Part 1: Choose five questions to answer (5ms) 1. Analyze the transitivity structure of the following extract Christopher Columbus made one of the greatest discoveries in the history of the world - North America. Though he probably wasn't the first explorer to see the continent, and he believed until his death that the islands he encountered were in the Asian continent, his discoveries were instrumental in the establishment of Spanish colonies in North America. Today, we celebrate Columbus Day in October to commemorate his discoveries. 2. Analyze the register (contextual parameter & lexicogrammar) of the following extract. When you make pizza, you must begin with the crust. The crust can be hard to make. If you want to make the crust yourself, you will have to make dough using flour, water, and yeast. You will have to knead the dough with your hands. If you do not have enough time to do this, you can use a prepared crust that you buy from the store. After you have chosen your crust, you must then add the sauce. Making your own sauce from scratch can take a long time. You have to buy tomatoes, peel them, and then cook them with spices. If this sounds like too much work, you can also purchase jarred sauce from the store. Many jarred sauces taste almost as good as the kind you make at home. Now that you have your crust and your sauce, you need to add the cheese. When you have the crust, sauce, and cheese ready, you can add other toppings. Some people like to put meat on their pizza, while other people like to add vegetables. Some people even like to add pineapple! The best part of making a pizza at home is that you can customize it by adding your own favorite ingredients. 3. Why is Sinclair and Couthard’s IRF model more appropriate than Halliday’s in classroom context? Give one example (different from ones in the textbook) of IRF model in classroom context. 4. Calculate the lexical density in this extract. In 1920, after some thirty-nine years of problems with diseases, high costs, and politics, the Panama Canal was officially opened, finally linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by allowing ships to pass through the fifty-mile canal zone instead of travelling some seven thousand miles around Cape Horn. It takes a ship approximately eight hours to complete the trip through the canal and costs an average of fifteen thousand dollars, one-tenth of what it would cost an average ship to round the Horn. More than fifteen thousand ships pass through its locks each year. The French initiated the project but sold their rights to the United States. The latter controlled it until the end of the twentieth century when Panama took over its duties. (word count: 123) 5. Identify the sentence type (interrogative / declarative / imperative) and speech act in each of the following sentences. Also say whether they are direct or indirect. Think of a context in which these sentences could occur. a. I’m sorry I can’t come to the phone at the moment. b. Please leave a message after the tone. c. We’ll get back to you. d. Could you give me a call? e. Give me a call. 6. Identify the PC (propositional content) and IC (illocutionary force) of the following sentences. a. Ouch! You’re stepping on my foot! b. We would like to thank customers for not smoking while they are in this store. 7. a. b. c. d. Identify the reference ties in the following sentences. The Queen is to visit New Zealand. When I told him, Bill didn’t really believe me. We have a new teacher, and he is much more easy-going than the last one. Every organization, as soon as it gets to any size (perhaps 1,000 people), begins to feel a need to systematize its management of human assets. 8. Analyze the cohesive chains in the following extract. In February 2001, the artist Michael Landy destroyed everything he owned. He rented an empty shop on London’s busiest shopping street, Oxford Street. He took all his possessions there and with the help of ten assistants, started to make a list of everything – his cars, his books, his works of art, his photographs, his clothes, his passport, his driving license, his toothbrush – absolutely everything! When they had written all 7,227 items onto huge cards, Landy and his assistants started the serious business. One by one, they placed Michael Landy’s things onto a conveyer belt, which took them to a machine that destroyed them. Why did Landy do this? For him, it was a work of performance art, which he called Break Down, and he even invited the public to come along and watch. During the two weeks that it took to destroy all his possessions, 45,000 people visited the shop in Oxford Street. Landy believed that Break Down could make people think again about the consumer society that they live in and reflect on their shopping habits and possessions. At the end of the process, Michael Landy was left with nothing except his cat. So how did he feel? ‘I felt an incredible sense of freedom,’ he said, ‘the possibility that I could do anything.’ Since then, Michael Landy has become one of the most respected artists in the UK but he certainly took an unusual route to career success. 