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PECULIARITIES OF WRITTEN DISCOURSE

TRACING THE PATTERNS.

If a speaker or learner of English hears or reads a passage of the language which is more than one sentence in length, he or she can normally decide without difficulty whether it forms a unified whole or is just a collection of unrelated sentences. Cohesion (or its absence) is what makes the difference between the two.

“Cohesion is what gives the text texture” (Halliday and Hasan)

Lexical Cohesion.

One of the strategies one uses is the understanding of words and phrases in the English language – the vocabulary system. In particular, one uses the awareness of relationships between words: this is called lexical cohesion. There are many different kinds of relationships that could be involved:

• Direct repetition;
• Synonyms, or near-synonyms (use of words with similar meaning);
• Superordination (hyponymy, where one word encompasses another in meaning);
• Antonyms;
• Specific – general meaning (words referring to the same thing or person, but where one has more detail than the other);
• Ordered series (words that we know as a set series, for example, the days of the week, months of the year or seasons);
• Whole – part (where one term names a part of an item and the other word describes it in full).

A much more general aspect of lexical cohesion is the use by writers of particular semantic fields: this means referring to a specific area of experience or knowledge. The clearest examples of semantic fields occur in the specialist language of occupations.

However, semantic fields do not have to contain technical language, or occupational terms. It may be simply that a text uses several words that all refer to the same subject matter, activity or experience.

Sometimes, writers deliberately weave together different semantic fields in order to foreground a particular idea. Foregrounding is a type of highlighting – it means that the writer is drawing attention to something and making the reader view it in a certain way.

Another option that a writer has, in using vocabulary from different semantic field, is to entwine the words and phrases so closely that the two systems are difficult to disentangle. One way of bringing different systems of vocabulary together is to use metaphor: this is where one thing is described as if it were another. Because metaphor tells us that one thing is another, it is a powerful factor in positioning the reader and constituting a particular viewpoint.

Another widely-ranging strategy … used n writing … an understanding of levels of formality in the vocabulary.

We talk about language being more or less formal as a way of describing how we vary our language according to the context we are in: for example, we will all use a relatively informal type of language when we are in the pub, relaxing with friends, compared with the more formal style we are likely to produce in a court of law or in an interview for a job. Formality can also be a reflection of social-group membership, particularly occupation, where some types of occupational language have retained special words which sound very formal in everyday discourse: for example, a financial consultant or solicitor might use the word ‘remuneration’ where the rest of us would use ‘salary’ or just ‘wages’. Calling a type of language formal or informal refers to more than simply vocabulary, but vocabulary will be an important contributory factor in a reader’s impression of the formality of a text. For example, although the words ‘home’, ‘house’, ‘residence’, and ‘domicile’ might refer to exactly the same building, they vary a great deal in formality and therefore to replace one with another in a text will create a very different effect.

tend to have a particular level of formality associated with them (although changes in the level of formality can occur as part of the process of language change).

But the operation of formality is actually more complex and subtle than that: for example, a writer, group of writers or members of an occupational group may write about the same subject in different ways according to the audience they are aiming at, and the purport of their text.

Sometimes, writers deliberately manipulate formal and informal styles in order to achieve certain effects.

Grammatical Cohesion

The way lexical items are woven together through a text was referred to as lexical cohesion.

The way the grammatical features are woven together across sentence boundaries is called grammatical cohesion.

Anyone who can speak and/or write a language knows grammar, as these structural patterns are learnt very early in life as an integral part of learning language; knowing grammar is different from knowing how to label parts of sentences, however. […]

Reference

The Penguin Concise English Dictionary defines ‘to refer’ as ‘to send for information’, ‘to seek information’. The principle of reference within texts is exactly that: it tells the reader that they can only make complete sense of the word or structure they are looking at if they look elsewhere in the text to get a fuller picture.

There are particular words that are often used for reference purposes. Some details are given below.

• Personal pronoun reference.

Personal pronouns are words that can substitute for nouns […] When one of these pronouns occurs in a text, the reader expects to have to link it with something – either an item that has already been mentioned or something that is coming up. The fact that these pronouns are called personal pronouns gives an indication of their reference function: they will mainly be referring to people; however, the words ‘it’ and ‘they/them’ can also be used to refer to non-human animates, inanimate objects and abstract ideas.

If the pronoun is referring back to something, this is called anaphoric reference; if the pronoun is referring to something coming later, this is called cataphoric reference.

Much ambiguity is based on the workings of cohesion in a text – or rather, the lack of cohesion.

But lack of cohesion can also be very useful, in that it can throw reference wide open and make the reader work to locate the meaning. […]

Making all the pronoun references link up is a skill that it takes children some time to learn.

While pronoun reference can be a challenge for us as we learn language, sometimes writers deliberately disrupt pronoun cohesion in order to achieve certain effects.

