Corso di
Lingua Inglese 3
The seven standards of textuality
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What distinguish texts is the quality of textuality
Textuality is the result of seven factors and depends on
both the writer and the reader to varying degrees:
COHESION and COHERENCE are text-centred notions,
designating operations directed at the text materials.
Cohesion concerns the ways in which the components of
the surface text (the actual words we hear or see) are
mutually connected within a sequence (de Beaugrande
& Dressler 1981:3).
Coherence on the other hand concerns the ways in which
the components of the textual world, i.e. the concepts
and relations which underlie the surface text are
mutually accessible and relevant.
The remaining standards of textuality are user-centred,
concerning the activity of textual communication by the
producers and receivers of texts:
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Intentionality concerns the text producer’s attitude that the set
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Acceptability concerns the receiver’s attitude that the set of
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Informativity concerns the extent to which the occurrences of
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Situationality concerns the factors which make a text relevant
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Intertextuality concerns the factors which make the utilisation
of occurrences should constitute a cohesive and coherent text
instrumental in fulfilling the producer’s intentions.
occurrences should constitute a cohesive and coherent text
having some use or relevance for the receiver.
the text are expected vs. unexpected or known vs.
unknown/uncertain.
to a situation of occurrence.
of one text dependent upon knowledge of one or more
previously encountered texts.
COHESION
The ties that bind a text together.
Halliday and Hasan define two general
categories of cohesion:
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grammatical cohesion (substitution,
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lexical cohesion (reitreration and
ellipsis, conjunction, reference)
collocation.
Grammatical cohesion
REFERENCE
“The semantic relation that ensures the continuity of meaning in a text.”
It includes items that cannot be interpreted in their own right, but which make
reference to something else for their interpretation.
Ex: Doctor Foster went to Gloucester in a shower of rain. He stepped in a puddle
right up to his middle and never went there again
•Exophoric reference: Reference to items outside the text
•Endophoric reference: Reference to items within the text
•Cataphoric Forward pointing (This is not good news for any of you. You are
all fired.)
•Anaphoric Backward pointing (John came in. He did x, he did )
Grammatical cohesion
SUBSTITUTION
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A grammatical relation, where one linguistic
item substitutes for a longer one. The
substitute item is therefore interpretable only
by reference to the original longer item.
– Nominal s. (one, ones, the same
– Verbal s. (do) It might rain but I hope it
doesn’t
– Clausal s. (they say so)
Grammatical cohesion
ELLIPSIS
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It is similar to substitution, except that in the
case of the ellipsis the substitution is by
nothing.
– Nominal s. (omission of the head of a
noun phrase)
– Verbal s. (omission of the lexical verb)
– Clausal s. (ellipsis of large part of clauses)
I voted for the Greens.
Why?
Grammatical cohesion
CONJUNCTIONS
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Specific devices for linking one
sentence to another:
–
–
–
–
Additive
Adversative
Causal
Temporal
James arrived and sat down.
I’m hungry but don’t want to eat now.
Lexical cohesion
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Lexical cohesion does not deal with grammatical or
semantic connections but with connections based on
the words used. It is achieved by selection of
vocabulary, using semantically close items. Because
lexical cohesion in itself carries no indication
whether it is functioning cohesively or not, it always
requires reference to the text, to some other lexical
item to be interpreted correctly. There are two types
of lexical cohesion:
– reiteration
– collocation.
Lexical cohesion
REITERATION
Reiteration includes:
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repetition (often involving reference) A conference will be held
on national environmental policy. At this conference the issue
of salination will play an important role.
synonymy (often involving reference) A conference will be
held on national environmental policy. This environmental
symposium will be primarily a conference dealing with water.
hyponymy (superordinate vs. subordinate concepts) We were
in town today shopping for furniture. We saw a lovely table.
metonymy (part vs. whole) At its six-month check-up, the
brakes had to be repaired. In general, however, the car was in
good condition.
antonymy The old movies just don’t do it anymore. The new
ones are more appealing.
Lahdenmäki (1989) calls these relations "(direct) synonym-type
relations, since they all refer to another word which has the
same referent (e.g. I met a man yesterday. The bastard stole all
my money)".
Lexical cohesion
COLLOCATION
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Collocation is any pair of lexical items that stand to each other
in some recognisable lexico-semantic relation, e.g. "sheep" and
"wool", "congress" and "politician", and "college" and "study".
Red Cross helicopters were in the air continuously. The blood
bank will soon be desperately in need of donors. The
hedgehog scurried across the road. Its speed surprised me.
