To appear in L. Merlini Barbaresi (ed.) Complexity in Language and Text. Pisa: Edizioni Plus
Towards a theory of text complexity
Lavinia Merlini-Barbaresi
Since time immemorial humans have complained
that life is becoming more complex, but it is only a
hope to analyse formally and verify this lament.
Yaneer Bar-Yam 1997
0. Introduction
A theory of complex systems integrated with a theory of naturalness/markedness may provide a
framework for defining the notion of text inherent complexity as distinguished from the (receiveroriented) notion of text difficulty. The way text complexity/difficulty and its grading has been so far
evaluated, especially within foreign language teaching, seems to me to lack theoretical grounding. This
contribution is an attempt to reach a definition of text complexity that may overcome the risk of an
intuition-based subjective perception of complexity/difficulty. In my approach, complexity is a multifaceted quality of the text starting with the speaker’s locutionary and illocutionary planning, but
adjustable and negotiable during the text development, while difficulty is a predictable and explainable
perlocutionary effect, subject to situational variables.
The interdisciplinary notion of complexity and complex systems appears also suitable for
explaining the emergence of text complexity and is here adopted and specified to be relevant for
application to text. Macro- and micro-level phenomena of text complexity are investigated, moving
from the hypothesis that complexity emerges whenever the interplay of language and text components
causes a preference for less natural/more marked choices. Text complexity is a dynamic configuration
resulting from the contributions of complex phenomena, as they occur at the various text levels. Text is
here viewed as a system, whose components are interacting to achieve a global effect. If compared to
the language system, text exhibits a more dynamic quality, due to the fact that its progression time is the
diachronic span in which all complexity phenomena emerge while changes and readjustments occur.
1. The notion of complexity
The merging of disciplines in the field of complex
systems…
provides
many
opportunities
for
synergies and the recognition of general principles
that
can
form
a
basis
for
education
and
understanding in all fields.
Yaneer Bar-Yam 1997
1
We owe to physics, anthropology, philosophy, economics and other scientific disciplines (Lemke 2000,
Kauffman1995, Strogatz 1994) a first conceptualisation of complexity and the elaboration of theories on
complex systems1, but extending this notion to language and text requires a careful redefinition of its
parameters.
Some basic criteria derived from those disciplines also apply to language and text complex
systems, for example the evolutionary and selective character of complexity, its constructionist
dynamics, and the tendency of the system to adapt and reorganise itself towards optimisation (a drift
towards recovering balance and stability).
An important point of similarity is also the emergent character of complexity (Bar-Yam 1997),
which is not only caused by the quantitative addition of constructional elements to the system (i.e.
language or text), but especially develops through the interplay and mutual impact of the various
subsystems (i.e. language or text levels), responding to evolutionary pressures (i.e. language diachronic
development or text progression).
An extreme level of emergent complexity, due to unpredictable consequences of such changes,
may even lead to a temporary situation similar to what in physics is described as the edge of chaos
(Gleick 1987). This refers to a situation which appears disorganised and disorderly only because too
intricate and complex to be understood and described. For example, in texts, multilayered recursiveness
in phrase and clause embedding, very dense or multi-thematic information, intricate interplay of
referential lines, ambiguity resulting from polysemy or multifunctional structures, or even ordo
artificialis may cause conditions for nearing chaos at various levels, unexpected to the text producer
himself. The cause of emergent complexity (up to chaos) is the simultaneous, correlated behaviours of
the various components of the system. In general, understanding large scale behaviours – for example,
of a social group or a biological organism - is more difficult than understanding the behaviours of
individual members. If each part of the system operated individually understanding would be simple. It
is well known, for example, that in lexis and in discourse the collective meaning of combined elements
exceeds the sum of meanings of the combination members. Global understanding requires a complex
operation integrating individual meanings into a unitary interpretation. As a consequence, increased text
complexity is also, at least indirectly, a question of quantity. Longer discourse units can be predicted to
be more complex, not only because the additional material may contribute new marked phenomena, but
especially because every addition in the progression of discourse requires integration at a more general
level. This confronts the receiver with the interpretation of larger scale discourse dynamics.
The eventuality of complexity nearing chaos may result in and be conceptualised and predicted as
a critical phase in perception or interpretation. A chaotic condition (extreme textual difficulty) selects
specialized interpreters and requires a qualified interpretative approach in which, over time, patterns
may emerge and be gradually identified.
Bar-Yam (1997:1) writes:” The study of complex systems in a unified framework has become recognized in
recent years as a new scientific discipline, the ultimate of the interdisciplinary fields.” Evidence of its success is
the creation of centres for interdisciplinary studies on complex systems in a large number of world universities.
1
2
Analogy between language or text and complex systems in physics or social sciences, as we see,
goes much beyond metaphor. A theory of complex systems can actually help explain and predict the
emergence of textual complexity and, what is more important, it allows us to model the interrelation
between the notions of markedness, complexity and processing difficulty.
A naturalness/markedness theory (Dressler 1985, Dressler et al. 1987, Merlini Barbaresi 1988b,
Dziubalska-Kolaczyk 1996) appears relevant to model text difficulty, with complexity being the
necessary bridge, because markedness and text difficulty share most diagnostic criteria, for example that
of transparency (Koj 1979), regulating access to meaning. Markedness, complexity and difficulty are
different in character and logically independent, but they are correlated and may be mutually defining.
The presence of markedness allows a prediction of difficulty. Complexity provides a theoretical and
logical bridge between the two notions. In my conception, complexity is the consequence of
markedness and it is the cause of processing (i.e. receiver’s oriented) difficulty.
2. Complexity and markedness
The behavior of ensembles is both influenced by and
influences the behavior of elements. There is a
reciprocal causal relationship between parts and
wholes.
Paul Grobstein 19972
In every complex system, subsystems may have different targets and requirements and these may
conflict among themselves. In order to minimise damage to the entire system (and move away from
chaos), the interacting subsystems need to abandon extreme competition and co-operate towards a
compromise solution. Competition, that is, eventually produces a strong incentive towards co-operation
among interacting agents and this allows them to reorganise themselves and mutually adjust towards
common objectives and optimal efficiency. In language and text, this normally means that subsystems
have to downgrade their natural requirements and opt for less natural/more marked solutions if this
condition proves more favourable for the success of the speech event as a whole. But the emergent
scenario is one of greater complexity because the system is forced to face new properties of its
constituents and a new dynamics among them, with less predictable results and more variables
involved.
If we keep on with the evolutionary perspective so far adopted, we can coherently predict that a
language system tends to increase its complexity in order to serve the largest set of universal functions
in the most efficient and economic way (the transition from Pidgin to Creole languages is a good
3
example of this process).
Increase in functional load also accommodates the notion of material
simplification, consequent to economy pressures. The fact that an increase in functional complexity may
be counterbalanced by a decrease in material complexity is another recognised character shared by all
complex systems. The other way round is also possible, since any simplification creates more room for
extending the functional potential of the system, with consequent restoring of a trend towards greater
complexity. A type of trade-off is expectable owing to the selectional character of evolutionary
pressures, whereby a system faces changes by balancing its costs and benefits. In language, this is
evidenced in both historical linguistics and language acquisition (Bichakjian 1999).
With some significant reshaping, this course of events also characterises text progression, our main
concern in this paper. An example of it can be observed in nominal anaphora. When the anaphoric
function is added to the referential function of a nominal, complexity arises, but generally this is
accompanied by a quantitative simplification in the coding material and a semantic restriction within the
range of possible meanings. In the same text, for example, an entity may be first referred to as a £9bn
plan to build nuclear stations and later co-referred as the plan for new stations or simply the plan (The
Guardian 27-2-02). Material simplification is jointly triggered by a strong tendency towards economy of
coding efforts and the necessity of leaving as much room as possible for new information. This may also
be in terms of new semantic elements added locally to the nominal phrase. The simplified anaphoric
noun phrase, the plan, for example, may recover room for new modifiers conveying comments or
supplementary descriptions. Such additions, as in this ambitious plan or this controversial plan, would
renew complexity, not only in terms of extra material to process, but especially because they open up
the new pragmatic dimension of text participants’ attitudes and beliefs.
At a level of intersection between grammar and pragmatics, other cases may be relevant examples
of increasing functional complexity. In conversation, the use of expressions such as look (imperative) or
I mean may be either referential (Look there, isn’t it nice?; I mean something different) or have an extra
function as discourse markers (Look, I don’t intend to accept all this; Well, I mean, I’m not sure).
Similarly, yes-answers may be referential (A: Are you sure? B: Yes) or phatic, i.e. functioning as mere
back-channel signals (A: Well, I went there B: yes A: and I met her) (Merlini Barbaresi 1990). In these
cases, the addition of the non-referential function increases complexity in terms of departure from
unique interpretability, whereas reduction is in terms of greater economy of language elements in the
system. A process of desemantization (Bazzanella 1994,1995) is at the basis of the functional
development of these language items and this is itself a type of concomitant (semantic) reduction.
Markedness and text complexity, however, are carefully regulated, since optimality in
communication is a strong social bias.
3. Optimality theory
2
By Paul Grobstein, in consultation with colleagues in Bryn Mawr Biology 367, Computational Models of
Biological Organization: Sarah Blankenship, Jane Lui, Jeff Oristaglio, Jennifer Santos, Beth Tinker. (in the
4
In Merlini Barbaresi 1988a, the notion was supported that a text pursues unmarkedness/naturalness at all
its levels and in relation to various parameters and perspectives, but that no text succeeds in attaining
overall unmarkedness. A combined action of all levels towards unmarked choices (for each level) is an
ideal. What the text attains is a compromise solution in which each of its levels is normally forced to
depart from naturalness due to the naturalness requirements of other levels conflicting with it. For
example, text cohesion might be downgraded - i.e. repetitions, junctives and other devices would be
limited - in favour of textual informativity, i.e. of more room devoted to new information.
In its dynamics, the text responds to various factors determining a hierarchy of requirements and
they are grammatical and semantic but also textual and pragmatic. The actual result may be graded
markedness at all levels.
