文体学8-textual.ppt

1、Text and discourse,Objectives: To analyze the cohesive devices and understand the text structure Cohesive devices, coherence, text pattern,Text: A text is any passage, spoken or written, of whatever length, that forms a unified whole. A text is realized by a sequence of language units, whether they

2、are sentences or not. The connection among parts of a text is achieved by various cohesive devices, and by semantic and pragmatic implication.,A text can be big or small. Help! Stop! No smoking! No admittance!,Cohesion,A text is made up of sentences. Then questions arise as to how the sentences are

3、linked together in a text. Halliday and Hasan(1976) divide the links into five types: Reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexcal cohesion.,Reference,Some units of language can only be explained by referring to some other elements in the above text or in the text below. Such phenomenon

4、 is called reference. Three types of reference: personal reference, demonstrative reference, and comparative reference,Personal reference refers to the phenomenon that an item sands for a person, such as he, she, we, etc.,Demonstrative reference refers to the phenomenon that an item stand for a thin

5、g or concept in the immediate context or known by both the speaker and the listener, such as this, that, here, then, those, etc.,Comparative reference refers to the phenomenon that one item is compared with another, such as the same, different, asas, etc.,Patricia tossed her head and her hat fell ov

6、er one eye. As she straightened her hat, “You come and sit down here, Arnold Mathews, youve got some questions to answer!” she said in her washing-day voice. “writing “dear heart” to us both”, said Patricia angrily. “did he ever take off your shoes and pull your toes and” “no, no , you mustnt, dont

7、go on, you mustnt speak like that!” Edith put her fingers to her cheeks.,Context-bound text,Excuse me, I hate to do this, but Im bring it back cause its stale. Ow, well. Ill make you another one. Ok, thanks a lot. I kinda feel bad doing that but Is that more to your liking? Yeah. Oh, well, I feel ro

8、tten bring it back.,A Context-bound text requires shared knowledge of the present situation, and of the subject matter of the text. A Context-free text,They are playing football and he kicks it and it goes through there it breaks the window and theyre looking at it and he comes out and shouts at the

9、m because theyve broken it so they run away and then she looks out and tells them off.,Three boys are playing football and one boy kicks the ball and it goes through the window and the ball breaks the window and boys are looking at it and a man comes out and shouts at them because theyve broken the

10、window so they run away and then a lady looks out of her window and she tells the boys off.,Substitution,If we use one item to replace another which was just referred to above, it is a case of substitution. My axe is too blunt. I must get a sharper one. You think Joan knows? I think everybody does.

11、Has Barbara left? I think so.,ellipsis,If an item is omitted when it is mentioned again in the following, it is a case of ellipsis. Would you like to hear another verse? I know twelve more. Joan brought some carnations, and Catherine some sweet peas. How much does it cost? Twelve dollars.,Substituti

12、on and ellipsis are similart in that both of them are concerned with the change of the items mentioned again in the following part of the text. They can produce the effect of loveliness, conciseness, and terseness.,conjunction,Conjunction refers to the elements which connect the clauses and sentence

13、s in a text. They include both conjunctions and conjunctive phrases and adverbs, such as however, in that case, on the other hand, at this point,Despite the discouragement I has received, I continued to study. I kept pursuing my interest in science partly to prove that I could do it and partly becau

14、se I enjoyed it. However, that enjoinment had decreased very much during my college years. The constant discouragement and pressures that I reserved as a woman had their result. I became less interested and my work suffered. All the energy that I had put into fighting these pressures distracted me f

15、rom my work. Eventually I believed the belittling, and the quality of work was lowered. However, I managed to finish school and then attempted to apply my skills.,Phonological device,Sound pattern can be used as means for cohesion, such as alliteration or assonance.,Alliteration and semi-alliteratio

16、n,In autumn the partridges whirred up, birds in flocks blew like spray across the fallow They mounted their horses, and held life between the grip of their knees, they harnessed their horses at the wagon, and, with hand on the bridle-rings, drew the heaving of the horses after their will.,assonance,

17、But heaven and earth was teeming around them, and how should this cease? The rain sucked up in the day time, nakedness that comes under the wind in autumn showing birds nest no longer worth hiding.,Stressed pattern,But heaven and earth was teeming around them, They felt the rush of the sap in spring

