJiugi it so/nor, what impricationsmight this have for how languag. t.r"r..,

"irp;";.h ;J;; r;;;:i'"''

3.6 Signalling larger lextual patterns

So far, the discourse-organisi'g words we have looked at in greatest detailhave been illustrated iritheir ,61. of ,.p..r.nri"g ,.gn'.,rr, o?^r*i, p"..f_ling up phrases and whole sentences. But we also noted in section 3.5 thatthey often have a broader,textual fun*ion too, ,nd d; i;;;;;;r'f io ,tr.reader what larger textual patterns or. b.i,rg ,."lised. we shall now lookfurther at this ph.,,orn.non. In section 1-r0', we saw an ilrustration of aproblem*solution paftern Discourse orgr,rir.r, often contribute to ourdwareness.that a.probrem-sorutior p",r.i. is being rearised. irril,. rotro*-ing texrs, items have been picked out in bord to"exemprify iiir'p"i"r. l"/6

3.6 Signalling larger textual patterns

the first-exalnple, only the headline, the first paragraph and.the last para-graph of a rrrtlrer long newspaper article are given to show how organisingwords have lrcerr usecl to 'wrap round' a lo'g problcr'-solution te"xt:

(3.13) I lcadlitrc TV Violence; No Sirnple Solution 4

()pcrtirtg sertteflce Tlrere is no doubt tlrat orre of the 'rajor

concernsof lroth viewcrs and lrroadcasters is thc arnounrand nature of violence on our television screens.

0naitt text\

olosirtg sentence Thc chicf 'lesson' of all .rr vie wirrg, readirrg a.ddiscussion is that there is no simple solution tothe problem of violence on televjsion.

('l ltc Obseruer, 15 Novenrber 1986: 42)

The words i' bold predict (sol,tion in rhe headlirrc, concern) and reinforce(solutior.t,. pr<tblem) the problem-solutio' patte'r of the longer rext(o-mitted here for space reasous), in which various responses to the problemof televisiorr violence are discussed and evaluated.

hr the past, the search for otherrvorlds has been hamrrered bytrvo factors. Iiirst, planets aretiny objects contpared withslars: for instance, the sun, a

typical star, is 300,000 timesrnore massive than the Eartn.Sccond, planets do not shine butonly reflect light dimly from stars.

But Dr Campbell and his col-leagues sot round this problerr

by using high-resolution spectro-scopy to measure accuratelyvariations in a star's light. Slightdifferences in a star's lightshowed that many were beingpushed and pulled out of thcirpaths by unseen planets.

(fr<nn Tbe Obseruer, 5 July 1987, p. 4)

Here botlr problern and hampered contribute to activating the problem-solutiorr pattenl, while got round indicates a positively evaluated response.'!7c can

'orv begin to see thar a number of vocabulary items chaiacter-

istically clusrer round the elements of larger patterns in texts. words thatoften occur in the environments <lf the elements of pr<lblern-solutionpattcrns irrclrr,le the following:

Problent collcern, difficulty, dilemma, drawback, hamper,hirrd(er/ance), obstacle, problem, snag

Response change, combat (vb), come up with, develop, find,measure(s), respon(d/se)

Solutionlresu/l answer, consequence, effect, outcome, result, solution,(re)solve

Eualuatio, (in)effective,manage,overcome,succeed, (un)successful,viable, work (vb)

Likewise, other items clraracteristically cluster round the elements of claim-

79

3 Discourse analysis and uocabulary

counterclainr (or 'hyp.thetical-real') patte'rs, itenrs sucrr as craim, assert,state, truth, false, in fact, in reality,etc. SLrch words have fr.." fi.t.a ou, inthe followirrg texr:

(3.15) Historians are generally agreed that these values have been dominant, theyBritish society is founded on a possessive would also acknowledqe that the devel-individualism, but they have disputed the opment of iapitalist

-iociety saw ,the

origins of that philosophy. some trace it parallel growth ot anothei ideology,' back to the middle ages, others link it to Against individualism with its emphaiisthe rise of capitalism. But the consensus on individual freedom has been coun-is that the cornerslone ot this society has lerposed colleclivism with its egaliffanbeen the nuclear family - where man the values, and skess on the view thar onebreadwinner holds dominance over his individual's freedom cannot be paid fordependent wife and children. The values by the denial of lreedom to others. Theof individual freedom, self-reliance, indi- 19th century growth of trades unions,vidual advancement and crucially, lhe lhe cooperativamovement and organisedobligation of family duty to look after socialist political movements ire all0ne's own in time of need are central to evidence oflhis opposition to dominantits operation. within stricr limits and ,deobsl Because

'of this recognition

under careful regulation, helping those of collective rights and responsibil-less fortunate than oneself has been seen ities, feminists have always seen thsas parl 0f the individual's obligation to granting and safeguarding'of womenssociety, rights as lying within ihis socialist

But, although most would accepl that tradition.

(frorn Nera Society,2g AugLrst 19g7, p. l(t1

Jordan (19B4) is a useful work for teachers/rnarerial writers wishing to look1t-lrow particular vocabulary items have a tendency to .lu.t"r"in .".hdifferent segment of text-patterns such as the proble--ror"rio,., p"tt.rn. H.gives reference lists for the n.rany textual e*anrpl.s hc presents i,, iri, 6r"r.and has a coding sysreln.for whether parricular words typically o..* in ,t.'problem' secion or wherever. pari of his word lisi tcrr tlr. .1"i.

"ndcounterclaim (or hypothetical-real) pamern is listed below:(3.16) 'whenever a writer needs to indicate doubt or urcertainty he uses a

signal of hypotheticarity to indicate this. Here are exampres of suchsignallirrg words in the exanrgrles.

according to estimatedapparently evidentlyappears expectedarguably forecastbelieves imagineclaimed likelyconsidered lookcould may

(Jordan 1984: 148)

might seemsold wives' tale shouldperhaps signspotential so-calledprobably speculationpromises to be suggestsreported thoughtsays

8081

3.6 Signalling larger textual patterns

These recurrent features of textual patterning .rnay be exploited invocabulary teaching/learning as a top-down pnenomenon; once consciousof a larger text-pattern, the learner can be brought to an awareness of therich vein of vocabulary tlrat regularly realises it. As a bottom-up phenom-enon, Iearuers carr bring together in their vocabulary records items thatregularly occur in similar textual environments, e.g. the typical .response'

vocabulary of problern-s.lutio' patterns. such lists can be added to overtime to build up a rich, rextually-based lexicon. Ir is yet anorher alrernariveto the ranclom vocabulary lisr and the decontextualised, semantically-motivated list.

Reoder octivity 6 rr.O

Pick out words in the following texrs which are srrongly associated witheither the problem-solution pattern or the claim-counterclaim pattern:

1. All western countries face a crisis in cooino withthe demands made 0n welfare provision Oi tfreirgrowing elderly populations. The problem 0fresource scarcity is a real one. But perhaps notall countries have adopted s0 rigorously lasBritainl the view that care should be based on thefamily model.

Scandinavia, for example, provides residentialfacilities for elderly people not wishing t0 remainat home 0r t0 live with their families, and thosefacilities are often available for use by localpensioners 0n a daily basis. Elderly people in theUnited States have developed communities oftheir own, supporting each other and runningthem by themselves, as their answer to increas-ing dependency. Some have argued againstthese 'age-dense' solutions, likening them toghettos, but research suggests a high degree ofc0nsumer satisfacti0n,

Examples from other countries demonstratethat there are alternative ways 0f tackling theissues of caring and dependency, The familymodel 0f care with the high demands made 0nwomen and lack of choice and frequent loneli-ness for the dependents is not the only solution.

(from Nerzr Society,23 August 1987,p. 1,2) >

3 Discourse analysis and uocabulary

2. Local authorities believe strongly in the involve_ment 0f the public sector and the need for publicplanning. They think that it is more important toprotect jobs which are already in their area thanto attract more from outside. And since they holothat production is the key to economic revivaithey think it is more important to sustain manu_facturing.industry than to switch to alternatives.such as the service indusrrv.

Central government, on the other hand, placesmore.faith in lhe private sector for its schemes,and it considers that public planning hindersrather than helps redevelopment. lt usually dis_misses planning as ,red

tape'. Government isalso more interested in attracting new jobs thanprotecting old ones. Above all, it believei that themarket decides what sort of jobs should andshould not be done.

1[rorrr Nr,ra ,Srr, ;4,1;,, Z8 Arrgrrst i9li7, lr. -]0)

3.7 Register and signalling vocabulary

In claiming that particular vocabulary itenrs te'cr to ch-rstcr rouncr certainclenrerrts <-,f text p:lttcrls y" ,1. igrr,rirrg the irrrportalr t fact tltat-register(sce page .12) is closely rieil ro lexical sel'ccti1n,obltrir.l.,;r;;;;;;roposed pr<tblem, d,;,,r,:i;lt:iltJ:; i:::*;Jr'i:clearly^ we nright not expc* to fi'cl s,ag occurring in this way i. a formarscierrtific reporr,

'or pcrhaps. ,onrr. rf witlt as; ;;;;;;?";'irlrpor*(deuelop would be a more piedictable cl.,oi..1. Th.r.f.ii.,

", i,.,lll .rrr.rr,- the relationship between vtcaburary and register ur.d, io t. l."r*r,,

"",when srudying rexrual . signailing.'Lexicar'choi.. *rrrri,,"irr.' jjS,rtin.a

clusrers will depend on theio'texi (textb.ok, -"r^gi,r., ,.*r'..oJra .r..t,the aurhor's assumoriorrs about the audi",,.. i.;J;;."J);ir.lriir."i.^ "rthe popular tabloici press, etc-.)whe ther the style is to be reacr as .wrirren, or'sgroker', and so on' M.sr of the texts *. hru.looked

";;;?;rlr.". u.."toward the 'written/f'rrnal/cultured' end of th. ,p..t.un-'. ri.r.l* ,*./ more, this tirne with a more inforr'al, collocluial ;.'". Th;;;r; pr.r.nr.ato illustrate the fact that discourse-signaili'g'words need nor'ecessarily beonly rather 'dry' acaclemic words t"ri.n f.oin th. crr..o-Lrti" ".*i"r..yof English. The relevant words are underlinecl:

82

(3.r7)

3.7 Register and signalling uocobulary

Put orrlirrary cxtcrior varnish on your rloors and window frames anrl in notinre at all you'll wish you hadn't.