Communicative optimality relies on a condition whereby markedness values are carefully balanced
and kept within acceptable terms. In Merlini Barbaresi 1988a, this definition is given: “Optimality at
discourse level is here defined as the most natural/least marked choice possible on each parameter after
the primary requirements of all other relevant parameters have been taken care of” (p.203). By
parameters, I there meant the seven standards of textuality as in Beaugrande and Dressler (1981), i.e.
such founding principles as text surface cohesion, conceptual coherence, informativity (the extent to
which content is new), text producer’s intentionality, user’s acceptability, situationality (adequacy of
text to situation) and intertextuality (there, adherence to text type). As will be seen later, these are taken
to represent relevant aspects of textuality that may qualify for markedness claims. In this paper, the term
‘parameter’, referring to the standards of textuality, is replaced by ‘perspective’, whereas the term
‘parameter’ is reserved for reference to universal semiotic principles (already in Merlini Barbaresi
1988b).
The above-mentioned conception of optimality shares with Optimality Theory (OT), as developed
since the early 1990s within generative phonology (Prince/Smolensky 1993) and later extended to
syntax (Pesetsky 1997, Bresnan 2000), some very general ideas, but differs from it on several basic
principles.
A point of convergence is the notion that surface forms (text, in my case) represent resolutions of
conflicts between competing constraints (naturalness requirements, in my case). Within OT “a surface
form is optimal if it incurs the least serious violations of a set of constraints taking into account their
hierarchical ranking” (Kager 1999). Similarly, as seen above, in my conception, an optimal state is
reached when the text has taken all requirements into account and the constraints imposed by each text
level are violated to a tolerable extent.
A basic difference is that, in my conception, the choice among the more or less marked options is
not only grammar-driven (be it universal or language-specific) but is also and ultimately depending on
text-strategic and pragmatic factors. A text requirement-hierarchy, that is, would have at its highest
ranks such constraints as semantic and pragmatic salience, purposeful communicative effectiveness,
situational adequacy, participant satisfaction, etc. A more marked linguistic expression may be chosen at
Internet: original, spring 1995, updated 7/28/97).
5
one level, if this is more appropriate to the plan of the speaker(s), i.e. if it allows other levels,
pragmatically more prominent, to take care of their constraints and adopt more natural options.
A second basic difference between my conception of optimality and OT is that the diagnostics for
determining markedness values and making the most suitable choices exploits semiotic principles
instead of universal and language-specific rules. A grid for identifying and measuring natural/marked
text choices comprises iconicity/diagrammaticity (structural and cognitive), text indexicality
(endophoric and exophoric), biuniqueness and transparency (semantic and pragmatic interpretability).
High degrees of such values are choices towards naturalness, as is proved (extra-linguistic evidence) by
their congruence with cognitive and psychological universal preferences. Due to the stage of this
research, in fact, we will not achieve a definition of graded values of markedness, complexity and
difficulty and of their mutual significance, but this remains a prominent goal in the research project. It is
here hypothesized that markedness can be measured by means of a grid of criteria, that complexity is the
result of the amount and values of marked phenomena in the specific text and that difficulty derives
from the value of complexity, but is relativised by contextual variables. What is certain is that, although
interdependent, the three scales remain separate and autonomous as regards criteria for measuring and
grading. For example, a case of ellipsis would exhibit a high degree of markedness (non-iconic relation
between content and expression), but its (semantic) complexity would be downgraded thanks to the
structural simplification it would bring about. Its difficulty would be relativised at the level of cognition,
as ellipsis allows greater concentration on more relevant material. The three scales would co-vary but on
different grounds.
A third basic difference is that in OT the set of alternatives to be evaluated is extended to include
ungrammatical structures, obviously to be discarded as constrained by well-formedness requirements.3
In my approach, markedness is also claimed for any option violating some naturalness constraint, but
the set of alternatives at any textual level is kept within a language-specific finite range of linguistically
acceptable forms. A gradient of markedness is set up, but upper pole values still yield grammatical
forms. This has important consequences, bearing upon my specific approach to complexity. In my
configuration, the upper marked pole is the extreme boundary of text complexity, beyond which
interpretability is impossible and a disruptive status of chaos emerges.
My motivations for supporting a theoretical notion of text optimality are the following:
1) optimality describes a stable point in the dynamic opposition naturalness/markedness, not definable
in terms of either naturalness or markedness. It can be conceptualized theoretically as a status of
equilibrium and in practice as a configuration compromising among contrasting values. This is in
line with the fact that text markedness or naturalness claims do not yield global evaluations, i.e. they
3
OT incurs some theoretical difficulties, here. Violation of constraints may, in principle, go beyond the borders of
universal (not only language-specific) grammaticality, with the theoretical result that markedness, a leading
principle in the conceptualisation of hierarchy (Battistella 1996), is even made to apply to impossible forms. The
consequence could be a distortion in the theoretical representation of markedness vs. unmarkedness, as dealt with
within GG. One descriptive theoretical aspect of markedness oppositions, quantitative asymmetry between more
restricted marked alternatives and more widely distributed unmarked ones, is reversed. Marked options, including
ungrammatical forms, would range far and wide with no restrictions.
6
are valid relative to certain parameters and text perspectives, but do not apply to the text as a whole
and cannot be mutually relativised. Being more natural on one parameter and from one perspective,
that is, does not produce a lowering of the markedness values of other parameters and perspectives,
or vice versa. Such differences become relevant and influential at the level of complexity, which
mediates among them and yields global values. Moreover, on each specific parameter, naturalness is
not absolute but offers an evaluation of two (or more) alternatives, i.e A is more natural than its
alternative B on parameter X, and not *A is natural on parameter X;
2) it is coherent with viewing texts as dynamic configurations compromising over natural and marked
options. Optimality is both a constraint on the outer boundaries of text procedures and a target
towards stability and equilibrium;
3) the conscious pursuing of optimality in communication justifies the speaker’s departure from
naturalness and allows negotiation. This is also in line with the notion of dynamic systems and their
thrust towards self-reorgnization in case of disruptive competition (§ 2);
4) a conception of optimality allows us to do away with the risk of blurring the notion of naturalness,
by protecting it from contextual fluctuations. Appropriate to contextual situation does not necessarily
mean natural, i.e. such quality may also accommodate marked choices. The notion of linguistic
naturalness/markedness, that is, should not be relativised on the basis of contextual variables.
Keeping it stable also helps avoiding excessive recourse to the notion of markedness reversal
(Shapiro 1983:90), which was often invoked as a way out of some contradiction between formal
markedness and behavioural (situational) naturalness.
Optimality, we repeat, by definition pursues naturalness, but the configuration that an optimal text
achieves is always a compromise between natural and marked solutions. Examples from Grice’s
conversational maxims may help explain the need for the conceptual independence of optimality.
Complying with the maxims is a choice towards optimality, not necessarily towards naturalness. For
example, complying with the Maxim of Quantity may mean to adopt elliptical utterances (marked in
terms of non-iconic signans/signatum relation) in case of in-group speakers (same family or group
members). Asking a family co-member Fetch the bottles in the kitchen, will you? second door on the
right would sound situationally inappropriate (and quantitatively excessive), and definitely ludicrous
would be entering a bookshop in Britain and uttering I’m looking for Hamlet by William Shakespeare,
please. Still, such utterances would be natural on a parameter of transparency (iconic signans/signatum
relation) and on the perspectives of speaker’s intentionality and receiver’s acceptability (in terms of
great communicative efficiency). Among intimates, though, a simple Bottles! would do, and access to
the referent in the bookshop request would be easily obtained by mere mentioning of the title. These
elliptical requests (cf. with the notion of inexplicit in Bertuccelli Papi 2000) are optimally adequate but
remain marked on the fundamental parameter of diagrammatic iconicity. It could be said that they are
natural on the parameters of ‘figure and ground’ (attention concentrated on the main concept) and
economy (minimal effort expended in accessing referent) and from a perspective of situationality. It is
worth repeating that a value of naturalness on these parameter does not relativise the value of
7
markedness on the parameter of diagrammatic iconicity and vice versa. It is precisely this unmanageable
plurality of independent text-oriented evaluations that justifies recourse to the negotiable but stable
overall conception of optimality, oriented to communication and reconciling speaker’s intentionality and
addressee’s acceptability.
Another important theoretical point concerns the relation of optimality with the concepts of
complexity and processing difficulty. Optimality seems to stand at polar distance, i.e. intuition might
suggest that an optimal text is neither complex nor difficult. But in fact the three notions are
conceptually independent and differently oriented, although interrelated.
With its communicative bias, optimality actually regulates complexity, i.e. negotiates its degrees,
and justifies it by providing a communication-oriented motivation for the speaker’s marked choices. An
optimal text can be highly complex (as, for example, discourse for specialists often is, or poetry or
publicity), and complexity may even be necessitated by optimality in communication. This may be in
terms of economy of coding means and consequent density of information among knowledgeable
specialists, or extreme semantic loading of lexical means in poetry or advertising.
Optimality and processing difficulty find an area of mutual relevance whenever communication is at
stake. Optimality is a claim concerning the text (process and product) and its “communicability”,
processing difficulty is a receiver-oriented claim predicting the actual chance that a certain receiver with his contextual coordinates specified -, would have of interpreting the text.
Optimality may operate recursively and concern both global and more local choices. It depends on
the scope dominated by a marked choice, i.e. the range of its consequences and readjustments. For
example, in §5, the choice of ordo articialis in Recipe (1’) and Narrative (2), concerns the entire texts
and the range of adjustments required covers the same area, but each of these adjustments may also be a
solution to restore optimality locally (see, for example, the use of temporal expressions to re-organise
the sequencing of adjacent actions both in the recipe and the narrative).
By way of summarising, it is worth repeating clearly that text optimality is not to be equated to
text naturalness, it is the most natural/least marked status possible, i.e. a trade-off between choices
favouring processing ease (textual efficiency) and choices favouring processing depth (textual
effectiveness). The point of balance between these two poles is constrained by such diverse factors as
text type, format, use, goals and participants.
4. Text markedness and complexity
It is worth emphasizing that the complexity of the text as a system is an emergent cumulative quality,
whereas markedness, as we said, is specified according to linguistic levels, perspectives and parameters.
This is in line with conceiving of complexity as deriving from the collective effects of marked
phenomena.
8
Let’s re-state what is here meant by parameters and perspectives (see § 3), since there is great
terminological overlapping across notions and theories.