• Demonstrative reference (deictics)

Another type of reference which acts as a cohesive tie is carried by the following terms: the, this, that, these, those, here, there.

These terms demonstrate where something is; they are deictic terms – they are ‘verbal pointers’.

As with personal pronouns, demonstrative reference can work backwards (anaphoric) or forwards (cataphoric).

The terms above can be categorised according to how they position the writer and reader (or speaker and listener, since the terms are used frequently in speech too).

‘This’, ‘these’ and ‘here’ all mean ‘near the writer/speaker’, while ‘that’, ‘those’ and ‘there’ all mean ‘away from the writer/speaker’.

While in speech these terms are often used to refer to physical items in the environment, in writing physical proximity can stand metaphorically for attitude as well.

As well as placing aspects of the physical speech context, deictic items can also refer to ideas in another speaker’s utterance in order to make links with them.

Because demonstrative reference is all about pointing out, this type of cohesion can be used to strike strong attitudes as well as physical positions. Advertisers, literary authors and writers of all kinds can use our knowledge of demonstrative signs to signal relationships and point of view.

Rather that referring to the position of the speaker and the hearer within a text, the term ‘the’ is often used to convey different levels of generality or specificity. […]

But ‘the’ can also refer to something very specific, with the suggestion that this item is the one and only example of its kind. In many types of discourse we often use ’the’ to refer anaphorically to something which has already been introduced by using ‘a’. […]

• Comparative reference.

Comparative reference tells the reader not just ‘to look elsewhere’ for information, but to look elsewhere with a particular aim in mind – to compare the items that are being linked.

The most common way in English to mark grammatically that two items are being compared is to add ‘-er’ to an adjective. It’s also possible to suggest comparison with more than one item, by adding ‘-est’.

Comparison can involve ideas about quantity and number: these meanings are carried by words like ‘more’, ‘fewer’, ‘less’, ‘another’.

In many cases, we are given the reference point for the comparison being made .

But it is also possible to omit the reference point – leaving out the aspect that the mentioned item is being compared with .

• Substitution and ellipsis.

Alongside reference, substitution and ellipses are also both powerful ingredients in textual cohesion.

Substitution means what it suggests – the writer or speaker has substituted one item for another in the text. This can involve long phrases, replaced by useful smaller items such as single words ‘do’ or  ‘so’, and is very characteristic of spontaneous spoken discourse. One important function of this type of substitution is to make texts more economic by avoiding tedious repetition.

[…]

Substitution can also involve nouns, and here we often make a substitution in order to redefine the original item.

He looked at the potatoes and picked out the largest ones.

While substitution is about swapping elements, ellipsis involves omitting elements altogether. Speakers who know each other will often use ellipsis because they have many shared meanings and references that do not need stating explicitly. As a result, when measured against writing, speech can appear to have gaps and incompleteness: for example, minor sentences (sentences without a verb) are very common in speech.

In some types of written texts, ellipsis can be used deliberately in order to create an illusion of closeness between writer and reader. The reader is forced to adopt the same position towards the writer that a speaker would adopt to a close friend in conversation. Rather than obscuring meaning or loosening the cohesion in a test, ellipsis is a binding factor because ties between writer and reader are strengthened through the work that the reader has to do to fill the gaps.

The politics or pronouns

Before leaving the personal pronoun system, there are one or two points to note that relate to changes that have occurred through time. Grammar, like other aspects of language, is subject to the processes of language change, and although the personal pronoun system appears to be relatively fixed, there have been important shifts in meaning and use. […] It’s important to realise that grammatical structures are not simply neutral – they are intimately related to power: for example, pronoun reference in a text is all about who is in the picture and how they are being seen, as well as about helping to construct a particular kind of relationship between writer and reader. These are all issues of power, because written texts are a powerful source of information for us about the nature of our world – not just the physical world, but our social, political and emotional ‘realities’ too.

One difficulty with the personal pronoun system as it exists in English is that there is no neutral way to refer simply to ‘a person’ without specifying a sex for them: ‘one’ can carry suggestions of pretension, and is hardly a term for everyday use; ‘it’ sounds rude when used of a person. ‘They” has had varied fortunes in terms of its acceptability: while it was seen as correct in Shakespeare’s time – for example, in The Winter’s Tale:

God grant everyone their heart’s desire

By the 18th century, prescriptive grammars were ruling this type of sentence as incorrect because singular and plural references were being used together. Eighteen-century grammars ruled that if pieces of communication were intended to refer to people in general, or a person of unspecified sex, the terms ‘man’ and ‘he’ should be used, claiming that these uses were generic – i.e., referring in a general way. In fact, it is clear from research that we actually understand ‘he’ and ‘man’ to refer to ‘male person’ rather than simply ‘person’. This means that the words are not capable of generic reference for modern readers.