Wrxxl shrinks and stretclres whcn thc ternperature and humidity changes.Or<lirrary varnish, rlocsn't, so it cracks.

.lfyou tlon't strip it offand start again you'll bc in rcal trouble, your wood

will lx: opcn to atack lionr fungus and rot, uud .1rit., fr*klyjt ,jll 1.,,karvful.

(Advcrtiscnrent [or Cuprinol front The Obseruer,l2 July 1987, p. S)

Alongside more rleurral iterns like deuelop and recluce the risk are informal,rect addresses r() rhe reaclcr: you'lt uiih you hadn't antl qttite fr.o,rp"ii, i)look atuful which creatc a pseudo-co'versatio'al r.gister in wl.,i.t., ih.

element of problem is realised.

(3.18)You're back where vou started.And left with the choice of getting

down on your hands and knees to weedit out or traipsing off to the shops forsome more moss treatment.

So if you want to save vourself heart-ache, backache and a considerableamount of shoeleather, insist onLawnsman Mosskiller from ICl. You'llbe rewarded with a moss-free lawn forthe rest of the season.

Mix the sachet with water, stir, andsprinkle over your lawn. It's that simple.

(front Thc Obseruer Mttgazine ,5 April 19g6, p. l2)

llecide to tackle that troublesome mosson your lawn and you could find yoursellgoinq round and around in circles. Or atleast backwards and forwards to yourlocal garden centre.

Conventional nross treatments simplvwon't keep moss away for any length oftirne. You apply it and shortly after-wards your moss blackens and dies. you

!hnrk,aU@troln lt. I he ltttlo so and so's will turn uoaqain as sure as thc uroverbiil-6-adPennY.

j Here icliornatic phrases are used as sig'ars of the resprnse and its occur-I rence after a,.previous ncgatively evaluated ..rplnr. ('conve'tio.altreatments'). Idiours are ofren a problem for dre t."ih., insomuch as it isnot always easy to find natural contexts in which to present them. Research

, by Moon (1987) sLrggesrs rhar writers a.rd speakers use icliomati. ph.as.s to'organise their discourse and_to signal evaluario', far o,ur. fr.qu.'tly thanprevious li'guistic studies of idionraticity have suggested. Idioms

"r. good

metaphors for the kinds of textual segmenrs *-Jh"u. been looking ar(pro.blenr/resporse, etc.). co'sider how some of the following could be

, used i' i.fornral cliscourses to suggesr the problem-solution n;;..;,(to be) in a fix b be up against a brick wallto c.otne up trurltps (sth) does the trickto haue a cracl< at (doing something) to haue a brainwaute(to be) up d gum tree

speakers and writers use these in informal situatio's to perform the same:'kind of organising and signalling functions that the mor. fo.m"l uo.abu-lary does in writtcrr argurnentation.

83

in coursebooks and exa's, and are regurarry cit.cf as b.i,rg .ii-fdcult','bori'g' and 'demorivating' for srudenrs lr"y t.^.h.rr. Th;y ;;; ;f,. *i, ,t.,are hardesr .to unpack. Sigrificantly, the kirrcl .f ,lir;;;;;_.rg^"iri"gvocabulary that has occurred iri moit of our example t.*tr, th. "C.^..o,Lati' words found in argu.mentation and exp.sition, is typical or tt

" t ina

of vocabulary that research has clai're.l p.<liu."s . ;I.*i.rr b"r;, , ,.riou,obstacle ro progress in education, for children learning rh;ir fi*; ilnfr"g.(see corso' 1985). we should nor uuderestimate thi difficulties sJcondlanguage learners ma-y experie'ce with rhese words, p.r,i*irJy ,"rr.i.'*t odo not come trom a I{ornance_ or Germanic_language background.

Discourse-orga'ising words are b".t pr.rentld Ind p.".tiJin th.i,rratural conrexrs. sir'ply lookirrg rhenr up i. a rrr<1.'li'gual dictionarv canlead to a circularity of abstract clefirritions. Note how eue,, a good, n'od..nlearner's dictio'ary like the collins coBUlLD (19s7) dicti?rr*y-a.n".,ltroblem irr rerms of difficulty, and difficulty in rerms o( problent,

. We can now_begin to see. just how inlportant certain vocabulary it.n , ,r. l

::g,iTl'lg 9,:::utr..: Admittedly, we have concenrrated on'r.porting,exprsitory ard argumenrative texrs, bur learrrers freque.rly l.,ru.il u.kl. ,

quite daunting and lengthy examples of these in th.i, i*iLr""r.r,..""J.,syllabus specificariorrs often dcrnarrcl.that.rhey_ be studied. ii,.;-;;; ;;;:cisely the.types of rexr thar come fesroo'ed *iih .o,r.,p..rr.,rrl.,-, q".rtion,

'

3 Discourse ana.lysis and uocabulary

(3.19) p1ofulsm /prgblem/, problerns.I A problem is l.l a situationor a state of affairs that causesdifficulties for people, so thatthey try to think of a way todeal with it. nc. ...how fami-I,ies can try to .solve these prob-lems... ...the social problemsin mod.ern society... i think wemay Imve a problem here...She has a weight problem...The problem is that she can'tcook.

difficulty/drfrke'lti'/, difficul_ties. I A difficulty is some_thing that is a problem foryou. EG. There are lots of dif_Jiculties that have to be over-come... The main difficulty is ashortage of time.2 If something causes diffi-cully, il . causes problemsDecause lt ls not easy to do orunderstarrd. Ec. This concause difJiculty... ...questionsoJ varying dfficulty.

(from Col/irs COBIJILD English Language Dictionary, pp. 1143, 391)

3.8 Modality

one contribution that the study of vocabulary i' naturally occurring, discourses,has.made is to point up the all-pervasiveness of modarity ii

spoken and wrimen language. Modality is often thought of as the provinceof the closed class of modal verbs (nru't, can, will, miy,etc.) and t.."t.d ,,part of the grammar of English, but a large numb.i of llexical'

words

84

3.8 Modality

(nourts, adjectivcs, vcrbs and adverbs) carr_y_the same or similar meani'gsito the modal verbs. For dris reason, modality is dealt with here in ourchapter on vocabulary rather than in Chapter 2.r ' fwo no-table studies of modality in rarge amounts of discourse, Hormes(1983) and Hernrer6n (1978), show a wide range of uses of th. trrdLionatclass of m'dal verbs and. of a vocaburary of rJxicar it.m, ...ryi.,g nro,rrlmeanings, frorn the classic epistemic modality (concerned witrL de!rees ofcertainty and possibility) to the root modalities (volition, p..,iirrion,obligation). Both Flolmes's and r{ermer6n's data sho* thaf pi, i.g.ir...,other word classes express modality more frequendy than

''od"t u.rb".. l-r,.

vocabulary. of modality includes verbs su.h as appear, Assunte, doubt,

f!j,'j:^L?"?k^fj.,.ll:.,l"sf!l!:, lh''k,,adverbs 'u'h,.',, actuattv, 9',,iiiav',\,i.neuitably., obuiously, possibly, and nouns and adjective, ,.f",.J ,"-ri.#:(tor a tull list, sec Ho_lmes 1988). In terms of frequency, the verbs andadverbs are considerably more frequent than the nouns and adjectives.All these words carry important information about the sta'ce andattitude of tlre sender to the message; they are corcerned with assertion.i tenrativeness, commirment, detachment and other crucial aspects of iitrr_

i ??:.?,:ol rnearring (as opposed to ideational, or content, meanings). In theHaf f idayan rnodel of t.glrt.. they form a pait of ,tt, trrt"i or ii"':;;;;.r".It we take a later part of one of our earlier texts, extract (3.10), we can seehow moda.l v.cabulary represents another aspect of ,tiscoursal o,."ningover and above the organisatioral and. more general signalling

"o."f ut".ialready analysed. Modal irems are picked oui in bold,.-

(3.20) Inevitably, objectiorrs will be raised to the promotion of the motorcycle as the saviour of our environment.

It is dangerous: it can be but three-fifths of all serious mororcycling accidents are caused by cars. so, by transferring some driversfrorn cars to motor cycles, the risk can immediately be"reduced.

Departrnent of Trarrsp<-rrt statistics have shown ihr, "

.r, driver isrrine times rnore likely to take someone else with him in an accidenrthan a moror cyclist, so riding a motor cycle is actually making acontribution to road safety.

(Canbridge Weekly News,22 Septenrber l98g: 11)

Discourse analysts have demo'strated that modality is fundamental in thecreation of discourse; a// messages choose rom. deg... of modality, euen ifit is only to rnake a neutral choice of bald assertion (e.g. .The

cat r"i on th.

atte'rion to the modal verbs but, Holmes 1i9sg1 shows, in her suruey offour ESL.textbooks, that the larger vocabulary of *,oarl t.*i.rili.rn, i,often under-represented in teaching materials, and there does seem,o b.,need to redress the balance in lighrof what natural data shows.

; mat', as compared with the heavily modalised .l supfose it' ible therrr4! r so lvrrrpdrLu wrLrr rrrs rcavuy rrrooallseo l suppose lt's posslble thecat just may have sat on the mat'). I.xngu"g. t.r.h.r, have always paid

85

I r,,{.r.:r i;t i

l,'lriIi

iiI

i,lt

!