On the basis of universal semiotic principles such as iconicity, indexicality, transparency, ‘figure
and ground’ and biuniqueness, we establish parameters of naturalness by claiming basic equations like,
for example, ‘most iconic = most natural’ or ‘most indexical = most natural’ (Peircean axiomatics)4. It
needs to be pointed out, though, that the above semiotic principles are different in character and
logically independent although correlated and often mutually defining. Other sub-equations may
actually derive, such as ‘most iconic = most transparent’ or ‘biuniqueness = maximum transparency’. So
we may posit a meta-level where these principles are theoretically connected, and then predict selective
interplay of the parameters based on them (Merlini Barbaresi 1988b). By selective, I mean that a text
will have congruent values on some semiotic parameters, e.g. a quasi-biunique element such as
conditional if, natural on the parameter of transparency, will also be natural on the parameter of
indexicality.
I adopt the term ‘perspective’ to indicate that a marked phenomenon on some linguistic level (e.g.
phonological, morphological, syntactic or semantic) and on some parameter (e.g. in terms of
transparency) is so definable from the point of view of some textual constitutive principle, be it
cohesion, coherence or intertextuality or informativity or other (see §3 and analyses in §5). To
summarise, let’s see the following schematic example:
phenomenon p (e.g. an opaque relation between a polysemous form and its meaning/function) is
marked from the perspectives of informativity and receiver’s acceptability on a parameter of
indexicality (due to low transparency and non-biuniqueness).
Both complexity and markedness yield graded values, but marked phenomena, to whatever
linguistic level they belong in the text - i.e. phonology, morphology, syntax, lexis and semantics - set up
scales of their own, specific to textual perspectives. So, for example, claiming a textually marked status
for a structural pattern like the two participles chopped and thawed in Recipe 3 (§ 5), means to
demonstrate that the relationship between their forms and their cohesive or informative function in the
text is less natural than that of other comparable occurrences. Such status of lower naturalness is
identified by evaluating their form/function relationship, i.e. how iconic, transparent, (bi)unique,
foregrounded it is. By contrast, text complexity is a global assessment obtained by evaluating the
number and mutual impact of the various marked phenomena. Its degree is proportionally dependent on
the percentage of marked vs. unmarked phenomena, and on their markedness values. A large proportion
of highly marked phenomena in a text will account for a high degree of global complexity, but it will
not allow a conception of global markedness. From the receiver’s perspective, complexity is evaluated
in terms of processing difficulty, but this value is situationally biased, i.e. depending on many variables,
whereas markedness values are not. Such factors as text type, micro- and macro-goals, addressee and
his/her approach to the text are powerful variables, which come in to regulate complexity and relativise
processing difficulty.
4
The semiotics of Charles S. Peirce (see 1965 Collected Papers) is at the basis of my approach to markedness.
9
Here, we can easily see how processing difficulty is mediated through complexity. Difficulty in
perception arises due to the presence of marked/complex phenomena, but its degree is directly
dependent on the overall complexity value. As we said, the notion of processing difficulty cannot be
conflated with that of complexity or markedness, for, unlike those values, the degree of difficulty is
sensitive to contextual variables, in primis those relative to the interpreter.
Processing difficulty has been the object of important experimentation in psychology (see Masi 1
and Bertuccelli Papi, this volume) and it will be necessary to check the validity of my speculations in
the light of their results and methodologies5.
5.
Text types and genres
The theoretical model described above will be previously tested by applying it to the actual analysis of
texts. In the following sections, we are going to identify macro and micro level textual phenomena that
qualify for markedness claims, and see how they become factors of text complexity. The text specimens
chosen belong to various text types and genres (Dressler and Eckkrammer 2001, Biber 1983, Longacre
1983), namely instructional type (recipes), narrative (fictional fragments), argumentative theorising
(fragments of economic discourse) and free conversation (excerpts of film scripts). The choice ranges
from a highly conventionalised, carefully planned type, with predefined roles of participants
(asymmetrical), like recipes, to a mostly unplanned, largely symmetrical (undefined in terms of roles)
type, like free conversation, only regulated by social preferences.
Predictions of default functions in a conventionalised text type can be modelled on the expectations
that we, as a social group, hold concerning that type. I refer to a standard of typical features, which are
based on a set of reasonable presuppositions (Tannen 1979, Goffman 1981, Aston 1988, van Djik 1999)
and shaped on our cognitive schemas and functionalist view of language. Such kinds of predictions can
only be probabilistic, as strategies are multifunctional and phenomena redundant. We can hardly expect
biunique relationships between forms and functions, but we can reasonably predict prototypical
occurrences. Schematic expectations concern goals, participant roles, locutionary and illocutionary
content, relevant discourse strategies, and even surface patterns at all linguistic levels, which create a
preliminary standpoint for analysis and interpretation. In conventionalised texts (see recipes below), any
accidental element not normally predicted in the schema is likely to be marked and to produce a chain of
marked effects. But the conventional format allows a very restricted range of possible accidents and
overcoming such limit would endanger the very type identification (see recipe 1’ in § 5). Analysis of
markedness is straightforward as the analyst himself operates from a well-defined set of hypotheses.
5
As I anticipated (see Introduction), the present study is part of a project whose final target is applicative, i.e.
provide theoretical grounding in the choice of materials in teaching and testing. To be actually effective and
immediately useful, experiments testing our predictions in terms of complexity will have to be carefully limited to
students whose individual variables can be kept reasonably stable, at least in terms of language knowledge and
cultural background.
10
With less conventionalised genres, marked phenomena are less easy to identify and their textual
motivations may be scattered across various text levels. This is the reason why the analyst should set up
limited perspectives and specific parameters. For each less conventional text, the present analyst will
choose one major aspect crucial to the definition of its type and will previously try to devise a schema of
minimal expectations. The recipe type will receive the most extended analysis and most complete
application of the model, the other types will have one nuclear aspect investigated.
5.1 The directive type
“We all have two eyes, but they are never the same distance
apart, never the same exact shape or size. All faces look much
alike at some level of typological classification, but their
quantitative 'topological' differences allow us to distinguish
them as individuals and to form, at a new intermediate level of
interpretance, Gestalt patterns (again types) of recognition from
many quantitative features, and then classify these patterns yet
again.”
Jay L. Lemke 2000
The genre we are going to analyse within this type is a very conventionalised type, i.e. written recipes as
found in cookbooks. A macro-relevant aspect that I intend to highlight is the text functional setting as
derived from such text type and format, especially its macro goal and intended addressee. I will try to
predict a set of default functions and relative prototypical encoding, as a standpoint from which to
identify apparent deviations and evaluate marked options.
The linguistic functions that we can consider as entailed by the pragmatic needs of a recipe are
those prototypically serving a directive/instructional text. Instructional texts clearly map situationally
bound, goal-oriented social actions, and, due to their routine nature, are easily recognised and
“contextualised” (van Dijk 2001: 17), i.e. conceptually represented. They are highly standardised, as are
the social actions they frame (Lemke 2001: 84). Their standardisation is very seldom downgraded by
creative “diversity”, and when this happens (see recipe 1’), extreme complexity may emerge.
The object of a recipe is instructing an addressee to mix and process some specific food ingredients
so as to produce a certain dish. This frame minimally entails two participants, instructor (an expert) and
addressee, i.e. someone willing to be instructed. A conceivable script would contain mention of the
needed food ingredients and of the actions to perform on them. This basic referential function (in the
sense of Jakobson 1960), speaker-oriented, would be dominated by the more nuclear directive function,
addressee-oriented, whereby the type, timing and sequencing of the actions the addressee is supposed to
perform are relevantly regulated in response to the situational goals.
11
A respondent linguistic behaviour should minimally ensure: a) referent accessibility; b) speech act
identifiability; c) situational adequacy. General expectations are also shaped in compliance with
principles of efficiency and economy (minimal effort), which regulate our social actions.
a) referent accessibility
The text must be adequate to ensure conditions for the actual performance of the actions requested by
the recipe (feasibility). This minimally relies on easy and correct access to referents. For example, the
list of ingredients placed at the beginning is made referentially and experientially accessible in terms of
type and quantity. The instructor is expected to use current terms for the objects and specify their
weights or numbers. The objects are normally stocked within reach of the user (the two participants are
supposed to share the same social context). The prospective cook accepts the convention whereby the
list placed at the beginning diagrams a preliminary, conditional action s/he has to perform. Before any
actual instruction can start, food ingredients should be made available. Complying with the directions,
presupposes having all needed ingredients in front, ready for use. At this point, the listing of these
objects is in some way deictical, whereas any subsequent reference to them is anaphoric. The most
relevant textual principle involved here is cohesion and, specifically, referential chaining.
b) speech act identifiability
The illocutionary force of directives should be clearly identifiable; there are surface means for
distinguishing between binding directions, recommendations and simple suggestions. Recognition
closely relies on the use of canonical forms, i.e. imperative sentences for binding directions and some
type of modalised structures for suggestions and recommendations (e.g., in recipe 1, the dish should be
eaten the same day). It also counts on relevant propositional contents and their referential accessibility.
Directives of the instructional type can be in the bare imperative because they are beneficial to the
addressee and are not imposing (submission to this type of directions is a totally free choice). There is
no face risk involved and so they do not require any polite hedging. The perspectives of intentionality
and acceptability are most relevant, since the text producer / receiver relationship is foregrounded.
c) situational adequacy
Under this heading, the textual principles that acquire special prominence are intertextuality and
situationality.
c.1 genre
What one minimally expects from an English recipe text is: 1) setting: a preliminary list (ingredients)
preceding a Directions section, 2) structure: short sentences (with ellipses whenever recovering is easy),
mostly in the imperative; anaphoric rather than cataphoric structuring; asyndeton and co-ordination
rather than subordination, 3) a) propositional content: reference to situationally relevant (i.e. associated
with cooking) agents, actions and objects, with precise indication of modalities, times and quantities; b)
illocutionary content: directive speech acts, with a clear distinction between binding directions,
12
reccommendations and simple suggestions; 4) style: ordo naturalis is the expected text linearity,
whereby directions diagram the order of actions to be performed. This is a default text-ordering
principle in recipes and instructional texts in general (see especially Enkvist 1986 and its notion of”
experiential iconicity”).
c.2 cooking-by-recipe frame
Following a recipe entails co-ordinating the reading of the various directions in the cookery book with
the carrying out of actions complying with them. Both reading and acting are accurately timed. The
coding material devoted to each instruction is balanced against the time the user needs to read and store
it. Brevity of expression is normally pursued, as the user’s time should be concentrated on processing
food (and its constrained times) rather than on reading and memorising long descriptions.
c.3
participant frame
The addressee recognises the instructor’s authority as an expert and is willing to comply with his/her
directions. There is no face risk involved in the instructor’s blunt orders, given in the bare imperative, as
the addressee recognises that the entire operation is beneficial to him/herself. The instructor takes
responsibility for the recipe but does not care about the actual or correct compliance with his/her
directions. This ensues from the fact that s/he is not the beneficiary of the addressee’s actions and is not
socially conditioned by face-to-face confrontation.