9. Identify substitution or ellipsis in the following example. If ellipsis, identify the words that were omitted. a. A group of people marching on the road should keep to the left. There should be look-outs in front and at the back wearing reflective clothing at night and fluorescent clothing by day. At night the look-out in front should carry a white light and the one at the back should carry a bright red light visible from the rear. b. To learn a new language you’ve got two options: either you study grammar, vocabulary and phonetics for months and months or you can go back to the way you learnt things as a child. A child learns to speak almost ‘by chance’. He imitates his parents without knowing why. 10. Identify the reference items in the following example. What do they refer to? What type of reference is it? a. A businessman would not consider a firm to have solved its problems of production and to have achieved viability if he saw that it was rapidly consuming its capital. b. Mary said that Britain caused the Second World War, but she couldn’t get anyone else to believe it. 11. What are the locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts of the following? a. Mother to son: Give me that Playboy magazine. b. Dean's secretary to professor: Coffee? 12. In the following, which performative verbs are used performatively, and which are used non-performatively? a. We thanked them for their hospitality. b. I hereby declare Tony Benn the duly elected member for this constituency. c. I'm warning you not to spend too much on alcohol. d. John withdraws his application. e. All passengers on flight number thirty-six to Paris are requested to proceed to gate number nine. f. The managing director congratulated everyone in the room. 13. What are the five basic categories of speech acts? Give examples. 14. Answer the questions below this situation: A teacher is writing a testimonial about a pupil who is a candidate for a philosophy job, and his letter reads as follows: Dear Sir, Mr. X's command of English is excellent, and his attendance at tutorials has been regular. Yours, a. What maxim does the teacher seem to flout? b. What implicature would you draw about X’s philosophy? c. Why do you think the teacher phrased his response this way? Part 2: (5ms) In your words, write an essay of at least 500 words to express valuable knowledge you have learnt from the course “Discourse Analysis” and how you will apply the knowledge to improve your English in the future. END OF TEST Answer key: 9. a. In example (a), the word one in the one at the back replaces (substitutes for) the word look-out. b. Example (b) has ellipsis after the word why. The words have been omitted: he imitates his parents 10. a. he in if he saw is the reference for businessman, its in its problems is the reference for a firm: anaphoric b. it in to believe it is the reference for Mary's assertion about the cause of the war: anaphoric 11. Locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts a. Locution: The mother uttered the words ‘Give me that Playboy magazine' to her son, meaning ‘Hand that Playboy magazine over to me', with me referring to the mother. Illocution: The mother requested (or ordered) her son to give her the Playboy magazine. Or the mother performed the speech act of requesting (or ordering) her son to give her the Playboy magazine. Perlocution: The mother persuaded her son to give her the playboy magazine. Or the son refused to give her mother the Playboy magazine. b. Locution: The dean's secretary uttered the word ‘Coffee?' to the professor, meaning ‘Would you like a coffee?' Illocution: The dean's secretary offered a coffee to the Professor. Or the dean's secretary performed the speech act of offering a coffee to the professor. Perlocution: The professor accepted the coffee from the dean's secretary with thanks. Or the professor declined the coffee from the dean's secretary with thanks. 12. Performatively versus non-performatively a. b. c. d. e. f. non-performatively performatively performatively non-performatively performatively non-performatively 13. Five basic categories of speech acts: Representatives: assertions, statements, claims, hypotheses, descriptions, suggestions. Ex: I’m a good guy. Commissives: promises, oaths, pledges, threats, vows. Ex: I will come to your home tonight. Directives: commands, requests, challenges, invitations, orders, summons, entreaties, dares. Ex: Could you lend me a pen? Declarations: blessings, firings, baptisms, arrests, marrying, juridical speech acts such as sentencings, declaring a mistrial, declaring s.o. out of order, etc. Ex: I pronounce you husband and wife. Expressives: Speech acts that make assessments of psychological states or attitudes: greetings, apologies, congratulations, condolences, thanksgivings. Ex: I like it. 14. a. The teacher’s response appears to flout the maxim of quantity. There is insufficient information about X’s philosophy, yet we would assume that as his teacher, he would have this information. b. Most people infer that Mr. X is not very good at philosophy even though at no point is this explicitly stated. This is a classic example of ‘damning with faint praise’. c. Here the teacher knows that he should give an informative answer to the question (quantity). He also knows that he should only say what is truthful (quality). The teacher does not want to state baldly that the student’s performance was not very good. (For example, he might think that X will see the reference letter.) At the same time, he does not want to lie. So, he makes his response in such a way that the reader can infer this without his having to stale it.