5 Spoken langttage

Donaldso. (r979) criscusses the rr:rrsacti.rrar/i'tcractrorrar clivicle, as we, asreciprocity.Tlre scrnirral 1,al)cr ()n ttrrn_t:rking is Secks rt ,r!. (1974).Also frorrr tlrar ti're Stalkey tisz:l ",,J ;;;.;;; arrcl Niedereh e (1974) are of

'lterest' but reccnt retrri'king arrcr criticisr' ur r,,.,r-,"t i,rg moders has c.nre fromHoutkoop and Maz"clend 1t9S-!1 arrcl flr*., "r.f'O"l Marrcllo (19g5).Ilow tur's operate wrrere visuar cues a[c

"b..',riir.t""lt rvith i, Buttcrworth, Hine__

arrcl Brady (1977) antl Ilcatie (l98 I).On telephone calls, see Schcgloff (1986).Toolan

.(I988) provides a goocl introcluction to rconsiders.lnp"u.r. u."t narrarive. rrarratrve' while FIinds (1984)

More orr the larrguage of roure crirections can rre foulrd in lrsathrs (r986).Ilygate (I987) gives eood cvaruarions "r p"Lrririr"i',nateriars for spoken Engrish,

ili'f;il::11:uu:,11:''.,".. ,h" g",'.,."ii-1,ii.",;",, or conversarion a'alysisIrrteresri'g r..",,r *.r.k..'liste.irrg are Ilicrrarcls (r9s3), G. Brown (1985), andAnderson and Lynch (1988).

lli

146

6 Written language

'l haven't opened it yet,,said theWhite Rabbit; ,but

it seems to bea letter, written by the prisonerto somebody.'

'lt must have been that,, saidthe King, ,unless it was writtento nobody, which isn't usual, youknow.'

Lewis Carroll: Alice,s Adventuresin Wonderland

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Text types

Unlike or-rr knowledgc of speech, orrr

Much of what 'eeds

to be said concerning writrer language has arreadybeen said i'. previous chapters. ch.pt.r't toucrred on the notions ofcoherence, cla'se relationi and te*tu"l p"rr..n, in. writte' language;Chapter 2 explored cohesion, t1.,.-. und'.heme a.d ,.,.,r. ,ni-^orp..r,taking ma.y of its exampres from wri*en t.*rr; "n,l

chapt"r J-.*rrri".alexical cohesion and rext-organising vocaburary, agaln exemprifyins with anur'ber of writren rexr exrracts. Even chapter i,';fih;;;h ii'i,lJ."i*-.allllt-:l].k.,'.t

language, made points th"t .r. ..l.u"nt ,.i *rirr.n ;;;.;.r.,ttre a*rve rrsrerrer a'd the a*ive reader are engaged in very ,i;;i;; p..-cesses, Also transferabre from trre rest of thi, b"oo't- "r. r*.'g.".r"r'0.i"_

ciples: rhat nor everythi'g described by di*ou*. analysts ir;i.;;;; ;" ",may have .any irnmediate application, in t.ngurge teaching, ""d,

o" ,1,.other hand, that rhe n,o.. *. can learn from l,r.ourse analysts as to howdiffere't rexts are oreanised and ho.w ,h. pr*.r, of .r.rting ;riri." i.*, i,realised ar various leiels, from smalr units io l,arge, the more rikery we are tobe able to create authentic materials ^nd ".tiurti., for the classroom.

knowledge of written text has been

| 4'7

6 'V/ritten languaE4e

Reoder octivity 1 rr.O

Ltrrk nt this list 'f cvcryclay writterr texts illrd rlecitlc h.w ,[ten you readand write such rexrs, o,t an oftenlsornetimesl\arerylNeuer s.rl.. iick theappropriate box ancl, if possible , compare your results with another person.

greatly assisted by the existerrce of huge cornputerised corpora of writtrrraterial such as rhe twenry-rnillion word llirmingharn colleition of EngliText (the basis of the colli's COBUILD dictionary project), and corpbuildi'g over rhe years has led to arr inreresr in ieiailed i"*orrorii,textual types. I-{owcver, we still lack hard cviclencc of iust how *ritt.n iimpinges.n the day-to-day life of urosr 1.rcrple. we cau obrrin statisticslibrary-borrowiug, or for

'ewspapcr salcs, a'cl gct so.re iclea <lf what

people read of these 'rnaiustreanr' text ty1'r.s, Lut a whole hidden rexists too, of nrenros, fornrs, notices, telexes, tickets, letters, hoardinlabels, junk mail, erc., ard it is very difficult ro guess just what people's dareadi'g and writing is. o'ce ag.ai', rhe language reacher is lefi with , rypoilog.y.based on iutuiti.n, or pedraps tt.tor",rft"i., rlran not, with an impfsed

;iting in m_ost general language courses. For writing purposes, letters ofrious kincls will always be a useful rype to

"xploit, but, in addition,llabuses a'd exami'ations often demand essays or compositions,hether narrative, descriptive or argumentarive, and it is here that teachersrd the greatest challenges in devising inreresting and authentic activities.e shall therefore consider how learners can bi assisted in s'ch writingills by the irsights discourse analysis has providecr inro texr types and theationships between texts and their conrexts.

Speech and writing

h spoken and written discourses are dependent on their irnmediatexts to a grearer or lesser degree. The idea that writing is in some wayra'ding" whereas speech is more closely tied to its context, has .oml

ji,:'This sarne variation in conrext-dependability is found i' written rexts. A'3ign saying 'No BICYCLES' is highly

-conrexr-dependent: it n.ray mean .it isrorbidde' to. ride/pa.rk a bicycle herr-or p"rhap, 'all available bicycles'already hired/sold', depending on where the notice is located. And wlLile it,is true that written texts such as essays, reports, instructions and letters do,tend to be more freestanding

"nd io'.ont"in fewer deictic .*p..rrionr,

written texts may still cncode a high degree of shared knowledge berweenreader and writer and be just as opaque as conversational tr"ns."ripts, as in

6.3 Speech and writing

s extract frorn a personal letter.

references to another text shared by the writer and reader'l too was sorry'), an exophoric reference to,the train' (see

syllabus of nrainstreanr texts, as the raw material of tcaching.

Read Write .)

os RN os RN

hrstruction leafletLetter tolfrom friendPublic noticeProduct labelNewspaper obituaryPoem

News reportAcadernic articleSmall adsPostcard to/from friendBusiness letter

It is certain that most people will read more of the texr types listed in the

Dear Simon,Thanks for your letter and the papers. I roo was sorry we didn't getthe chance to continue our bonversation on the train. My iournevwasn't so bad, and I got back about nine.

(Author's data 1989)

I

reader activity than actuallylearners, who tend to havedifficult trl gauge preciselylanguage teaching and to

148

write them. Nonetheless, apart from specialistprecise reading and writing needs, it is still

what types of written text are most useful infind the right balance berween reading and

e have here('your letter',

149

I j;,:tr )llJrrI;

J

i

t'j

6 'Written language

section 2.2), and the deictic bach, all of which clcpend on rnutual know-ledge to be fully understood. As cavesclropp... o,i rhe texr, we can onlyrnake intelligert guesses (orr rnurual krrowleclge in cliscourse, see Gibbi1987). But e ve n rransparent, highly explicit tcxts are wrimen by someone forsollleolle and for sotnetlritrg, artd thcir forrn is detenninccl by tfiese factors,hnplicitness and explicit'ess will clepend orr whar is beirrg cornmunicaredto whorn, rather than rrrerely o. wlrctlrer the discourse is writte' or snoken.

classroom acrivities which bring out rhe differences berwee. .our."udependent and relatively freestanding cliscourses can be devisccl based on acornbination of speakirrg tasks and writirrg tasks.

In arr exanrple ofthe task-based approach (see also exrracts (5.10-12)), agroup of German advanced learne rs of F.nglish rve re irrstructed to decide onthe clispositio's of furniture and ecluiprnent ir a room for a school openclay. The first phase .f the task was a cliscnssion in the room itself of howbest to arrange the furniture; in the seconcl phase, thdgroup had to wrire anote to the school caretaker explaining their requirernenis. Thrrs it waspredicted that the spoken phase would be highly ctinte*t-dependent and thewritten text derached from its irnnrcdiate context in time and space. Thetranscript oI the discussion irr thc first phnsc conrairred n nunrberof deicricwords and phrases such as'rhis corirer','a litrle bit to the side','there,where the door is', etc. The discussion also co'tairred the tu'r:takrng,exchanges and transaction nranagerneut that we examined in detail inchapter 5, as well as reflections on the real-tirne and planning constraintsof spcech in progress ('wait a rninute', ''ow, what's next?'). In short, allsorts of elenrents occurrecl that rvould be out of place in the uext (written)phase of the task.

The wrimen phase (the letter to rhe careraker) the' involved the learnersin a

'un.rber of differe.t discoursal problems typical .f (though not unrque

to) writing: ar absenr adclressee, detachment from the relevant phvsiialenvironment as a shared context for sender and receiver and the rlsulranrneed to be explicit, and the choice of lrow ro 'stage' the text (friendly note?bare list of requirerne'ts?). In fact, the two differerrt groups who did theactivity produced quite different wrirren ourput, arrd the feedback sessionafterwards with the tutor led ro a very inreresiing discussion on the culturaldifferences in sending a letter to a school caretaker i' Britain arrd in Germany.

This is the text one group produced:(6.2) Group A:

Dear John,

. Would you be kind enough ro ger roonr no. 4 ready for open day andas games room.You will need:

2 square and one rectangular table1 coffee table14 chairs

1.t0

I

2.

3.4.