5.1.2 The evidence of phenomena
The following data will allow comparison between verbal behaviours consonant with the pragmatic
requirements identified above with other behaviours variously deviating from them.
(1) ORANGE CURD CREAM 6
Ingredients:
2 oranges
2 oz sugar
½ lb fresh curd cheese
¼ pint double cream
Directions
Peel and cut up the oranges and remove the pips. Put the flesh in the liquidiser with the sugar. Add the
curd cheese and blend well. Add the whipped cream and blend again. Put in individual glasses or dishes
and chill for several hours. The dish should be eaten the same day as it is made. (The Good Food Guide,
Hedder and Stoughton, London 1971, p.84)
6
Titles are the first means of identification; they refer to the dish after processing. Normally, they identify the type
of dish (see Recipes 1 and 2) or, more rarely, comment on them (see Recipe 3). In both cases, they are clear
indication of the text goal. Markedness claims might also apply to titles. For example, that of Recipe 3 is more
13
(2) AUNT MARY’S CHOCOLATE CAKE
Ingredients
1/2-cup margarine
1-cup water
2 (1 ounce) squares unsweetened chocolate
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
1/2-teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 cup sour milk
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 9x13-inch pan. In a microwave-safe bowl,
microwave chocolate, margarine and water until melted. Stir occasionally until chocolate is smooth.
Allow to cool to room temperature. In a large bowl, mix together flour, sugar, salt and soda. Pour in
milk and eggs. Mix the cooled chocolate mixture into the batter. Pour into prepared pan. (downloaded
from All Recipes.com)
3) BETTER THAN SEX CAKE
Ingredients
1 (18.25 ounce) package devil's food cake mix
1/2 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
6 ounces caramel ice cream topping
3 (1.4 ounce) bars chocolate covered toffee, chopped
1 (8 ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed
Directions
Bake cake according to package directions for a 9x13 inch pan; cool on wire rack for 5 minutes. Make
slits across the top of the cake, making sure not to go through to the bottom. In a saucepan over low
heat, combine sweetened condensed milk and caramel topping, stirring until smooth and blended.
Slowly pour the warm topping mixture over the top of the warm cake, letting it sink into the slits; then
sprinkle the crushed chocolate toffee bars liberally across the entire cake while still warm. (Hint: I crush
my candy bars into small chunks as opposed to crumbs - I like to have pieces I can chew on!). Let cake
cool completely, then top with whipped topping. Decorate the top of the cake with some more chocolate
toffee bar chunks and swirls of caramel topping. Refrigerate and serve right from the pan! (Id.)
5.1.2.1 Analysis relative to: a) object/referent accessibility and b) speech act identifiability
marked than the others, as it is indexically less reliable and referentially less functional. In addition, the cataphoric
nature of titles (see Baicchi, this volume) is a prejudice to naturalness.
14
In each of the three examples, ingredients are described with the type and amount of specifications
necessary for their precise identification7. Types are presented with the characteristics by which they
can be distinguished among similar goods available on the market, for example in (2) chocolate is of the
unsweetened type, in (3) milk is sweetened and condensed rather than fresh, etc.
But, in (3), two specifications (in italic) are not functional to the identification of the ingredients,
they rather refer to some preliminary actions the cook is supposed to perform on them. These verbal
elements pragmatically belong to the instructional section, but are not immediately identifiable as
instructions. The inexperienced cook might even think that such specifications are type rather than
token, i.e. that chocolate covered toffee is available already chopped on the market or that frozen
whipped topping is sold ready to use (i.e. thawed) by some helpful shop keeper. Structurally, they align
with such type specifications as unsweetened or covered or whipped, but functionally, they collocate
with the list of imperatives construing the Directions section. Due to their structure, these two
instructions for action are backgrounded and as such they escape text linearity and temporality. The
actions could be carried out in anticipation or just before the ingredients are actually needed in the
processing phase.
There are sufficient reasons for attributing a marked status to these elements, which are deviant in
relation to the naturalness requirements they expectedly would have. They are marked in terms of 1)
transparency and indexicality, 2) figure and ground, 3) biuniqueness, 4) (experiential) iconicity and
from various textual perspectives, with cohesion, informativity and acceptability being the most
prominent.
Re 1: their position in the text and their structural format render them functionally opaque, not clearly
indexical of their illocutionary function as directives;
Re 2: the non-finite form backgrounds these actions and renders their inclusion in the list of directions
problematic;
Re 3: due to their form (past participle), they are not recognisable as directive speech acts, normally
exhibiting the imperative in recipes;
Re 4: the two directives, in their escaping temporality and linearity, do not clearly mirror an action
phase in the cook’s experiential activity.
Re cohesion: they are not entered in the referential line of instructions and are not connected with them
either structurally or temporally;
Re informativity: their format (as modifiers expressing type specifications) and their backgrounded
status (as implicit directives for action) give them a lower informative weight than explicit directives
have. As compared to other modifiers, like condensed or whipped, though, they are more salient, as
signalled by their being post-modifying appositions;
7
Marked options at this level might, for example, be imprecise indications of quantity. Expressions like some, a
sprinkle of, a few drops, are normally reserved to minor or obvious ingredients, like herbs, or salt and pepper, or
else their use and quantity are to some extent discretionary. To the inexperienced cook, yet, such expressions
might appear referentially opaque and cause difficulty.
15
Re acceptability: in terms of interpretability, their opaqueness as directives can hardly be acceptable to
the inexperienced cook, or at least requires a high degree of cooperativeness and tolerance (Beaugrande
and Dressler 1981: 113).
We can now observe how this marked choice relates to complexity and text difficulty. A system
component, a past participle, is given an additional function. First and naturally, a past participle used as
a noun modifier indicates that a certain object (here chocolate or whipped topping) has undergone an
action in the past resulting in a certain status (in our cases, in its being chopped or thawed). Secondly,
but more importantly, the past participle is here made to implicitly express a directive speech act. At the
beginning of the text, when the speech event starts, this action has not yet been performed and is
expected to be carried out by the text user, exactly as the other actions required to implement the recipe.
Interpretation of this second illocutionary function rests on a complex set of presuppositional
inferences, thus creating a condition for difficulty. However, such difficulty is relativised, as the
addressee is expected to check the setting beforehand.
As said in § 2, increased functional complexity may bring about material simplification, here
represented by 1) reduction of a clause to a noun modifier; 2) non-specification of the addressee
participant role, as compared to instructions in the imperative form. Another aspect of the emergent
complexity deriving from the added function is the resulting concomitant presence in one text of similar
structures having different functional weight, as is the case with whipped as compared to chopped.
Now, a question arises, why are these marked solutions preferred to more natural ones (i.e.
instructions in the imperative and included in the Directions section), which other level(s) benefit(s)
from these costly choices? A tentative answer is: the textual level, in terms of informativity (thematic
salience). The actions explicitly directed are more crucial and specific for the implementation of that
recipe than those left implicit. As such, they deserve canonical structuring and fronting. The latter type,
by contrast, can be backgrounded because such actions are too obvious and general, as is thawing
ingredients before using them or reducing a chocolate bar to small bits before scattering it over a cake.
Moreover, downgrading their importance leaves some room for subjective choices on the part of the
cook (e.g. thawing CHOPPING into chunks rather than crumbs). Differentiating the two types of
actions structurally, then, is optimal, i.e. justified from the perspective of informativity.
Other marked choices in terms of referent accessibility are to be found in the Directions sections.
For example, ellipses of object are frequent, as in Put  in individual glasses or dishes and chill  for
several hours in (1), or Pour  into prepared pan in (2), or again Refrigerate  and serve  right from
the pan in (3), and they are instances of markedness from the perspectives of cohesion and consequently
coherence, as they represent cases of zero anaphora, i.e. of non-diagrammatic correspondence between
expression and content. Still, they are preferred when the requirements of informativity are higher in the
hierarchy of text requirements. The standard of informativity requires that in normal conditions the most
expected and most easily recoverable be given the least salience and attention, and vice versa (Givón
1985).
16
Although ellipses are admitted only when recovering is safe, still they are always a cause of
complexity, as they represent momentary informative gaps and contradict syntactic rules. If not
adequately (optimally) regulated, they may even cause the emergence of chaos. For example, in (3), the
objects of the various actions must be kept separate during processing and must be referred to explicitly
in the anaphoric chain. We see for example, Mix the cooled chocolate mixture into the batter in (2) or
Slowly pour the warm topping mixture over the top of the warm cake in (3). Ellipses, in these cases
would make the referential line inaccessible.
In recipes, ellipses are sometimes preferred also due to the actual difficulty of performing the act
of referring. Naming the unstable food entities resulting from intermediate processing requires words
like mixture, or blending, which are semantically very general and referentially vague. When there are
multiple referential lines, they require specifying modifiers, like chocolate or topping, which are costly
and marked in terms of text economy.
In the anaphoric noun phrases above, other modifiers - cooled and warm - represent marked
options. They comply with economy requirements, as they stand for clauses of the type exemplified in
(3) - while still warm and let cake cool completely. The reduction of directives to noun modifiers is a
marked option in terms of speech act identifiability (cf. b above), but also in terms of cohesion, as they
are not explicitly timed in the sequence of actions to be performed, i.e. their time is included in that of a
subsequent action. Complying with their implicit directive force, though, may affect and partly disrupt
the temporal sequencing of the cook’s actions. What we infer is that mixing the chocolate mixture must
be done after some time has elapsed from the previous action (in the meantime other actions may be
performed), whereas pouring the topping mixture must be done during the time immediately following
the previous action. Markedness can be claimed for lack of transparency and diagrammatic iconicity,
i.e. non-correspondence between time of expression and time of action. Such marked solutions can be
viewed as optimal because they background and downgrade processes (keeping warm and becoming
cool) which do not imply actual activity on the part of the cook and thus do not deserve the same coding
explicitness as the actions to be performed. On the textual level, they, again, have a lower informational
salience.