Like in the case of synonymous reference, collocational relation
exists without any explicit reference to another item, but now
the nature of relation is different: it is indirect, more difficult to
define and based on associations in the reader’s mind
(e.g. I looked into the room. The ceiling was very high).
Interpretation of such relations is completely based on the
knowledge of subject fields).
Collocations
words which tend to occur with other words.
‘language’:
first language, second language, foreign
language, dead language, classical language,
modern language, spoken language, written
language, colloquial language, sign language,
body language, legal or technical or scientific
language; speak a language, understand a
language, learn a language, study a language
etc. are all examples of collocations.
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A famous quotation on collocations by the
linguist Firth: You shall know a word for the
company it keeps.
Paragraphs are often highly cohesive entities. The cohesive ties can stand out
very clearly if he sentences are shuffled into a random order.
It may even be possible to reconstitute the original sequence solely by
considering the nature of these ties, as in the following case:
1.
However, nobody had seen one for months.
2.
He thought he saw a shape in the bushes.
3.
Mary had told him about the foxes.
4.
John looked out of the window.
5.
Could it be a fox?
Solution:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
John looked out of the window
He thought he saw a shape in the
bushes
Could it be a fox?
Mary had told him about the foxes.
However, nobody had seen one for
months
This is the closing paragraph of Joyce’s short
story A Painful Case. The sequence of
pronouns, the anaphoric definite articles and
the repeated phrases are the main cohesive
features between the clauses and sentences.
Several refer back to previous parts of the
story, thus making this paragraph, out of
context, impossible to understand.
He turned back the way he had come, the
rhythm of the engine pounding in his ears.
He began to doubt the reality of what
memory told him. He halted under a tree
and allowed the rhythm to die away. He
could not feel her near him in the darkness
nor her voice touch his ear. He waited for
some minutes listening. He could hear
nothing: the night was perfectly silent. He
listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he
was alone.
He turned back the way he had come, the
rhythm of the engine pounding in his ears.
He began to doubt the reality of what
memory told him. He halted under a tree
and allowed the rhythm to die away. He
could not feel her near him in the DARKNESS
nor her voice touch his ear. He waited for
some minutes listening. He could hear
nothing: the NIGHT was perfectly silent. He
listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he
was alone.
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Find out all the cohesive devices:
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The first sign of the new man was the knock
of the door, It was the landlady, knocking at
Ann’s door, as she’d thought, but on the
other door, the one east of the bathroom.
Knock, knock, kock; then a pause, soft
fotsteps, the sound of unlocking. Ann, who
had been reading a book on canals, put it
down and lit herself a cigarette. It wasn’t
that she tried to overhear: in this house you
couldn’t help it.
Ambiguity in texts can derive from the
workings of cohesion or the
lack of cohesion
COHERENCE
The concepts and relationships expressed
should be relevant to each other, thus
enabling us to make plausible
inferences about the underlying
meaning.
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In Text and Context, Teun A. van Dijk (p. 93) argues convincingly that coherence
is a semantic property of discourse formed through the interpretation of each
individual sentence relative to the interpretation of other sentences, with
"interpretation" implying interaction between the text and the reader. One method
for evaluating a text's coherence is topical structure analysis.
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Coherence, the sub-surface feature of a text, concerns the ways in which the
meanings within a text (concepts, relations among them and their relations to the
external world) are established and developed. Some of the major relations of
coherence are logical sequences, such as cause-consequence (and so), conditionconsequence (if), instrument-achievement (by), contrast (however), compatibility
(and), etc. Moreover, it is the general ´aboutness´, i.e., the topic development
which provides a text with necessary integrity; even in the absence of overt links,
a text may be perceived as coherent (i.e., as making sense), as in various lists,
charts, timetables, menus. Contrarily, other types of texts are characterized by
explicit cohesive structure signalling intricate logico-semantic relationships
(scientific reports, legal texts); in literary works, cohesion may be programmatically
suppressed in order to enhance readers´ enjoyment while discovering these links
for themselves.
Read the following and discuss them in
terms of cohesion and coherence:
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A: Have you seen Tom? B: The black car is not here;
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My father once bought a Lincoln. He did it by saving
every penny he could. That car would be worth a fortune
today. However, he sold it to help pay for my college
education. Sometimes, I think I’d rather have the Lincoln;
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My father bought a Lincoln. The car driven by the police
was red. That color doesn’t suit her. She wrote three
letters. However, a letter isn’t as fast as an e-mail message
and my mailing box is full of spam.
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The fear of the enemy upset our plans.