6.3 Speecb and writing

5 easy chairs2 screensI dart boardI monopoly, I clress board, I set of bridge cards and I rouletteSonrc puzzlc arrtl word gamcs and *"g"ii,.,., (see librarian)Set up the dart board on thc left, on the wall rrexr ro door.Arra'gc -5 casy chairs arrrl I coffce tabre in the lcft c.rre*ear thewindow.Separatc the darts corner and the quiet corner with a screen.l)lcase put a screell on the edgc of left window irr order to shicld offthe quiet corner.Have a cu1.r of tea to relax. Thanks a lot for your help!(lCC data 1988-90)

Reoderoctivity 2 *4Here is the writte' rext procluced by the other group doi'g the activity. I'what ways cloes it differ from the Erst g.oup'r,

"nd ho* io the t*o1e*ts

reflect percepticxs as to how one writes to a school caretaker?Gror-rp B:Instructiorrs

I)ut a dart board between the window and the loudspeaker.Parallel to the windows, install a screen to separate,h. roo-

",distance of the loudspeaker.Put two scluare tables with four chairs each in front of the screen.Put two coffee tables with two chairs each on the right hand side ofthe door, between the door and the curtain.In the middle of the room, place another square table with forrrchairs.

(lC(-'clata 1988-90)

1.

z.

3.

4.

-5.

Similar problerns arise wirh writing activities of this kind to those whicharise with spoken activities: rhe learners may misunderstand the taskinstructior.rs and assume that the caretaker is expecting a note about theopen day, ancl therefore no.t include anything bura list ir r.quir.-.'t, 1",group B's effort seems to do), or else, as mentioned, there may be unr..ndiffere'ces of cultural perception affecting modes of a,ldress. vhri *n,clear was that the participanis did not *.iL in a vacuum and had formedquite cle.ar pictures of whom they should write to an<r what sort ofrelatio'ship they had with this person. Thus the activity not only brings outlinguistic differences connectecl with such things as deixis antl lExical

1tl

:ll

6 \1,/ritten language

specificity, but also specific problenrs thar are evcr preseltr in writirrg: who

tire reader is, whar tle wriier's relationship with the reader is, what the

purpose of the text is, and what textual form is appropriate' given. that

"nr*.r, to these questions are built into the activity or can reasonably ber

expected to be shared knowledge. This set of qtlestiotls ettcodes in another',i

foirn of words the field, tenor and nrode cousrraints of Halliday's rnodel of ,J

language in its social context (see Halliclay l97tl).Gtt.r, are a good exarnple of a discourse type lvhere the receiver rs

usually a specified individual or group, unlike the classroom or homework

essay, whiih is often written for an unknown audiettce, but with the overlay

of knowing tfiat the teacher/examirter will be the pseudo-readef. Letter-

writing activities can therefore raise all the inrportartt questiolls of the

relationship bctweetr cliscourse structure attcl conte xtual factors, as we have

seen. Theri also appear to be crgss-cultural problems-copcerning letters,

especially lrusiness letters. Jenkins and FIinds (1987) found significantliff..o'.."" i. nrie'rrrion herween Arnerican- French and laoanese businessdiiferences in orientation between American, French and Japanese business

.,i

1iii.ll':

i

)il,lrli{llll rtliiil,!

1

liilll!i,!,1

1:i

t,li'i:l

,,1

rllr i

letters; the American letters in their data were generally more informal and :

readei-oriented, with the writer strongly proiecting the reader's needs and '

assumed purposes. The French data were ruriter-oriented, with tl.re writer

lnrent upou protecultg his/her positioll and remainitlg lnore forrnal. The

Japanesi rexis oriented towarcls thc ntid-ground, tfie relationship between

writer and reader.So writing is not fundameltally different from speech. While it is true

that the rvriier usually fias tirnc to compose and t[ink, alld is not going to

be interrupted by the reader bidding for a rurn or saying 'Sorry, can't stop

norV, must rushl;, all the other important factors constraining what is said

and how it is said are present in writing as Inuch as in speech'

6.4 Units in written discourse

In all our discussions on speaking, the sentertce was dismissed as being of

dubious value as a unir of discourse (especially in Chapter 4). The sentence

is more obvious as a gramnlatical unit irl writing, although certainly.not in

all kinds of writing: sigls and norices, small acls, llotes, forms, tickets,

.il.qu.r, all contaii fr.,"qu.nt exaulples of 'tron-setttetlces' (lists of single

*o.dr, verbless clauses, etc.). The interlal construction of the sentence has

always been the provit.rce of granlmar' but in Chapter 2, w.9 argued that a

nunlb., of things in clause and senrence grammar have implications for the

discourse ,, " irhol., in particular, word order, cohesion, and tense and

aspect. For the purposes of our discussion of these discoursal features, the

se)fience will liave no special status other than as a grammatical and

trthogr"phi. unit which can be exploited where desired for pedagogical.

illustration, iust as the clause can.

152

6.4 Units itr written discourse

It is possiblc to devise interactive activities which involve decisions onword order, cohesion and sequences of tenses in discourse. The followrngtext-jigsaw has been used successfully with groups at widely differentlevels to focus on bottorn-up choices of these kinds. A texr is read ir.r

class, and any other desired activities carried out on it. When its contentis fanriliar, it is then presented in jigsaw format, divided up into itsindividual sentences (or irrdeed groups of sentences or paragraphs; thedecision is purely a practical one). What this means is that one group orindividual gets the text with selttences (or paragraphs) 1, 3, 5,7,9, etc.and has to recreatc seuteuces 21 4,61 8, etc. in their own words from theirfamiliarity with the content. The other group or individual gets sentences2, 4, 6, 8, etc. and lras to recreate the odd-numbered ones. 'When all thenew sentences irre ready, tlre sentences originally provided are discarded,the two sets of created sentences are put together to see if they rnake a

coherent and cohesive text, and the pair or group together make anychanges neecled until they are satisfied with the finished produc. Theactivity produces interesting results, as with this group of advancedlearners of English:

(6.3) The origirral text that was read and then iigsawed was about trafficproblerns in citics (sce extract (3.10)). The resultant text when thetwo sets of created sentences were dovctailed was:

2.

A

I. At prescnt, 75n/o of Englancls surface area is covered by some kind ofmatr nrade materiel, rnost of which comes in the shape of long stripesof concrcte bond.Arrd yct the governrnent suggests building even more roads in orderto cope with the problern of too many vehicles in our country; thiscan hardly be the answer.'While I don't in the least doubt the sincerity of these studies, my ownobservations lead Ine to challenge the very principles with which theyhave been carried out.Day by day I watch the traffic jam on my way to work moving even

more slowly than rny walking speed,

If I was to take this as indicative of a problern with the existing roadnetwork, the following could be said.There are four ;rossible ways in which this dilemma might be dealtwith: one is to build more roads and thereby destroy ourenvironnrent, two is to tax cars and petrol heavily, three is to giveout licences for those who really need a car, four is to take intoconsideration the use of motorbikes instead of cars.Conceivably, the first three solutions have been discussed ingovernment circles, but they remain within the simplistic carlroadmile computation which don't do the problem any justice. They leaveout of sight the proper use of each vehicle. This takes me to thefourth solution, which is in fact the ideal one.

(Author's data 1989)

7.

153

6 Written language

This activity lctl ro a cliscussiorr aulo,g trrc pnrricipnrrrs. Everyoue agrethat'thesc sruclies' (se're.ce 3) renclercJthc text incohercnt, ."a

"ir.*irisuperordinates such as 'these policies', 'dresc views', ,these ic{eas, wer€

offered to nrake the text lexically cohesive (see secion 3.2). Some in rhJgroup werc 'ot happy with co,ceiuaDl1 (scrrterrcc 7) ard with its front.placing, sirrce (sentence 3) h:rd i.errtionecr roacl cxpansion as an ideaalready put i'to_practice. Altcrratives such as ' fhc firsi three s'lutions maywell have bccn cliscussed', a'd 'The first three s.l.tio's havc p..Lr"uiy . . .lwere proposed. l-here were also nracro-level discussiorrs on fentures su.h asthe use of firsr persor and what some felt was a clash of register b.t*..n the'sarcasrn' of senre,ce 1 and the neutral tonc of thc rest oi th. t.*t, butrin[he Inailr, tlre grouP rnernbers were concerned with inter-sentential linkl

. The suc.cess of the jigsaw activity was ''crorbtedly

clue to ,h. f".t th.i',Ithe. participants were de.fending their orun text,'creared uy th.,trr.lu.rl;irather tha.. takirrg a

'roclel tcxt to pieces. The dccisi'.-,rr"ki,.,g p.o..rr.i

were br.ughr to rhc surface and i.clividuals hacl to explain a'd .l""fe,Jiheircllorces' a process r'ore motivating for lear'ers tha. having to explain thtichoices of arr i'visiblc, uuk'owr author. -l-here

has Lr..,i " t"ni.n.y inteaching rnaterials to see knowledg'e .f cohesiou as sor'etlring tc, be testedirr relation to textual producs, bur process approaches ."n oli., tackle thisa.rea, by getti'g lear.ers to evaluate thcir .w' texts as they are creatingtherrr (see Johns 1986 for further discussion of peer evaluaticins).

affecting cohesion ancl word orclcr.

Reoder octivity 3 r.0I ook at these pieces

'f lear.er data purely fr.nr the point of view ofinterse'tential connexions, that is, ignoring errors whicli could be said tobe principally serrtence-internal. Look for lxoblenrs of cohesion in terrns ofsLrch things as reference ancl corrjunction and decidc what effect suchfertures have on overall comprehensibiliry and readability.

1. (Frorn arr_essay on rown plarrnirrg lry arr ltalian rown planner doingan English course.)Unfortunately, not always the gmwth of cities go on with anattention research. lt's tlre cause of rl:rny problerns that people havein livirrg in big cities, arrcl also the destrtrction of the elrvlronmenr.