5.1.2.2 Analysis relative to: c) situational adequacy
Recipes (1), (2) and (3) are all adequate on a macro-level. Markedness here would especially concern
the perspectives of intertextuality and situationality. By way of exemplifying, let’s consider the
following text (a manipulation of recipe 1):
(1’) ORANGE CURD CREAM
What is important about this dish is that it should be eaten the same day as it is made. A way of serving
it is putting it in individual glasses or dishes before chilling it for several hours. Particularly important is
the whipped cream you add and blend at the end. But, before, it is curd cheese you add and blend well.
You will have liquidised 2 oranges together with 2 oz. sugar. Of course, the oranges will have first to be
17
peeled and the pips removed. Before starting, the following ingredients should be made available: 2
oranges, 2 oz sugar, ½ lb fresh curd cheese, ¼ pint double cream. (fabricated, Merlini Barbaresi 1988b:
7)
c1 (genre)
This text token deviates from the expected text type on various levels:
Re 1 (format): the list of ingredients is not perspicuous (markedness in terms of transparency);
Re 2 (structure): sentences are made longer by the addition of comments (what is important,
particularly important, of course), of temporal expressions made necessary by the text linearisation
(before; first), of focalising structures such as extra-posed or inverted forms (what is + adj.…;
particularly important is…). There are occurrences of subordination (before chilling…before starting)
and of complex sentences (A way of serving it is putting…it is curd cheese you add); the imperative
mood is avoided and replaced by past in future, a tense that is not normally associated with a directive
(markedness as departure from transparency and biuniqueness);
Re 3 (content): the speech acts are not construed as directives for the addressee. They are modalised
assertives, which, at most, sound as suggestions for a general readership. Indirectness and mixing of
illocutionary forces are marked on the level of transparency. Even when the addressee is mentioned
(you add; you will have…), the pronominal reference is ambiguously inserted among general assertions
and may be interpreted as an impersonal you;
Re 4 (style): the ordo artificialis makes it very difficult to identify the sequence of actions that
somebody should perform. There is no calculated timing and their sequential order is not immediately
perspicuous. Markedness is here in terms of departure from iconicity.
c2 cooking frame
Disrupted linearity and temporality, i.e. anti-iconic sequencing between instructions and actions, would
force the recipe user to spend extra time in understanding and restoring order. Text naturalness
requirements are disregarded on various perspectives, from intentionality (opaqueness of plans and
goals) to informativity (opaqueness of speaker’s informational design in terms of figure and ground)
and especially, and more importantly, on situationality. From this perspective, the text would be
perceived as highly marked, because it departs from the representational model one has of cooking by a
recipe, i.e. it does not diagram the experience one has of this activity. Markedness is again in terms of
departure from experiential iconicity.
c3 participant frame
The role relationship between instructor and compliant addressee is hardly recoverable. The guiding
function of the instructor is obscured due to the substitution of assertives for explicit directives.
Markedness, from a perspective of intentionality/acceptability, is in terms of departure from
transparency, i.e. perspicuousness in illocutionary intentions.
From the perspectives of intertextuality and situationality, most prominent at this level of analysis,
text (1’) is highly marked. The naturalness requirements of a recipe format are massively left
18
unattended, to such an extent that text (1’) would hardly be recognised as a recipe. Its level of ensuing
complexity is nearing the edge of chaos (§ 2), where interpretation is most difficult.
Still, text (1’) is made up of the same content elements as text (1). All sentences are grammatical,
well formed and adequately conjoined with metaphrastic means. They are semantically accessible and
logically sequenced. Yet, we have difficulty in identifying the speaker’s plan (perspective of
intentionality) and recover situational coherence. The only way is to look for other, more complex
patterns that may allow us to recognise the text as a type and still interpret it as functional and goaloriented. But, to do so, we must overcome the constraints and conditions of the recipe text type and
genre, disregarding the naturalness requirements of intertextuality. Tentatively, we may, for example,
think of text (1’) as a letter intended to back up a recipe, previously passed to somebody, who did not
succeed with it a first time and would like a second go. In this way its macro function would be partly
recovered, text (1’) would be seen as anomalous, i.e. non-standard, but still could eventually be used as
a recipe by a very co-operative, tolerant user.
5.2 The narrative text type
“All narrative is artificial, and the time it creates
out of memory is artificial, variously related to
existential time. Reality never occurs in
narrative form”.
Ong 1982: 12
As regards a narrative text type (see examples below), we are going to focus the analysis on its time
structure (including indication of participant deixes), i.e. its temporal ordering, tenses, aspect and the
linguistic items involved, lexical and functional. This specific choice is motivated by the fact that the
time structure of a narrative is a nuclear aspect of its definition. A narrative can indeed be viewed as a
report (made at a certain time, defined as narration time) of a sequence of events, chronologically
ordered and all located in the past. The reporter may be (e.g. in the narrative fragments below) a firstperson narrator or, in fictional narrative, a character whose deictical perspective is chosen by the author.
I do not intend here to join the vast debate concerning the definition of narratives (for a detailed account
of this and many other relevant issues, see Fleischman 1990, and especially Björklund 1993)
Naturalness relative to this aspect minimally requires that the account of the events in the narrative
text (written or spoken) might allow an easy reconstruction of the events actually experienced. The
easiest and most transparent way is to keep the same chronological ordering (ordo naturalis vs.
artificialis). Any departure from this – a source of markedness and complexity - must be motivated and
structurally taken care of, e.g. with the addition of time adverbs and/or by differentiating tenses and
aspect.
Another crucial point in a narrative is the way the periods of time made relevant by the events
narrated are mutually and deictically related. Naturalness expectations are for them to be sequentially
19
related and additively coordinated (as was the case with actual events) - and not recursively embedded,
and for all to have the narrator’s time as a reference point. Narrative (1) below is a good example of
more natural options relative to temporal ordering.
The language involved in the narrative will minimally consist of lexical verbs and nouns denoting
actions and states and of functional items (time junctives and adverbials) relating points in time or
setting up circumstantial temporal frames. By default, junctives introduce subordinated clauses having
circumstantial relevance for the event narrated in the main clause, but this natural relation is sometimes
reversed and causes ambiguity and aspectual complexity.
Marked options are often motivated by the conflicting naturalness requirements of text informativity,
whereby the informational content gets foregrounded or backgrounded according to the narrator’s plan,
often escaping ordo naturalis and the iconicity requirements of the syntactic structure (i.e. main clause
for the figure and subordinate clause for the ground). Narrative (2) is a good example of departure from
natural/unmarked options.
5.2.1 Narratives
Let’s summarise the points of our analysis:
Markedness (and complexity) may minimally arise, when a) the order of narrated events is non-iconic
(from non-iconic to anti-iconic) in respect to the temporal sequence of events (ordo artificialis instead
of ordo naturalis); b) narrated events are located in a plurality of recursively embedded periods of time
in the past; c) narrated events are occasionally located in times which escape the narrator’s or the main
character’s deixis; d) time relators (temporal junctives, like, for example, when, as, until) introduce
subordinate clauses foregrounding focal events (normally in the main clause) instead of relating them to
a circumstantial background; e) aspect preferences (perfective past in the foreground, imperfective past
progressive in tte background) are not respected; f) the time internal constituency of events narrated is
not transparent due to insufficient grammaticalization of aspect and tense, as sometimes is the case in
English. In the course of our analysis, other minor causes of markedness and complexity will be
highlighted. But, lets see relevant examples:
Narrative (1)
We drank so much that eventually we had to go to Union Hall and borrow the money for the fare,
and a couple of quid besides, and we got on a train at Amiens Street Station and arrived at the
border, I am bound to admit, still pretty drunk. After opening our battered-looking cases containing
our personal effects, if a couple of old dirty shirts can ever be so described, the customs officer’s
eyes focussed on the boxes. (Brendan Behan, Confessions of an Irish rebel, Lancer Books, New
York, 1965: 192)
Narrative (1) is characterized by a restricted number of marked phenomena. The order of the events
narrated substantially mirrors the sequence of the events actually occurred (ordo naturalis). Past events
are deictically related to the time of narration, which is clearly referred to in digressive metatextual
statements (I am bound to admit, if a couple of dirty shirts can ever be so described). These belong to a
20
level that is well distinguished from that of events. Such digressions would be considered marked in
terms of textual diagrammatic iconicity as they interrupt the narrative sequence, creating an asymmetry
in the calculated balance between the time of events and the time devoted to their narration (iconic
reconstruction of events). Still, these metatextual digressions are indices of the presence of a narrating
ego (other than the author) non-symmetrical with the characters involved in the events narrated
(inclusive we, our). Complexity arises, but the digressive material is optimally motivated as it helps text
interpretability.
The other marked option in the text is the non-finite clause in the final sentence, after opening our…
the customs officer’s eyes focussed…It complies with ordo naturalis but it causes the text to become
more complex in terms of syntactic structure (subordination instead of additive coordination), of extra
material added (time adverbial), of syntactic order (main clause after subordinate clause) and,
especially, in terms of semantic transparency. A momentary indeterminacy is created due to the
cataphoric construction, whereby the agent of the two actions remains unknown up to the second clause.
The marked choice, though, is here motivated on the level of informativity, whose natural requirements
may have to neglect transparency and efficiency in favour of effectiveness. In accordance with the
principle of ‘figure and ground’, informativity requires that more consequential actions be given greater
focus. The customs officer’s second action, much more consequential, gets foregrounded, whereas the
first, already pragmatically implied in the second, can be backgrounded. Let’s move to the second
example:
Narrative (2) (events are sequentially numbered in order of appearance in the text)
1) A year after 2) [Pemberton had come to live with them] Mr and Mrs Moreen suddenly gave up
the villa at Nice. 3) Pemberton had got used to suddenness, 4) having seen it practiced on a
considerable scale during two jerky little tours – [4’) one in Switzerland the first summer, and 4’’)
the other late in the winter, when they all went down to Florence] and 5) then, at the end of ten days,
6) liking it much less than 7) they had intended, struggled back in mysterious depression. 8) They
had returned to Nice ‘for ever’, [9) as they said]; 11) but this didn’t prevent them from squeezing,
one rainy, muggy May night, into a second-class railway-carriage –12) you could never tell 13)
which class they would travel –14) where Pemberton helped them to stow away a wonderful
collection of bundles and bags. 15) The explanation of this manoeuvre was that 16) they had
determined to spend the summer ‘in some bracing place’; but 17) in Paris they dropped into a small
furnished apartment – a fourth floor in a third-rate avenue, where 18) there was a smell on the
staircase and the portier was hateful – and 19) passed the next four months in black indigence.