Nowadays, in order to get round the clumsiness of using ‘he or she’ every time we want to refer to ‘a person or either sex’, we use ‘they’ very often in speech, and increasingly frequently in writing. For example:

The principle of reference within texts is exactly that: it tells the reader that they can only make complete sense of the word or structure they are looking at if they look elsewhere in the text to get a fuller picture.

It’s important to note, though, that people will disagree about whether the above sentence is correct, since eighteen-century ideas about grammar were still current up to the 1960s. People’s ideas about correctness will have been influenced by their age and the type of education they had.

Another personal pronoun that had has a directly political history is ‘you’.

Originally, English had two forms of ‘you’: ‘thou/thee’ was used to one person, and ‘ye/you’ for group address. ‘Thou’ was used when the person was the subject of the sentence, and ‘thee’ for the object; similarly, ‘ye’ was used for the subject, ‘you’ for the object.

As well as denoting simply singular or plural address, however, these terms also came to mark relationships between people: if people who were social equals were addressing each other, the plural forms could be used between individuals (i.e., as singular forms) to signal distance and formality, while the singular forms could signal closeness and intimacy when used reciprocally; if the people were not equals, however, the plural form could be used in addressing the more powerful person, as a mark of respect and authority, while the singular forms could be used in addressing the less powerful person to mark lower status.

This pattern meant that speakers could signal meanings in a subtle way, simply by using a certain pronoun. While this distinction has been lost in modern usage (although the older forms are sometimes retained in dialect, and much can be expressed via personal names and titles), older texts can present patterns of pronoun reference that say much about social relationships.

[…]

Although the use of a plural form to denote respect to one individual has died out in the system above, we still have some residue of this idea in the royal ‘we’ to denote one powerful person in particular.

• Stepping out of the text

At the beginning of this section on grammatical cohesion, the idea of reference was defined as ‘seeking information from elsewhere’.

Up to now, the focus has been on the reader searching various parts of the text for that information. But reference, particularly involving certain of the personal pronouns, can also involve moving outside the text to find the appropriate locus of information.

For example, the use of ‘you’ in a text as a direct address to the reader tells that reader to use himself/herself as the reference point; the use of ‘I’ in a text tells the reader that the writer (or the narrator) is being self-referential. In both these cases, the pronouns are functioning as signposts leading out of the text and making us focus on the human agents who are producing and receiving the text.

Where a reference item moves us outside a text, so that we can only make full sense of the text by referring to its context, this is called an exophoric reference; where we stay within the text, not needing any support from outside, this is called endophoric reference.

[…]

There are certain types of text that are characterised by their use of exophoric references via the personal pronoun system: for example, many advertisements address the reader directly, using ‘you’, and companies refer to themselves as ‘we’. […]

Address forms which take us outside the text are also very characteristic of literature, particularly some types of prose fiction. […]

The attraction of referring outside a text is that this can leave plenty of room for manoeuvre, as it is unclear who ‘you’, ‘I’ and ‘we’ actually are.

While this could suggest confusion, in fact there is much creative potential in not pinning down exactly who the creators and receivers of a text are, because that then means that readers have to construct their own version of these figures: for writers of literature and adverts alike (and any other texts that try to work in an interactive way) it means that many possible ‘readings’ can occur.

Because the type of communication that’s described above is potentially very complex, it can be useful to represent diagrammatically how these layers of reference may work.

[…]

A text can create a particular relationship between the real writer and the real reader by constructing a piece of fictional discourse between implied versions of themselves:

If you have difficulty understanding the difference between the real audience and the implied one, then think about the following analogies: TV adverts for washing powder show women (‘implied readers’) as people whose lives revolve around the quality of their washing. Is this a true reflection of how women really live their lives (the ‘real readers’)?

• Conjunctions

The term conjunction means ‘joining’.

In a sense, all the aspects of cohesion are about joining or linking items together, but conjunction refers specifically to words and phrases which express how items should be linked. An example form the sentence that you have just read is the word ‘but’: this tells the reader that what is to follow will revise, limit or re-focus the first part of the sentence.

Different types of writing tend to use different types of connecting word.

This is not just about conventions that have developed – it is often very much to do with the purpose of the piece of writing (see also ‘information structure’, later in this unit). So, for example, a story may well concentrate on the way one event followed another in time. If this is so, then conjunctions such as ‘first’, ‘then’, ‘after that’, ‘in the end’ are likely to appear. On the other hand, an information text may be more interested in showing how an idea or these is made up of different interrelating elements, and phrases such as ‘on the other hand’ may be more relevant here (as at the beginning of this sentence).

Here are some more conjunctions, with a brief explanation for each group of what they are telling the reader to do. (Note that some conjunctions can occur in more than one category.) Read through the notes, add any further examples you can think of, then specify the types of text (e.g., stories) that tend to use the various types of conjunction.