(From an essay ou differeuces bctweeu Itlliarr and British andAnrericarr teenagers, by arr ltalian lcarner.)fhe lSritislr, Italian a'd Aurcrica'tec'egers are rike, but I think thatfor the ltalian ree'agers usirrg to play football more rhan British andAmerican teenagers.

So as for the American teenagers using to play rugby more thanItalian and British teenagers. For use, British teenaeers like to look

t54t))

''ln sectio' 1.9 lve lo.kcd at fhe clause-relational approach to wrirte'rexr,ifj::::-:::j:::::'.1*11.alji::l'1"'or writte.,ris.o*,., ."ir'", ,r,",,1j*,v.

6.5 Clause relatiotts

viclcos and listerr nrusic. ln fact Britain is thc country of the bestnrusiciarrs of tlrc worlil.

3. (Fronr a surulnary of a text <rrr training astronauts; Italian learner.)Thc passagc spcaks about tlre astr.r,rn"ut,, lif". lfh"r" arc a lot of

'roblcrrrs r'vhcrr.rrc livcs in space, ard the rnost i.rp()rtarrt is abscnccofgrevity. lt is nccessary_a krrrg periocl of treining fo lcarn the basic.pcrurrirrrs rvhich arrow the rife and.the rvork withi. thc shuttre.

1'lrcy arc traincd irr sirrpre iobs like as cookirrg <>r crairy r.utirres nrrcr

::111"*tr, .pcrati.'s as cnrerge.cy 1rr,rc.d.,r.r, satcllire ,.p^ir; ;;;

(Arrthrrr's clata 1989)

6.5 Glause relations

containing a different lexicar crause signar. Ind"ividuais-.r*rJr. rrr.ii'.,*"

being c.-extc.sive with se'tences (though they so.retr'res are), *.r.T:t:seen as furctional sesmerrs (c,f anythingirom phrasal ;";;;;;p;'l.,rgrhlwhich could be relaGd to o.e anotrr.. 6y

" fi,r'ir. ,., of cog.itive rerarions,such as cause-consequence, irstrunre'tlachievenrent, temporar sequence,and nrarchi'g relations such as .."rr.rii"f rnd equivalence. Individual

segnlerts of texts combined to fo.n the logicar srru*uie of the whole andto forrn cerrai' characteristic patterns 1.1,.h ", probl.__Jurlo,rl."fn.sequencing of segnrenrs and how the relations rr.r**,.irr., ...'ri"r"rr.a

i were viewed as factors in textuar correrence (r;; wi,;;;; isli, H".r"1rr:r., 11"*ll- ll; lrgLrteis which coulcl b.e subsumed r.rncler the notion ofcohesion by coniunction in the last reader ..iiul,y calr also be viewecl frorna clarrse-relario.al stnrrdpoirrt,, irr .trrat.i'afprop'ate ,se of conjurrctionscreares difficulties for rhe reader in .elatirij segme'ts of rhe text ro oneanorher cohere'tly. Bur we arso noted i,i' cf,rpt.., z

""a :-'ir,", ,rr.borderline betwee' how. co'jurction. ,ig,.,rl crause rerations ancr howcertain lexical items do rhe same is somevlhat rrru.r.d, "nJiir"r'in].,iun._tiorrs such as and, so and because have their rexical equivarents in nou's;verbs and adjectives such as additional, cause (a-s noun or-u.lLi,' ,on_sequertt\ce), instrutnental, reason, and so on. Theretore, as well as activitiesthat focus on co-'junction and otrier l<rcal .ohesiue choices, activities air,edat tl.re Iexico' of clause-rerationar signars ,o;t;lr. b. ;;;i;r. ;;;;".,"-.r,ri"

activities can be used for this purpose. An ope'ing segment (which could bea sentence or more) and a. closing segment of , t.*t are glven to a group ofl::ij:,fl."'jl,9T:l llli .i.i Indi"uidu.l I, gi*1 th.-,t,., .1,ffi.",

'litliI..: i1

i,l,ii:llri i

,tj

]i

,'tiil

r.l

Written langttage

segment with as tnuch text as they fcel necessary, ancl thcn compare theirsegment with everyor-re else's in order to asser-nble the segurents into a

coherent text. This involves not orlly being satisfied with the individualsegments but deciding on an approprinte serluence fclr the chain of clause

relations that will lead logically to the giverr closing segnlent, and rnakingany changes felt nccessary to inrprovc cohercrrce. Irr thc following cxantple,groups of advanced Gernratr learners were givctr atr opeuirrg serltcnce:'Young pec,ple ttowaclays rre exposed to a lot of violcrrce on television, infilms, and so oll', ancl the concludion: 'This would suggest thirt some sort ofcontrol or censorship may be necessary to solve thc problenr.' lndividualsegment-cards llacl starters such as:

The result is . . .

Tbe reason is . . .

The {act is that . . .

This contrasts tuitb . . .

Typical of thc texts produced by thc groups was:

(6.4) Yotrng peoplc nowadays arc exposed to a lot of violctrce ontelcvisiorr, irr filurs, and so otr. -I'he result is that floocls of bloodsuffocate thc T'V news ancl filnrs all over Ilrropc. T'his contrasts withcourrtries rvhere there is a strict control of -I'V arrd filnrs. The reasonis an trprooted, deculturaliz-ed young gcrtcratiotr which has ccased tostick to the strigent values of their elders. The fact is that thesituatior.r has got worse and worse recetrtly. This would suggest thatsome sort of corttrol or celtsorsltip is ttecessary.

(Author's data 1989)

This particular group were unhappy with the relationship between the

sentence beginning 'T'he reason is . . .' arrd the rest of the text, as they feltthat since nothirrg had been saicl about yourrg pcople's behauiour' it was

pointless to give a reasoll for it, and a 'deculturalizecl generation' couldharclly be cited

^s the redson for violetrce on television. The opinion was

also voiced that the final text was a little uttttatural with so many front'placed phrases such as'the reason is . . .', once again raising new decisions

ou theme arld rhenle which had to be taken in relation to the text as a

whole. The group finally decided to move the words 'the result is that' fromsentence 2 to sentence 4 to replace 'the reason is', and then to reverse the

order of sentences 3 and 4.

The aim of the activity was to reproduce some of the processes of choice

that are involved in using the lexicon of clause-relational signals, once

again as an alternative to only examining textual products containing such

items. This does not mean that cohesive and clatlse-relational features

cannot also be usefully tackled on readymade texts; alongside the process

approach to writing, there is a healthy tradition of problern-solving

1.t5

6.6 Getting to grilts witb larger patterns

methods thirt inclr.rde exercises in inserting nrissing linking and signal wordsin texts. Tl.rese force the learr"rer to make vocabulary choices that take moretharr tlre individual sentence into account (e.g. Coe, Rycroft and Ernest1 983 ).

Reoder octivity 4 r-0Look at thcse picccs of leamer data, in which there seem to be problems ofhow iudividual sentences relate to on€ another. Suggest ways in which,either by using corrjunctions or lexical sigrrals, the relationships can bemade Irrorc clear.

l. My field of study concerns architecture. It's nor a 6eld of study, Ithink, it's a hr-rge world going from science to knowledge ofrnaterials, to the history and composition of cultures, ro knowlcdgeof psychological needs and wishes of men and women in the world.

2. The problerns of rnodern cities are derived from the IndustrialIlevolutiolr, ancl also if the cities of my courrtry were not interessedfrorn this everrt it's true that there are relations between every cities.

(Arrthor's data 1989)

6.6 Getling to grips with larger patterns

\7e lrave considered larger patterns of discourse organisation at variouspoints irr this book. The problern-solution pamern was illustrated inChapter 1, and again in Chapter 3 in relation to vocabulary signals.Chapter 3 also looked at examples of claim*counrerclairn (or hypothetical-real) pattenrs, and Chapters 2 and 5 referred to narrative patterns.

-fhese are not the only patterns found in texts; another common one is

the'question-answer' pattern, which has some features in common widrthe problem solution pattern, but whose primary morivation is the pursuitof a satisfactory answer to a question explicitly posed (usually) at thebeginning of the text. For exarnple: )r) ./

'r' o

t.) /

li'l

I

6 Written larrguage

(6.5) London -too expensive?It's no surprise that London isthe most expensive city to stayin, in Britain: we've all heard thehorror stories. But Just howexpensive is it? According tointernational hotel consultantsHorwath & Horwath's recent re-port, there are now five Londonhotels charging over €90 a night' for a single room.

But even ifyour hotel choice isa little more modest, you'll stillbe forking out nearly twice asmuch for a night's stay in Lon-don as elsewhere in Britain.Average room rates last yearworked out at around fl 9 in theprovinces compared to €35 inLondon. I

(frorn Morrel,r:rllc, Octobcr 198.5, p. 4)

In this text, a situation is establishecl which eouteius an unansweredquestion. Arrswers arc then offered, along with evidence or authoritativesnpport for them. As with 'possible responses' in the problem-solutionpattenr, if the answer(s) offered clo trot allswer the original cluestiort, thenother auswers are sought.

Other typical textual pattenls incltrde various perttttltatiolrs of thegeneral-specific pattern, where macro-structures sr,rch as the following are

found:

t:".i l'

Ii'; l.iiil:,1,li;ll

, lrlrlil

.i' I

I

i,l

lir,l

l:

'i;

,ii

,ir

:ll

General statementL

5peclhc statenlent I

Specific statement 2

Speci6c staiemetrt 3

etc....

General sttternent

Examples of these pattems can be founcl irr texts such as estate ageltts' sales

literature in Britain, where a general descriptiorr of the property for sale is

followed by detailed descriptions of inclividual rooms/features, and then,

finally a return to a general statcment abor.rt the whole property again (for

further discussion of differerrt pattertis, see Hoey 1983).