(from Henry James, The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories, Penguin Books, GB, 1969: 135)
Narrative (2) exhibits many more marked options than Narrative (1), and accordingly it is much more
complex. Complexity especially arises in terms of ordo artificialis, temporal embedding, number and
sequencing of temporal periods and of their internal and deictical relationships. The chronological order
of actual events is the following (square bracket indicates embedding and brace side commenting):
21
[2], 3, 4 [4’, 4’’], 7, 6, 5, 9, 8,1, [16, 15], 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19.
We notice here various marked cases of hysteron proteron (e.g.1 reports an action as first which
chronologically takes place after eight others), temporal embedding (e.g. 2 is embedded in 1) and metatextual (i.e. meta-narrative) digressions (e.g. 3, 12) (Clyne 1987). These marked solutions cause the
time line to become more complex (addition of time reference points other than the narration time) and
in need of complex structural adjustments, i.e. intricate, recursive subordination (especially from 1 to 9),
non-finite clauses (having seen it, liking it), complex tenses (pluperfect, as had come, had got used, they
had intended, they had returned, etc.), addition of time relators (after, when). Increased complexity in
the time line also causes complex deixis. Not all events are unambiguously referred to the perspective of
the same character – Pemberton. Many actions having a time reference point prior to the narration time
are actually in the perspective of other characters - the Moreens (e.g. they had returned to Nice for ever,
they had determined).
In conjunction with complex time structures, processing difficulty may be particularly severe in
English, due to defective grammaticalized means expressing aspectual specifications (i.e. the
progressive forms are normally limited to action verbs). For example, the clause the explanation of this
manoeuvre is ambiguous relative to the explaining agent, whether Pemberton, who might be attempting
an interpretation, or the Moreens themselves providing the explanation to Pemberton. In a Romance
language like Italian, the two cases would be differentiated aspectually, with an imperfective era in the
first case and a perfective fu in the second.
But, now, let’s consider other micro-textual phenomena which may characterize the narrative text
type. Complexity may arise in conjunction with temporal relationships among actions and due to the
multifunctional meaning of the time relators (Harris 1989, Couper-Kuhlen 1989). In Text 2, a marked
case of cum inversum construction occurs in clause 4’’, introduced by the time relator when.
As we said, expectations are normally for the main events to be narrated in the main clauses, with
circumstantial aspects described in subordinate clauses, as in examples (1) to (6) (drawn from the
BNC):
(1) Then, when I reached the Mess, I found your letter, and it made me happy and sad.
(2) She did not stop to think, and when the Rabbit ran down a large rabbit-hole, Alice followed it
immediately.
(3) But as he took the field in the second Test against the West Indies, all eyes were on his behaviour.
(4) Damned quiet in the dining room, he’d thought, as he crossed the hall.
(5) I did not appreciate how beautiful the countryside was until I was much older.
(6) Etiquette had demanded that none of the cast should leave until the last of their guests had gone.
In unmarked occurrences as above, junctives when, as, until signal the time relationships that link
clauses - previous to, simultaneous with, subsequent to the time referred to in the main clause. And
precisely, when in (1) and (2) signals perfective actions preceding the time of the main clause, as in (3)
22
and (4) simultaneous actions, aspectually ambiguous, and finally until in (5) and (6) signals previous
actions, also aspectually ambiguous. At the same time, these time junctives mark the subordinate
character of the clauses they introduce. In such cases, subordinators prototypically introduce
background information.
Let’s now analyse, instead, a second group of examples, where the same time relators are used:
(7) She was just heading off downstairs when the telephone rang.
(8) The horse had barely stepped on to the gravelly reverbed at the edge of the ford, when it stumbled,
almost falling to its knees.
(9) His blue eyes held shards of ice as he glared down at her, his features darkening in annoyance.
(10) She stood up to walk stiffly around the desk, as he stepped politely to one side and let her precede
him from the room.
(11) John showed me around for awhile and we became friends until he moved to news work in
Toronto within the year.
(12) Lizards could not have been more still, until the creature spoke again, this time with a note of
pleading in his voice.
In this group, the same junctives exhibit quite different functions in the informational structure and are
involved in a different temporal ‘internal constituency’ (Comrie 1976). In (7) to (12), they all introduce
foregrounded actions with main clauses expressing circumstantial conditions. In all cases, the
subordinate clauses exhibit semantic perfectivity, whereas the main clauses may have either semantic
imperfectivity (e.g. 7, 8, 9, 12) - structurally signalled only in (7) - or perfectivity (e.g. 10, 11). Clause
4’’ in Text 2 (when they all went down to Florence) belongs here. Such constructions are textually
motivated on the level of informativity, i.e. they are strategic means for giving climactic salience to a
point in time. They are semantically paraphraseable as extrapositions of the type it was at this time that.
The multifunctional quality of such time relators – a departure from biuniqueness - is the cause for
their marked status. Ambiguity arises relative to their textual function (whether figure or ground).
Ambiguity is more likely to occur in English, due to its defective apparatus for distinguishing aspect.
Clause (9) above may be seen as an example of such ambiguity. Other examples are the following:
(13) It seems the French got the better part of the deal when the Eurodisney share price was announced
in the City yesterday with all the overkill we have come to expect from the Americans.
(14) She told how he kept her prisoner in the bunker for a week when she refused to pay up.
23
In (15) below, the addition of suddenly, further specifying the time relationship between subordinate
and main clause, is a sufficient means for disambiguation:
15) I mentioned Ben Ami and Um Al-Farajh and referred momentarily to Mrs Zamzam, when suddenly
the boy's face lit up.
Clause 4’’ in Narrative 2 might also sound ambiguous, if taken in isolation, i.e. if the event described
were not further detailed in clauses (5), (6) and (7). The time adjunct late in the winter could either be
viewed as the conclusion of the clause having seen it practiced…, with the when-clause introducing
circumstantial specification, or might be setting the time of the event expressed in the when-clause. In
the first case it would be paraphraseable as late in the winter, on the occasion of their going to Florence,
in the second as late in the winter, when it happened that they all went to Florence. In Italian,
disambiguation would again be obtained through aspectual specification. The first meaning could be
unambiguously obtained with imperfective quando erano andati tutti a Firenze. A perfective - quando
tutti andarono a Firenze -, though, would exhibit the same ambiguity as in English.
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5.3 The ‘free conversation’ type
“Certainly for biological systems, and probably for many others as well,
the richness of their complexity derives in part from a strategy of
organizing smaller units into larger ones, and these in turn into still
larger ones, and so on.”
Jay L. Lemke 1999
“Random, coherent and correlated behaviors illustrate the relationship
between the behavior of parts and the collective behavior of a system.
In both random and coherent behavior the collective behavior of the
system is simple. Correlated behavior gives rise to complex collective
behavior. Examples illustrating these types of behavior can be found in
physical, biological and social systems.”
Yaneer Bar-Yam 1997
By free (or spontaneous or naturally occurring or everyday) conversation, I here intend any mostly
unplanned verbal exchange taking place among two or more participants, whose goal is interactional
rather than transactional (Aston 1988), i.e. devoid of immediate practical or commercial tasks but rather
functional to the constitution and maintenance of social relations. It is a processual interactive speech
event whose communicative goal is ideally cooperatively pursued by the participants, each contributing
to its situational adequacy and to the development of its semantic and pragmatic content.
It is important to point out that conversations are interactively-built texts and that their most
interesting aspect is their processual character, i.e. the way speakers negotiate content and modalities
during the time span of the conversation development. Still, our interest here is for both the finished
product and the process, because our aim is the evaluation and grading of text complexity. The ultimate
target of our analysis is to achieve means for predicting the difficulty outside users (e.g. foreign
language students) would encounter in interpreting them, rather than the difficulty ratified participants
would have in their on-line mutual understanding. Still, the two levels of difficulty are interrelated and
both depending on the complexity arising in the course of the conversation.8
Dialogues and multi-party conversations can be predicted to develop greater complexity than
monologic discourse, due to the fact that many individual speech behaviours stand for as many
interacting components of the text complex system. The interpreter and the analyst are confronted with
8
In our research project, the variable concerning the ability of outside users to decode the foreign language is
kept stable at a level of an excellent knowledge of the standard variety. We do not intend this type of
(in)competence to interfere with our modelling of processing difficulty. In our future experimentation, we will
choose students with comparable educational background.
25
a collective level of behaviour (product) and, in order to understand, are supposed to strive to
reconstruct detailed “stories” of individual behaviours (process).
In my hypothesis, it is the level of reactions that is most consequential and especially prone to
markedness and arising complexity, because it is where the individual speakers’ plans, goals, strategies
and social roles get manifested and confrontation takes place, requiring negotiation and solution.
Moreover, conversations do not normally occur in isolation, they may also presuppose a context where
the speakers have already shared behavioural experience and set up relationships (conflictual or
harmonious). These past stories normally remain unknown to the analyst and interpreter and must be retraced through the text, as they are a strong bias to the interaction.
Shared context experience and mutual knowledge may limit the need for explicit communication
and, as we will see, determine a lower demand for naturalness. But such prediction rests on the
assumption that speakers are allowed to negotiate and verify sharedness. Sometimes, in fact, the
conviction of sharedness is not supported by previous verification and it is often the case that the
interlocutor’s understanding is blocked due to a wrong presumption on the part of the speaker, or, vice
versa, it is the speaker that provides unneeded information and explanation.
In general, the prediction is for greater markedness in case of intimate and habitual interactants,
which means greater processing difficulty for outside users, although not necessarily for participants. In
case of unacquainted interactants, understanding relies on more explicit communication and participants
and outside text users are closer in their needs for explicitness.
For outside users, we may, for example, predict complexity and consequent processing difficulty in
connection with: a) low semantic and pragmatic transparency, i.e. in referent accessibility and
identifiability of illocutionary intent, goals and strategies, b) intertextual conditioning, i.e. outsiders may
ignore crucial antecedents, and c) use of special languages or slang (family or group varieties).
For inside participants, complexity and on-going processing difficulty may instead be connected
with negotiation of: 1) referent, 2) goals, 3) roles and rapport, 4) organization of the interaction, e.g.
turn taking, and 5) memory and assessment of shared present and past events.