18、, They knew the wave which cannot halt, They knew the intercourse between heaven and earth, Sunshine drawn into the breast and bowels, Feeling the pulse and body of the soil, The pulse of the blood of the teats of the cows Beat into the pulse of the hands of the men.,Lexical device,At the lexical le

19、vel, there are two important devices for cohesion. These are lexical repetition and elegant variation, both of which manifest the relation of meaning within the text.,Lexical repetition,I saw her and liked her because she was not beautiful. Her chin was just right and something about her nose fell s

20、hort of perfection. And when she stood up, well, there wasnt much to see but her tallness, the length from her hips to her feet, and the length from her hips to her shoulders. She was a tall girl and that was all. She was the first tall girl I had ever liked, perhaps because I had never watched a ta

21、ll girl get up from a table before.,Elegant variation,Elegant variation refers to the use of an alternative word or expression as a replacement for a word or expression that occurred in the preceding context. Writers often resort to this device to achieve stylistic effect.,Put the little creature do

22、wn, he said. Let up not be cruel to the innocent creations of Almighty God. It is not poison and grows no larger that a mouse and does not travel in great numbers and has no memory to speak of, let the timid little thing return to the earth, let us be gentle towards these small thing which live on t

23、he earth with us.,Coherence,Coherence is more difficult to define or analyze since it refers to the way we know a text gets togethercontinuity of theme, cause and effect, and so on. Coherence refers to the unity within a text.,As a property existing in the mind of the speaker/ writer and hearer/ rea

24、der, coherence is a mental phenomenon which can not be identified or quantified in the same way as cohesion.,The exploitation of the cohesive resources of the language, if not effectively, does not necessarily ensure the text to be coherent. The coherence of a text may depend on implicit semantic re

25、lations between parts of a text rather than explicit cohesive ties.,What reduced to their simplest reciprocal form were Blooms thoughts about Stephens thoughts about Bloom and Blooms thoughts about Stephens thoughts about Blooms thoughts about Stephen? He thought that he thought that he was a Jew wh

26、ereas he knew that he knew that he knew that he was not. - James Joyce Ulysses,布卢姆对斯蒂芬关于布卢姆的看法到底怎样想法？而且，布卢姆对斯蒂芬究竟这样看待布卢姆关于斯蒂芬的看法又有何想法？如果把这些想法用最简单的相互形式扼要的表达出来，究竟是这样的？ 他布卢姆认为，他斯蒂芬在想他布卢姆是个犹太人；同时他布卢姆知道，他斯蒂芬晓得他布卢姆明白他斯蒂芬不是个犹太人。,以最言简意赅的方式，是说明布卢姆关于斯蒂芬关于布卢姆的想法的想法，以及布卢姆关于斯蒂芬关于布卢姆关于斯蒂芬的想法的想法的想法为何？ 他想他想他是犹太人，而他

27、知道他知道他知道他不是。,Text structure,In general, text structure refers to the organizational features of text that serve as a frame or pattern to guide and help readers identify important information and logical connections between ideas.Each type of expository text structure is represented by an organizatio

28、nal pattern that includes differing types of relations between important information in the text.,Physical features : A term used here to include headings, subheadings, signal words, location of topic or main idea sentences, and spacing between chunks or idea units within sentences.,Semantic cues :

29、Indicators of a text structure. One example of a semantic cue is a topic sentence that uses words to indicate the text structure of the upcoming passage. For example, The production of woolen yarn is a long and difficult process, signals sequence text structure.,Signal words : Words such as first, f

30、inally, as a consequence of, and as a result of that emphasize the structure or organization of a passage, but do not add content information.,Syntactic cues : Indicators of a text structure; key signal words such as “still and then signal sequence text structure, whereas in contrast, but, and simil

31、arly signal compare/contrast text structure.,Common examples of text structures include narrative, persuasive, sequence, problem/solution, descriptive, and compare/contrast. Fiction: Fiction writings are often regarded as consisting of five or six stages:,Structure of fiction,1. description of setti

32、ng: time, place, characters, and events 2. initiation: beginning of the story 3. complications: development of the events 4. climax: the most dramatic part of the story 5. winding up: the resolution of the conflict 6. coda & evaluation: the end of the story,Fire authorities in California found a corpse in a burned out section of forest while assessing the damage done by a forest fire. Te deceased male was dressed in a full wet suit, complete with scuba tanks on his back, flippers, and face mask. A post-mortem revealed that the person died not from burns, but from massive interna