15u

General staternclltI

specrhc stxltcurent

Even more';pecific

Even more'specific

Gereral st*tcurc't

6.6 Gettittg to grilts tuith larger patterns

One point t() notc about pattenrs is that they are of no fixed size in termsof rrumlrer of senteuces or paragraphs contained in thenr. Another point isth:rt arry givcu text may contain morc than one of the common pattcrns,either follorvi'g onc anorher or enrbedded within orre anorher. Thus aproblenr-solution pattcrn may contairr general-specific patterns withinirrcliviclurl segnrents, or a clainr-counterclaim pattern ',vhen proposed solu-tions rrre bcirrg evaluaterl, both of whiclr features arc prescnt in this tcxt:

provide more resources,in this case build moreroads and car parks;two, restrict the avail-ability of motorisedtransport by artificiallyraising the price ofvebicles and fuel: three,license only those with agood reason for needingmotorised transport andprohibit un-Decessary use; fourreduce the average size0f !notor vehicles,cspccially those used forconmutrng purposes,

'l'he ideal vehicle fortransporting one personto and from his or herplace of work has been inuse lor as long as themotor car. l'here isroom on our existingroads for present andfuture needs but not ifthey are to be clogged upwith half-empty carswhen the motor cyclewould sene the samepurpose more than ade-quately.

lnevitably, objections

will be raised to the pro-nrotion of the motorcycle as the saviour ofour environnent.

It is dangerous: It canbe but three-fifths of allserious motor cyclingaccidents are caused bycars. So, by transferringsome drivers from carsto motor cycles, the riskcan immediately bereduced.

I)epartnrent of 'l'rans-port statistics haveshoM that a car driver isnine times more likely totake someone else withhim in an accident than amotor cyclist, so riding amotor cycle is actuallymaking a contribution toroad safety.

Our climate is tm coldand wet: Have we Brit-ish really become so softthat we couldn't face aride on a chilly moming?A good waterproof jac-ket costs a lot less than anew bypass,

But I must drive aBMW or Jaguar or I'llhave no credibility withnry clients, my boss, myshareholders: That isiust a matter of fashionwhich most of the busi-ness community followas slavishly as sheep.

lf the right personwere to set the lead andexchange his tin boxtraflic jammer for anenvironnlcnlally respon-siblc set of two wheelsthe rest of the businesssheep would be fallingover thenselves to fol-low suit and some of ourtraf6c problems wouldbe solved at a stroke.

All that is needed isthe willingness to sacri-llce a little bit of comlort,take a little bit of a riskand dare to be a littledifterent.

On the other hand,what is a few thousandacres of countrysideeach year and a ten-miletailback?

(66) Two-wheel solution'I'IIOUSANDS of acresof our countryside areburied for ever underribbons of concrete andtarmac every year.

Every few months aGovernment study orstatement frorn an auth-oritativc body clairns thatour nrotoNay networkis inadequate and nrustbc cxtended.

Week by week theatnourrt of car lraffic onour roacls grows, 13 perccnt in the last yearalonc.

liach day as I walk towork, I see the ludicrousspectacle of hundreds ofcomnrrters sitting alonein four or five-seatercars and barely movingas fast as I can walk.

Our traffic crisis nowpresents us with theclassic conservationdilemnta - too manypeople making too muchdemand on inadequateres0urces,

'I'here are four pos-sible solutiols:0ne,

(frcnr Ctnbtidge \Veckly News,22 Septenrber, p. 11)

Here we begin with a general statement and then, in terms of time, a senesof evernrore specific ones, culminating in a geueral statement in paragraph5 of the ltroblem that is to form the central focr,rs of the rext. The next twoparagraphs then put forwarcl possible solutions. The author's preferredsolution, tl.re motorcycle, is then evaluated in the rest of the text in a seriesof clainrs and couuterclairns with justifications for the counterarguments.Only the last sentence breaks the completeness of the patterns by raising acounterargurncnt that the author chooses to leave open, but which bringsus right back to the statement of the problem in the very firsr sentence of histext. So the text is highly pitterned, and its aurhor has embedded pamernswithin the overall structure of the text.

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Reoder octivity 5 r.0What patterns can yoll observe in the following cxtracts fronr the openinglines of two magazine articles (you have already arlalysecl the secor.rd onefor modals in section 3.8)? What text pattern woulcl you predict is going tobe the dominant one in each of the texts as a whole ?

1. Men can nrend stereos, drive cars ancl br.rclget rhcir pay packets :

efficiently; wornen are helpless when facecl with anything nrechanicaland are extravagant spenders. Chaps, of course, arc cool andrational, while wornen are swayed by their emotions and are slaves tothe lunar cycle. Men are polyglrnous, wornen nlonogarllous.Ridiculous stereotypes? Absolutely. So why do cpritc a lot of rnen andrather a large number of wonren still half belieqe them?

(O pt i ons, October 19135: 20 l)

' Can citruspeel harm?Did you know that lemon andorange peel is coated with waxand chemicals?

The skin of almost all citrusfruit sold in the UK is heatedwith fungicides to stop it goingmouldy. And the glossysurface is the result of bathingthe fruif in wax.

Could the fungicides usedon citrus peel be harmful -particularly since there's someevidence hom laboratory teststhat, in s rfficient quantities,they may produce cancers ormutations in animals?

The Govemment doesn't feelthere is any need to worrybecause the levels of fungicidepermitted are very low. Thelevels are based on therecommendations of UK andintemational advisorv bodiesfor the amount that;n b€coruumed daily without anysignificant effect.

(fromWhich?, January 1984, p.4l

t60151

6.7 Patterns and the learner

Finding patterns ir texrs is a nratte.rof interpretation by the reader, makinguse,of clucs a'd signals provided by the author; it is not n.lu.riion o1hnding one sirrgle right answer, ard it will often be possibre to analyse agiven text in rnore than one way. But certain patteins do tend to occurfrequently i' particular setrings: ihe problem-solurio. patre.r is frequenrin advertising rexrs (one way.ro sell i product is t<l convince people theyhave a problem rhey may

'or be aware tf; and in rexrs reporrir; ;hnoro-gical advances (which are often seen as solving problems

"." ,.*ouing

obstacles). claim-counterclaim rexrs are frequert i' political journalism]as well as in the letters-to-the-eclitor prg.r oi .,.*rpnp.., and magazines,(but see Ghade-ssy 1983, for a problem:solr-rtion orienrarion ro such i-etters).General-specific patterns can be found in e'cyclopaeclias ancl other refer-ence texts, t

6.7 Patlerns and the learner

If we look at lea.rers' attenrpts to create textuar pattcrrs of the kincls wehave describecl above, we find that there are sometimes proble'rs. Just aswe noted that learrrers.whole.overall competence *.i pou. crft.n gortrappecl irr the difficulties of local encoditig at th. .*p.nr. of larger{ig9ou1se ma'ageme't i. spoken discourse, so roo cau we obscrve suchdifficulties affccrirrg lear'eri' wrirte' work. if we look again at . ,.*i f.on,which we took an exrra* earlier, dris time reprod'cing ihe whole texr, wecan sce an attempt at a general-specific pattefr.l which seems to iust end inmidstream, lacking the typical i.turn io a general ,r",...n, after thespecific examples that is gxpscled in a well-formed texr. On the other hand,one coulcl equally say that the text sets out to create a ,ur.ber of descriptrvecontrasts, but gets 'lclst' in a digression about Britai.,s ascendancy in rheworld of music:

(6'7) (generttl st.ttement) The British, Italian and Anrerican reenagers arelike, (specific: nt<tdificatiorr of generar stdte,rrent) but I thinlithat forrhe Italian rcenagers rrsing to play footbarl rnore rha'British andAnrericarr teenagers.

(specifc: parallel modification) So as for the Arnerican teenasersr.rsirrg to play nrgby more rhan Italian and British teenagcrr. (ni*specific) F<ir use, British reenagers like to look videos uid li.i.nnrusic. (r/rgressioni) In fact Britain is the country of the bestnrusicians of the world. (entl of text\

(Author's data 1989)

It is extrernely doubtful whether the wrirer (a highly educatcd, marureperson) would write such an unsrru*ured rexr in hii uwn native ranguage.It is quite clear rhat rhe'srresses of creating the text (and the frJdu.n,

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crossi'gs-rut irr the r'arruscript s.pport rhis) at thc levcl of Iocal ch<;ice ofgramnrar arrd vocabular.y has provccl t.o rruch, arrcl all ,",rr",rf uu.rrllplarrnirrg has bcen abanclonecl.'

At lower lcvels, clausc- ancr scntcrrcc-clraining irctivitics ca' take thestrairr off nracr'-level plar'ing but still procluce . i.rr,r.r-g.r.,.r.i.ii.-, r",scruti'y in class. As with the clir.se-rclati.'ar chainiirg

^...i"iiy, .".tIea*er cre:ltes a texturrl segnre.t relcvart t. a givcu topic, but with thesegnreut-startcrs corrt:rirrirrg sigrral wortls of tlrc (irr tlris case) l.rolrlem_sohrtion srrufiurc. For an all-rtalian group of archiiccts .,,a .rrul.lr,r,r.,.urrtplan'ers o. a' inte'sive E'glish .a-ra., trrc topic selrte'cc was: .Nowa-days, more a.d nr.re pr.opl. wa.t to ,-,r" t1.," .u,,,rrrfri,l"

'io, l.,ru..

purposcs.' -f lre stnrtcrs wcrc:

Ilrrt tltc ltroblcnt is . . .

Planners hrtue ttn important role to ltlay: . . . .Orre possible solutiott to tlte problei,, i, . . .