Although spontaneous in character, an interactive speech is still in some way functionally
constrained by its goal-oriented content, by its participants’ shared interest and by general social norms,
i.e. cooperativeness, politeness, role relationships and conversational routines. Such constraints are
sufficient to determine some schematic expectations even concerning “free” talk exchanges. The
following excerpt (from film script Contact) is an example of conversation taking place between two
characters belonging to the same restricted context but meeting for the first time (it is the fourth scene in
the film, and the audience – and observers of the script as well - are already acquainted with Ellie and
the fact that she is an astronomer working for the Arecibo Telescope, but Palmer appears for the first
time):
1)
CANTINA - DAY
26
Ellie buys two packs of thumbtacks from the general store merchant. Then sits at a table and nurses a
beer, when PALMER JOSS approaches.
PALMER
Arecibo, right?
ELLIE
Does it show?
PALMER
Yeah. Crackerjack?
ELLIE
No. Thanks.
PALMER
Mind if I sit down.
ELLIE
Sure.
PALMER
I hear the locals; they call it El-Radar. They think it has some dark military purpose.
ELLIE
I think we’re pretty harmless.
PALMER
(holds out his hand) Palmer Joss.
ELLIE
(shakes his hand) Ellie Arroway.
PALMER
Nice to meet you, Ellie. What are you studying up there?
ELLIE
Oh, the usual. Nebulae, quasars, pulsars, stuff like that. What are you writing?
PALMER
The usual. Nouns, adverbs, adjective here and there.
ELLIE
I’m working on a project called SETI.
PALMER
Search for extraterrestrial intelligence? Well, now that is out there.
ELLIE
Wait, are you a student or something?
PALMER
I’m a writer, I’m writing a book. Doing some research. It’s how technology affects third-world cultures.
I’m also looking for this guy David Drumlin, he’s the new head-honcho of the national science
foundation; I’m trying to get an interview with him. I take it you know him?
27
ELLIE
Uh huh. You can say that.
PALMER
SETI, man. That’s fringe. I’ve crossed paths with this guy before. I mean something like that must
really chap his ass, huh? <fringe.mp3>
PALMER
(pulls the toy out of the crackerjacks box) Compass. For you El.
ELLIE
You better keep this. Might save your life some day.
PALMER
Will you go out with me tonight?
ELLIE
I don’t make a very good research subject. I’m just not very quotable.
PALMER
No quotes, no quotes, scout’s honor. Just good meal, good company.
ELLIE
I gotta go. (gets up to leave), but Drumlin’s coming in this Tuesday.
As predictable, complexity here is limited, due to the routine type of social exchange and the fact that
interactants are no acquaintances and cannot easily resort to implicit communication. Still, they can
count on much greater context sharedness than outside users would. Understanding between the two
interactants is smooth in terms of reference and illocutionary intentions, in spite of the marked structure
of many moves, such as the first elliptical question by Palmer - Arecibo, right? -, the elliptical offer
Crackerjacs?, whose illocutionary opaqueness is solved thanks to, respectively, a restricted shared
context and politeness routines. Some negotiation, however, is needed in connection with Palmer’s
questioning Ellie about her job. Ellie’s answer - Oh, the usual. Nebulae, quasars, pulsars, stuff like that
- is vague, informationally underdetermined, and it triggers Palmer’s ironic reaction. In both cases the
speakers’ respective signantia are marked, as they are scarcely diagrammatic with their signata (the
reality of their jobs). The complexity of the move does not create misunderstanding between the
speakers, as evidenced by Palmer’s subtle retort, but it might need some elaborate inferencing on the
part of outside text users, as normally ironic utterances do. Ellie’s answer might also induce some
processing difficulty connected with the specialized language she uses, which she is probably exploiting
in order to sound vague and to show her unwillingness to continue the conversation on these grounds.
On the other hand, after Palmer’s irony she repairs with more explicit information. Negotiation is
especially needed in connection with goals and rapport, which the two interactants clearly do not share,
as shown by Ellie’s turning down Palmer’s invitation. The complexity of Ellie’s refusal is based on its
implicitness. Rather than express it with an explicit refusal routine, she constructs it through a general
reluctance to agree with Palmer’s conversational project, i.e. through lack of reciprocation in asking
28
information, through general avoidance, e.g. of contributing to important (for Palmer) topics – see the
Drumlin topic – and especially of explaining the reasons for her refusal. She later exploits Drumlin’s
topic and its frame for that, which allows her to hide behind motivations that do not disclose anything
about herself. Complexity derives from the marked indirectness of Ellie’s illocutionary move, i.e. from
the lack of transparency and iconic diagrammaticity in the relationship between expression/signans and
content/signatum (refusal).
Outsider users would have some processing difficulty here, especially due to a need for a backward
recovering of Ellie’s motivations. Ability to access her illocutionary intentions would be partly impaired
by the difficulty of complex inferencing, i.e. difficulty of integrating such multiple facts into a unitary
interpretation. Access to referents is conditioned by the knowledge of preceding events (intertextuality),
available if the complete script is in the readers’ possession.
Let’s now move to an example of greater complexity, i.e. a conversation taking place between
intimates (from film script You’ve got mail, III scene):
2)
[Joe’s apartment/kitchen. Joe is at his computer talking to a Chat partner]
PATRICIA: Hey!
JOE: Yo.
PATRICIA: I’m almost ready
(Joe is talking, his voice over)
PATRICIA: I need a double today
(Joe is talking, his voice over)
PATRICIA: Did you turn it on?
(Joe is talking, his voice over)
PATRICIA: Did you push it today?
JOE: Yeah. Yes, I pushed it.
PATRICIA: I’m so late. Random House fired Dick Atkins. Good riddance. Murray Chilton died, which
makes one less person I’m not speaking to. Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Uh! Oh! Vince got a great review.
He’ll be insufferable.
PATRICIA: Ah, tonight. PEN dinner.
JOE: Am I going?
PATRICIA: Joe Fox, you promised.
JOE: It’s black tie.
PATRICIA: Oh, oh. Mmm.
JOE: Can’t I just give money instead? What is it this week? Free Albanian writers?
PATRICIA: Oh.
JOE: ‘Cause I’m in favour of that. Okay, I’ll go. I’ll go. You’re late.
PATRICIA: I know, I know.
29
Complexity and consequent processing difficulty for outside text users arise in connection with the
marked referential structure, characterized by very reduced or opaque means of reference (empty
pronouns instead of nouns). Referent accessibility heavily relies on intertextuality, i.e. antecedents not
immediately available to the observer (low transparency). Examples are Patricia’s report of the day and
the PEN dinner event, which must have been the object of previous talks among the interactants. The
outside reader of the text will also fail to understand deictical reference, i.e. elements available in the
context are indicated by pronominal reference or substitution (e.g. the computer referred to in Did you
turn it on? and the drink implicitly intended in I need a double) and especially on shared experience
(e.g. implicit reference to other similar events in What is it this week?). Such elliptical information may
represent an obstacle to immediate understanding. Illocutionary intentions may also be opaque to
outsiders, due to the marked structure of questions. For example, Am I going? is a request for
information actually disguising a request for permission to act differently. The irony associated to the
question What is it this week? Free Albanian writers? disguises a disagreeing attitude that is not limited
to the present case and must be reconstructed as a story of the individual. It also gives hints of the
“collective” story of the two interactants and of their relationships.
Mutual understanding among interactants is instead very easy and does not cause any
interruption in the flow of discourse and in the progression of the text. On the contrary, the extreme
economy of means allows the text to progress fast and smoothly towards the completion of the
speakers’ interactive project.
This is a very good example of the theoretical independence of such notions as
naturalness/markedness and optimality (§ 3). The communicative optimality of conversation (2) rests on
options that are marked on the fundamental parameter of diagrammatic iconicity. Still, their complexity
does not prevent the situational success of the text. The hierarchy of naturalness requirements clearly
privileges other levels, first of all economy of expressive means (situationally adequate to interactants’
great hurry!). We can also observe, here, the clear bifurcation of text interpretability into two different
conceptions, namely the on-going understanding among inside interacting participants, for whom the
text is communicatively optimal, vs. the understanding allowed to outside observers of the text, for
whom its optimality is irrelevant, as they are not ratified participants in the communicative project.
5. 4 The argumentative type
Two men who perceive the same situation
differently but nevertheless employ the same
vocabulary in its discussion must be using
words differently. They speak, that is, from
what
I
have
called
incommensurable
30
viewpoints. How can they even hope to talk
together much less to be persuasive.
T.S. Kuhn 1962
The final application that I propose concerns the argumentative text type and specifically the
monologic discourse relative to economic theorising. In my preceding research (Merlini Barbaresi 1983,
1988) I tried to provide a description of this type by integrating the linguistic, cognitive and pragmatic
perspectives.
The point of departure was the definition of the social function of the economist as a
scientist – well established and largely conventionalised and predictable – and of the
components and phases of his activity. My specific aim was to model the intersemiotic
relationships holding among the various systems in which the economist is involved, i.e. 1) the
social system in which the economist is interpreter and actor; 2) the world of cognition, where
the economist’s intentions and planning are structured; and 3) discourse, the world of
signification and communication. In conceiving these three different layers of the economist’s
experience, I had Vigotzki in mind, as re-elaborated in Luria (1976). In order to relate these
three semiotic systems I went through the following three phases:
1) by having recourse to the science of Economics I was able to establish which was a typical action
scheme of the economist as a theorist, in fact a combination of Analysis, Prediction, Proposal. This
finding directed my investigations into the corpus;
2) my second step was to draw on theoretical studies in cognition giving indication, for example, of
universal perceptual preferences and inferential procedures (e.g. cause perceived before effect,
motivation before aim). This preference is isomorphic with the order of facts and the scheme of
actions. The economist starts with the analysis and interpretation of facts and inferentially predicts
trends of development. These actions develop motivations for intervention on the economic system,
and promote the economist’s intention to make a proposal.
Some schematisation may illustrate the economist’s conceptual processing:
Scheme 1 p  q (there is a causal relation between p and q)
(theoretical premise)
Scheme 2 since/if p (is observable) then q will occur
(analysis and prediction)
Scheme 3 since q (is a negative event) do A (to prevent it)
(proposal)
Scheme 3’ since q (is a positive event) do A (to accelerate it)
So, intention A is promoted by a typical inferential process: if p then q (premise), now p (facts), then q
(conclusions).
3) in a third phase, that of discourse, one can predict, as a natural/unmarked outcome, a certain
sequence of speech acts, whose type, order and combination was in some way pre-determined.
31
Expectations are for a sequence of :
(a) Assertion (a premise disclosing the economist’s theoretical frame of reference), which may be
left unexpressed in specific text tokens. In this case, it may appear at any point as a warrant to
argumentative assertions,
b) Assertion/Analysis (argumentative in nature, concerning the identification of relevant data and of
their connections, which may be warranted by recalling models and theories adopted),
c) Assertion/Prediction (concerning developments and trends constrained by the phenomena
identified in (b),and by the causal relations linking them).
d) Proposal (in the form of suggestion, advice, authoritative directive, etc., depending on the stage
of the economist’s elaboration and the social role of the economist) + Warrant prediction.
The pattern of
Analysis + Prediction + Proposal was found to be constitutive of this type and
recursively recurring at various text levels. Expectancy in terms of naturalness is for the pattern to
appear in this order (ordo naturalis), iconic with the economist’s social activity and cognitive
processing. In the reality of things, the order may be disrupted, often in response to local needs, or due
to “defective” argumentative superstructures (van Djik 1980), in which the economist skips some of the
component activities, in order to concentrate on either analysis only, or prediction or proposal. The rest
of the pattern may be recovered elsewhere in his own or other economists’ work.
Argumentative texts often contain explicit metatextual reference to this basic sequence. Let’s see an
example:
1) Thus (A) our analysis has offered us not only an explanation for the current state of affairs; it
has also provided us with (B) a basis for speculations about the future… (C) If our model is
valid…(D) increased support from other sources will have to be found if the performing arts are
to continue (Elzinga 1972:55).
(A=Analysis; B=Prediction; C= Premise/Warrant Analysis; D=Proposal)
The naturalness of the economist’s discourse was evaluated on the parameter of diagrammatic
iconicity. In the reality of facts, his discourse might fail to meet one’s expectations and have, instead,
more marked solutions, that is a less iconic or even anti-iconic order or less regular co-occurrence of the
three speech acts. This may be due, as we have seen elsewhere, to pressures coming from conflicting
principles influencing the speaker’s choices in the course of his/her discourse planning. Requirements
of the level of information structure, for example, concerning hyper- vs. hypo-themes, foregrounding
vs. back-grounding, salience and focus may constrain cognitive preferences and natural sequences of
speech acts.
For example, if at a perceptual level, the cause (or condition) comes first, from the point of view of
argumentation and of social relevance and appeal, it is rather the predicted social effect that deserves
32
focus and salience. Also syntactic requirements (system adequacy) may intervene in the same direction.
The since/if p of scheme n.2 expectedly should appear as a secondary clause (causal or conditional) in
first position, but this is seldom the case, as the English system, we said, prefers main clause to come
first. Let’s see a few examples (from Elzinga 1972):
(1) Wherever there are unliquidated gains [analysed cause], prices will fall more promptly
[predicted effect].
2) Consumers will be benefited [predicted effect], when the speculators buy …[analysed
cause/condition].
3) The existence of the black market [cause] may affect the willingness to sell of the legal market
sellers [prediction].
4) Preventing and countering [proposal] the events which select people for poverty, may help
maintain or accelerate the rate at which…[warrant prediction].
In (2) the order of clauses iconically mirrors (ordo naturalis) both the phase of the economist’s social
action and that of his cognitive processes, and is not respectful of the grammatical preference of the
English system, which is instead complied with in (3) and (5). In (4), the order is a compromise
solution. It iconically mirrors the cognitive schema but the subordinate clause is nominalized (the
existence of) so as to obtain a one-clause sentence.
In these examples we witness the interplay of powerful conflicting text requirements. For example,
in (4), resorting to a nominalization may be optimal but the pattern is more marked/less natural than a
canonical if-clause on a parameter of transparency and biuniqueness. In (3) the anticipated prediction is
optimally effective from the point of view of the argumentative purpose, but it may create a momentary
gap in the inferential process of the receiver, who may be unable to immediately reconstruct the causeeffect relation.
In argumentative scientific texts, effectiveness (vs. efficiency) is a very basic text requirement and
optimality may have to accept many compromise solutions in terms of naturalness to favour this
requirement. Predictably, argumentative theorising selects specialized receivers, whose high level of
textual competence can raise the threshold of acceptable markedness and relativise processing
difficulty, but complexity remains an expectable quality of such texts. Complexity also derives from the
functional load of such texts, combining more functions (Dressler and Eckkrammer 2001), namely
referential (reference to facts), argumentative (describing and expressing the speaker’s personal
perception of facts and their relations) and conative/suasive (preoccupation with the reciver’s
33
acceptance of the speaker’s argumentation). A final example will illustrate the intersecting of these
prominent functions with the complex tripartite illocutionary design:
5) It is apparent that all the standard problems of nonprofit organizations which (A) have just been
discussed beset the performing arts. It is not surprising, therefore, that the survival of the great
majority of its organizations requires a constant flow of conributions. We can then easily
understand why the arts find themselves in their present unhappy circumstances. But, up to this
point, (A) our discussion has offered (B) no portents for the future. Here we don the inherited
mantle of the dismal scientist and argue that one can read the (B) prospects of the arts tomorrow in
the economic structure which characterizes them today. (A) The evidence will suggest that (B)
prospects will offer no grounds for complacency - that there are fundamental reasons to expect the
financial strains which beset the performing arts organizations to increase, chronically, with the
passage of time. To understand the prospective developments on the cost side, (C) it is necessary to
digress briefly… (Elzinga 1972: 55)
The arrangement of the basic components in the text – (A) is for analysis, (B) for prediction and (C) for
proposals – in its sequentiality, iconically diagrams the logical arrangements of the same components in
the economist’s cognitive process. This “natural” relation between cognition and discourse (a metaphor
of ordo naturalis)
mitigates complexity, which is otherwise of a high degree. Markedness and
complexity especially derive from the non-canonical syntactic means used to express the macrorelevant speech acts (analysis, prediction and proposal), mainly entrusted to lexical elements (in italics)
rather than clausal structures (except C). In this task, lexis is poorly efficient from the indexical point of
view, and the pragmatic transparency (recognition of illocutionary intents) is low. As a consequence, a
marked status is also predictable in the expression of the general discourse functions prominent in this
type. The disguising of the agent in the macro-speech acts causes the referential/argumentative function
to remain confined to the background and reduces the suasive force of the argumentation. Re-tracing the
economist’s arguments gets more difficult. Is it an optimal text? Do these marked solutions satisfy some
hierarchically higher naturalness requirements? They may be motivated by the phasing of the
argumentation. This fragment has more explicit antecedents in the text. It is probably meant to be a recapitulation preparing the receiver to a concrete proposal.
6. Conclusions
By way of concluding, I would like to resume the main points of my theoretical proposal, whereby text
complexity is viewed as an instance of system complexity, and a text as a complex system, similar to
what can be found in physics and other disciplines. The analysis of text complexity under this light
presupposes conceiving of the text as a dynamic configuration of components that, in the course of the
text progression (text time), variously interplay and with varied effects. The theory of complex systems
offers good instruments for modelling this type of interplay and for explaining the changes and
34
readjustments that follow. A theory of markedness, on the other hand, intended as any departure from
naturalness, can help motivate and predict the emergence, type and scope of textual complexity. By
combining the two theoretical approaches, it is possible to achieve a consistent, objectively formed
conception of text difficulty (processing difficulty), a relevant notion in language teaching, and a
problem awaiting definition and solutions.
The basic tenets of my model are the following: all texts variably exhibit marked choices at some
linguistic level(s) (phonological, morphological, syntactical, etc.), from some perspective (here: text
constitutive principles) and on some parameter (here: universal semiotic principles). These are the most
natural/least marked choices possible after all naturalness requirements of the text have been taken care
of. A hierarchy of such requirements (often internally conflicting), depending on the prominence the
various perspectives (from cohesion to intertextuality) acquire in the text, is organised and continuously
reorganised as the text producer progresses in his/her textual choices. The degree, extent and mutual
impact of such marked phenomena are the main source of emergent complexity. Complexity is a graded
value and at its extreme levels may be a source of misunderstanding, i.e. extreme processing difficulty.
To put it schematically, text complexity is the consequence of markedness and is the cause of
processing difficulty. Evaluating the complexity of a text on the basis of the number and level of its
marked options is, at the same time, a quantitative and a qualitative action, involving both linguistic and
cognitive operations. Evaluating text difficulty, intended as its receiver's ability to understand text
meaning and significance, requires adding operations devoted to the analysis of contextual variables.
The limit of text time puts an end to the dynamic interplay of marked phenomena and to the emergence
of complexity, whereas processing difficulty must be continuously re-defined according to text users,
their experience and amount of knowledge sharing. Grading texts according to difficulty, though,
becomes easier once contextual variables can be kept fixed, as happens at school, where knowledge is
monitored.
My theoretical conception includes a fourth relevant notion, optimality. This is a dynamic quality
the text pursues and manages. Any marked choice and the changes it produces are counterbalanced by
measures intended to restore optimality in communication. Optimality is not to be conflated with
naturalness: an optimal text may contain marked options but it is one that has undergone modifications
intended to restore a tolerable level of coherence and interpretability.
The notion of complex systems deserves a few final words. Modelling text analysis on this notion
has allowed us to explain and predict the emergence of complexity deriving from any departure from
naturalness. When system agents (text components for us) enter into conflicts, it is difficult to predict
their consequences, and chaos may emerge. In text, marked phenomena (e.g. ordo artificialis in Recipe
1’ or Narrative 2) allow prediction and explanation of emerging complexity (e.g. extra temporal
expressions, more complex tenses, etc.). The recognition of a marked status (independently evaluated)
opens up opportunities for identifying new patterns for a new interpretative approach (e.g. different
expectations concerning text type, as in Recipe 1’).
35
In fact, it should be emphasized that integrating a theory of complex systems with a theory of
naturalness/markedness obtains a very efficient framework for overcoming the fuzziness of intuitive
evaluations of text complexity and difficulty.
REFERENCES
Aston, G. (1988) “What’s a public service encounter anyway?”. In G. Aston (ed.)
Negotiating Service. Bologna: CLUEB, 25-42.
Bar-Yam, Y. (1997) Dynamics of Complex Systems. London: Longman.
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