These were desig'ccl to.gererate tr're ltrtbretrt, a respot'*e fro'r plar.ers a.da possiblc solutiort. l-hus thc rcxr srage of the :rcriviry, ,".irir"iii,rg ,lr.irrrlivi.lu:r.l scgnlclrts irrto a colrercllr tcxr: is grriclctl lry t.,1,' .f ,,*,, .:,,,,r,1i,,"of typical problern-solurirr secluenc.r. l.i.," .lir.ussion .,'' l.q,,",r.l,rg

"rsegments and rrecessary changes to the text was carriccl o,r in the learners,L1 o' this occasiorr. The authclr of extract (5.7) was a ure'rber nf th. g.,.,uprvhosc final text is reprocluced here:

(6'8) Nowaciays, nrore arcl rnore pcopre wart to use tlre cou.tryside forleisttre purposes. But the problenr is that tlre ur[r:rnisrn take ouer anddonrinatcs it. plarrrcrs rrlve rr irnportarrt r.rc to pray: they have tocrrsure the comnrunity thc right disti'ctiorr b"t*.",l ,r".", fu,working tinre arrd for leisrrrc plrrl)oscsr nrrd rrrorcovcr to locate tlrrsIast activities in the best corrve'ie.t situatiorr f.r ur.st .I pe.pre. onep<-rssible solutiorr to thc prorrrcnr is thrt pcoprc hlve to kuow theadvarrtages to live far fronr traffic ancl rroise, lreceuse a calnr placewhere everybocly can have a rerati.rrship witrr itself, it is'eccssaryfor our soul.

(Author's clate 1989)

The author o-f tex-t (5.2) cornposed the serreuce lregi'ni'g 'but the problemis ..'', which reflects his lexic.-gramrnatical r'.ikn.rr.r.unrpr..J *iththe others in the_group, but i' teirns of the fi'al text, whiclr w'r, ,*a ro,remedial vocabulary ancl grarnmar work, his co'tribLrtio. was as useful asthe rest.

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Reoder octivity 6 r.OAn aclva'cecl group r-rf Ger'ra. lea.rers of English produced the followrngsentcrlces basecl on the topic. card (seen by all rnenibers of the group) anclsegrncnt-starters given (in italics). Vhat, in yonr opinion, would be the bcstorder for tlre scnterrces to rnake a satisfactory tcxt? How many possibleacceptable orclers are there? what changes would you like ro nr"ke to tl.,ewording of inclividual senrences?

T.1ric: 1. Fo.tball hooliganism is a conunctn lthan.ntenon itt n lot of1 l.trtopean countries.

2. Orre ltossible solutiott to reduce the worst effects might be, 6rstof all, to stop violent fans from entering the stadiurn.

3. 'fhe reason for the fans aggressive behaviour is their socialbackground.

4. 'l'he ltroblent is how t' interfere witho.t cancelling all footballrnatclrcs arrd witlrout frustrating the real rrorr_violent fans.

-5. 'f lte siruatiort carr [re describecl as foll.ws: rhousarcls of peopre. are injured every rveckend and a lot of danraqe is done to tlre

stadiums.

(Author's data t989)

Auother interesting aspect of learners' success or otherwise in macro-levelcomnrunication in their writing is how they use the kind of discourse-signalling vocabulary discussed in sections 3.5-6. what is sometimes observ-able in leanrer data is that, although the overall parrerning is presenr, mlsuseof sigualling worcls cau disorient the reader somewhar. This extracr is froma sunlmary of a text on the problems of training asrronauts to live in space:

(6.9) As soon as a rnan of our century realizes we're going to reach thec.rrplete crntrol .f cornnruricating and travelling in space, he has toconsicler the huge number of difficulties that overcome with thedeveloping of space travels. I

Science and technique may develop to hinder a lot of problems.like for example loss of oxyge', inrense cold, severe radttion bursrsand so on.

(Author's data 1989)

The 6rst infelicity in discourse-signalling vocabulary occurs with 'difficul-ties that overcome', but here it is not entirely clear whether the problem isIexical; it may be (interference from a cognate form ir Italian whlch hides afalse friend) or it cor-rld be syntactic, insomuch as many langr.rages use a'that' consr.r*ion where English would have an infinitive ('Jifficulties ro

i

6 \Yritten language

ouerconte'), br,rt the vclcabulary-cftoice teltcls to be clonripated by tfie quite

plausible syutax hcrc, autl nrqst rcaclers prcsclttecl with the text suffer

iisorientati<tn. "fhe secqn.l error, 'to ltindcr a lot of problenls' is more

obviously lexical, and ulrderlipes the point t'rlatle in Chapter 3 abou.t the

importarice of grouping words together along cliscottrse-futlctional lines,

,nil ,ugg..r, " iol. f,,rihe tcaclring of collocating pa.irs irr the case.of such

*or.lr..'A sinriltr collocatiottal prttblcrrr scellts to ltave <lccttrred in the

football hooliganisnt text itt Readcr activity 6: otre does not rrornrally

interfere to solve a problem (irtterfercnce r-rsually suggests ma.king things

worse); in English, ole interuencs to solve problems. Such local errors

clisorient the rcader in tl.re sense that he/she is cotrtitrttottsly making pre-

clictions ebout the text as a whole ancl its likely secluencing ancl patterlling'

6.8 Culture and rhetoric

Our data cxantples so far show orre thinP,: F.Lrropeatt leartters of English in

general are pcifectly capalrle of tra_nsfcrriug discourse patterns .such as

itroblem-solutiol patterns fronr tlteir L1 tq an L2 (as witnessed in the

chaining activities). Where problems arise, thcy seetn to be relatable to lack

of lingJistic competeltce ai the lexico-gratnlrlatical level ancl the natural

difficu-lties of coping with global planning wheu one is under great stress

encoding at the seritence level. But what of the writing of lear-ners from

cultures"quite differertt frotn Westcrtr olles? Are thcre established llorms o[

rvriting iri other literate cultures that are clifferent and nright therefore be

exoect'etl to interfere with the lnacro-level clecision-r.naking of the learner

rvnting in F,nglish?

The"area uT .rosr-.r',1t'-rral rhetoric studies has spawned a vast literature

of its own, and a solnewhat confusilg one. Ott the otre hancl, linguists claim

in Ir.u. .uid.,.,.. of tcxtual parrenls iir other languages not found in English

writing; on thc other harrd, there is disagreemeut over whether these

patter;l; are transferred and cause intcrference when the learuer writes ln

irrrgfltft. A paper by Kaplan (1956), in whicS he posited-a typology for

t.*'iurl projr.rrio,r with different rypes associated wit[ different cultures,

*r, ".iy iifluential, but has since- been undermi.ed by other studies.

r"prr" ,ugg.rt.d that English rexr was characteristically linear and hier-

.r.j.,i.^I, ,i[,ile s.mitic (llebrew and Arabic) text was characterised by

oarallelisrn; Oriental text had 'ildirectiop' as a characteristic, and Russian

lnd Ror"n.e texts had a preference for cligressions. Sonre evidence seems

io ,uppor, differences i' textual structure, such as the acceptability in

j;p;.'r. rexrs of whar seems to the Englis6 eye to be the abrupt insertion of

irr.l.u"n, matrer (see Hinds 1983), or certain features of word order and use

oi funlun.tiors t6at are redolent of Indian languages being.carried over

into writing i6 Indian b,rrglish (Kachru l'- -)' Sinrilarly, clifferences irr

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6.8 Culture and rhetoric

prefercnce of particular therne-rheme sequences (see section 2.3) have been

claimed. Even within the satne language family differences have been

suggested: Gerurarr acadcnric texts seem to allow a greater amount ofparenthetical irrformation and freedom to digress than English writing ofthe sanre kind, and thcre is sonte evidence that English writers tend to use

topic se ntences at the lrcginning of paragraplrs where German writers mightprefer a bridging sentcnce between paragraphs.

But by u() rncalls evcryone agrees that such teltdettcics are significant, northat they cause problerns for language learners. Typical of the confusiorl is

the case of Arabic and Chinese: Kaplan had spoken of parallelism forArabic and indirection for Oriental texts, but Bar-Lev (1985) finds more ofa terrdency to 'fluidity' in Arabic text (i.e. non-hierarchical progression witha preference for'conuexion with and, but, and so), and claims that paral-lelisnr is a property of Chinese and Vietnarnese. Aziz (1988), however, finds

that Arabic text has a preference for the theme-repetition pattern (the firstof the three theme and rheme patterns discussed in section 2'3), rnaking itdifferent from Englislr and indeed suggestiltg a sort of parallelism. Thenagain, as regarcls Chirrese, Mohar.r and Lo (1985) found no marked diffcr-ences between Chirrcse texts atrd English ones. 'lhis sort of conflictingevidence does not provide the answers to the sorts of questions language

teachers arc concerned with. Nor is the picture any clearer with regard to

whether there is cross-cultural interfereuce for learners. Language teachers

are therefore left with irrtuition, experience and tl-reir own data as the most

reliable resources for cleciding whether interference is a problem.What we find frecluently in examining Middle Eastern, Oriental and

other learner data in English are the same probletns uoted in European

data: that bad discourse organisation often accompanies poor lextco-

grammarical compbtence. Just as we observed an ltalian learner failing to

produce a satisfactory ar.rd cornplete general-specific pattern in compartng-British

and Italian reenagers (extract 6.7), so we find similar difficulties witha Japanese low-level learner doing the same task:

(6.10) British teerragers watching television. Boys and girls many people'

My country teenagers very more people watching television, because

my country television more select. My country TV have channell

no. 1, 3, 4, 6,8, 10, 12.

British teenagers playing football very famous. But my country

teenagers playing baseball very famous'

(Author's data 1989)

Reoderoctivity 7 r'0Consider this essay on differences between English and Japanese teenagers

by a highcr-level lapanese learner of English. f)oes it display better

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discourse pattcrning than extract (5. l0), ancl if so, in what way(s)?

I'd likc to corn[)arc the hnbits of tecrragcrs with those of teenagers rn

nly country.Irr Britairr both boys arrci girls spent tinre for watching'fV,

listening to recortls anrl goirrg to clisco.'fhat is the sarne teenagers inmy country. Of coursc therc are sotttc lcisurc for girls arrtl for boys.llritish girls spent lnost tinrc for goirrg to the cirrcnra and tirle withboyfricnd. l'hat is a little bit cliffererrt frotrt tecnegers irr my country,rny sistcr wlro is 1-5 yeais ol.l, sltc spctrt rlr()st tinrc for slropping ancl

stuclying- I think.fapan arrd Britain arc differcrrt from educatiotrsystem that's rvhy Japanese tcellagers spcllt rlr()st titne for

' studying.Llritish boys spent lnost tinrc for footbell lrecause, iu this country,

football is the rnost popr.rlar sp()rts thxt's why thcy spellt most timefor football. In Japan baseball is tlre Iuost popnrlar sp()rts so Japancseboys (teenagers) spent tnost tilrtc for baseball.

If thc culturc is sirnilar Japarr ancl Ilritain it lvoultl be a sanle resultbut irr fact Japan and Britain are cornpletely different frorn theculture. For exanrple, food, religion, poptrlar sports and so otr. So theresult is a bit cliffcrent.

(Autlror's data 1989)

'fhe argunrents we have been rnxkirlg abor,rt the link between lexico-grammatical competence and discourse conlpetetrce do trot mean thatparticular features in the realisation of discourse pattcrlllttg cannot be

irr.,1rrou.d or directly taught; the main point is that nlacro-patterlls them-

selves do not seem to be lacking once reasonable general competeltce has

been achieved, ancl that, where the rnacro-patterlls are abseltt, there seem tobe basic clause- and sentence-level problems that demand higher priority in

teaching. Nonetheless, we have argued that while lower-order skills are

being taught, the higher-order fcatures can lre practised through pair andgroup activities such as chaining and text-iigsaw activities, wltere the

macro-level decisions can be discussed in the learners' L1, or if in L2, then

at least divorced frotn the inrnrediate stresses of encocling the individualclauses and sentences.

The sorts of discourse features that do lend thentselves to direct interven-tion are likely to be discourse-signalling vocabulary, appropriate use ofcoujunctions and other linking words, and perhaps a closer look at refer-

ence and ellipsis/substitution. There does seetn to be some evidence thatlearners do not handle anaphoric reference at the text level as efficientty as

they might, but again it is not always clear whether this is because some

languages tolerate more repetition of the noun head rather than pronomi-nalisation, or that they use ellipsis for sttbsecl''-nt occtlrrences of the same

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6.8 Culture and rhetoric

entity aftcr first lnention (as seems to operate in Japanese), or indeedwhether local encoding stresses are once more to blame rather than cross-linguistic interference. If we exarnine two of dre sentences from the Japan-ese learner's text in Reader activity 7. we see an unnatural amount ofnouu-head repctition:

(6.11) llritish boys spent most time for footl;dll bccause, in this corrntry,

fo<ttbill is the rnost popular sports tlrat's why they spent most timef<tr fti<ttball. lu Japan baseball is the most popular sports so Japaneseboys (teerragers) spent nrost tirne for baseball.

Something like this might sound more natural:

(6.12) llri,tish boys spend rnost of their time playing football, becar-rse in thiscor.rntry it is the rnost popular sport, and that is why they spend mostof their time playing it.

We rnight even wish to look at the possibilities for substitution and reducethe last part of the tcxt to 'and that is why this is so'. Such changes to thetext do not hide the nrore obvious lexico-grammatical errors, but theycertainly improve the overall feeling of naturalness once the lexico-grammatical errors have also been dealt with. But it is not always easy toseparate discourse-level weaknesses from the local lexico-grammaticalones, especially when the latter are thick on the groLlnd in a piece of learnerwnullg.

Reoderoctivity B -'OIn what way(s) coulcl this paragraph from a Korean leanrer's essay beimproved in terms of discourse features such as conjunction, anaphoricreference, ellipsis/substitution? You may find it helpful to correct the moreobvious mistakes in grammar and vocabulary first, and then to reread thetext.

Korea lras clcvcloped radically in econotny over the past 25 years. Allirrclustries have developed and especially meclranical industries haveadvanced, for example, electric, steel and car industries. As a resultdevelopment of industries, Korea has become rich country andaltnost houses have had televisions, videos and cars.

(Author's data 1989)

Paying attention to the grammar-and-discourse features described inChapter 2 is a partial means of attending to the writer's responsibilitytowards the reader, in terms of assisting orientation to the writer's argument

167

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and giving signals to the reader as to how tlre segments of the text relate toone auother. Process approaches to the teaching of writing tend to includesuch features auyway, and sot.ne materials for the tcaching of writing doalso take into account the rnacro-planrritrg of text with regarcl to patternssuch as problenr solution and others we havc lookecl at (e.g. Harnp-Lyonsand l-Ieasley 19t37).

6.9 Discourse and the reader

.We canrrot leave this chapter, and indeed, the whole discussion of discourse

analysis and languagc teaching, rvitl.rout considering the influence of dis-colrrsc analysis on the teaching of reading. What we shall conclude aboutdiscourse and reading in fact follows consistently from what we have saidin this chapter arrcl itr earlier ones: rffe callnot explain disctturse pattentingat the macro-le vcl without payirrg due attentiort to tltc rolc of granrrnai andlexis; by the same token, we cannot fostcr good reacling without cousider-ing global ancl local reading skills sirnultaneously.

In recerrt years, (luestions of rcacling pedagogy h:rve cetrtrecl on whetherbottom-up (i.e. decoding of the text step-by-stcp frtlm srnall textualelernents such as worcls and phrases) or top-clowtt (using ntacro-level clues

to decode the text) strategies are rnore ilnportant. Tlte detrate scems to havesettled, quite sensibly, oll a compromise betwectt local and global decoding'and there is gerteral agreelnent that cfficicnt readers ttse top-down and

bottom-up processing simultaneously (..g. Eskey 1988). This fits with ourgeneral view of discourse as being rnanifestcd itt tnacro-level patterns towhich a constellation of local lexico-grammatical choices contribute. Thebest reading materials rvill encourage an ellgagement witl.r larger textualforms (for exanrple throtrgh problem-solvitrg cxercises at the whole-textlevel) but not ne€ilect thc role of inclividual worcls, plrrases and grarnmatical

devices in guiding the reader arouttcl the tcxt (e.g. Greerrall ancl Swan 1985,

who achieve a balatrce of both ingredients).But at both the micro- and macro-level, cautiotr itt how to ir.rtroduce the

discourse dimension is called for. In the case of cohesion, for example, theprecise relationship betweetr cohesion and coherettce is unclear, and focus-

ing on cohesive devices for reading purposes may llot gtlarantee any betterroute towards a coherent interpretation of the text (see Steffensen 1988). Atthe nracro-leve I, nruch has been rnade in recctlt years of schenm theory, thatis, the role of background knowledge in the reader's ability to make sense

of the text. The theory is that new knowledge can only be processed

coherently in relation to existing knowledge frameworks, and that the

efficient reader activates the necessary frameworks to assist in decoding the

text being reacl. The frameworks are lrot only knowledge about the world(e.g. about natural phetromena, aboLrt typic'' sequcllces of real-life evcnts

16R

6.9 Discourse and the reader

and behaviour), but also about texts, how texts are typically structured andorgarrisecl, tlrus e nabling us to talk about two kinds of sche matai corrtent atldfonnal, respcctively. The theory in itself seems plausible enough; the morewe are Iocked irrto the world of the text, the easier it is to absorb rrew infor-matiou. It is often held that the teacher's job is to help the reader to activatethe appropriatc schenrata. \Uhile we have already tested the value of pre-dicting rvhat textual pattern(s) a given text may be going to realise in Readeractivity 5 ns au awarcness activity for constructing patterrrs in writing. it isnot at all certain whether activating the right formal schema for reading canhelp rnuch if the right content schema is lacking. If the teacher's job thenbecomes onc of supplyirrg the appropriate content schemata for a possiblyvast number 9f textual encounters, then we are out of the world of discourseas such and firrnly in the realm of the teaching of culture, and we are notnecessarily teaching the learner any skill that will be subsequently productive.

'What we have already said, and what may be repeated now, is thatlistening and reading have in common a positive and active role for thereceiver, and, if any insight is to be taken seriously on board fronr discourseanalysis, it is that good listeners and readers are constantly attencling to thesegmentation of the discourse, whether by intonational features in speech,or by orthographical features in writing, or by lexico-grammatical signalsin both. What is also clear is that good listeners aud readers are alwayspreclicting what is to come, both in terms of the rrext few words and interms of larger patterns such as problem-solutiorl, narrative, and so on.This act of prediction may be in the form of precise prediction of cotrtent ora more diffuse prediction of a set of questions that the author is likely toanswer. For this reason, interpreting the author's signals at the level ofgrammar and vocabulary as to what questions he/she is going to address is

as useful as predicting, for example, the content of the rest of a giverrsentence or paragraph. This will mean paying attention to structures suchas cle[t sentences (see section 2.3), rhetorical questions, front-placing ofadverbials and other markers, and any other discourse-level features. Thereading text will be seen simultaneously as an artifact arising from a

context and a particular set of assumptions of world kr.rowledge, and as an

unfolding message in which the writer has encoded a lot more than justcontent, with signposts at various stages to guide the reader around.

Reoder octivity 9 ;-O

Try and predict as much as you can about this news text from the first twoparagraphs which are given on the following page. What do you thinkcaused the problem of the telephone boxes being out of order? Vill the textgive us an answer?'What other things is it likely to tell us? \fill this be a

typical protrlcrn-sol rrtion text?

16e