Critical Reading and Writing in the Digital Age

An Introductory Coursebook

Andrew Goatly, Preet Hiradhar

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780415842617
• eBook ISBN: 9781317205807
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Critical Reading and Writing in the Digital Age is a fully introductory, interactive textbook that explores the power relations at work in and behind the texts we encounter in our everyday lives. Using examples from numerous genres – such as fiction, poetry, advertisements and newspapers – this textbook examines the language choices a writer must make in structuring texts, representing the world and positioning the reader. Assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics, Critical Reading and Writing in the Digital Age offers guidance on how to read texts critically and how to develop effective writing skills.

Extensively updated, key features of the second edition include:

• a radically revised and repackaged section that highlights the theme of discourses of power and authority and the new possibilities for resisting them;
• a revamped analysis of the art of communication which has changed due to the advent of new media including Facebook and Wikipedia;
• fresh examples, exercises and case studies including fan fiction, articles from the BBC, Daily Mail and South China Morning Post, and a selection of international ads for a variety of products;
• a brand new companion website at www.routledge.com/cw/goatly featuring projects, quizzes and activities for each chapter, a glossary and further reading.

Written by two experienced teachers, Critical Reading and Writing in the Digital Age is an ideal coursebook for students of English language.

1 Genre and the organisation of text

DOI: 10.4324/9781315616728-1

The aim of this chapter

is to show how we can organise information in texts, through language, visuals and the structure of different genres.

Contents

1.0 Introduction: the need for organisation

underlines the fact that texts will be judged not only on their content but also on their organisation and textual impact.

1.1 Information in the clause and sentence

analyses the language resources for distributing old and new information in sentences, and patterns of organisation over sequences of sentences.

1.2 The structure of the paragraph

introduces four basic kinds of paragraph structure, and explores the differences between point-first and point-last structures.

1.3 Generic structure

explains the notion of generic structure, concentrating on narratives and news reports and showing how the latter’s structure gives scope for bias.

1.4 Visual information in texts

surveys the devices at our disposal for making texts more visually interesting, and discusses their effects on reading.

1.5 Summary and postscript on genre, culture and ideology

Activities

As well as many small-scale activities, there are two major activities on

• making a text more visually attractive
• rewriting a narrative as a news report.

1.0 Introduction: the need for organisation

Supposing you bumped into your new professor in the canteen and wanted to arrange to meet her in her office, and she gave you the following directions:

It’s the third office on the left on the corridor. You need the Arts building, that’s three blocks down from here. It’s on the second floor.

Though there is enough information here to get you to the office, it’s so badly organised that it will be difficult to remember or to use. In fact it breaks two principles of the organisation of information. The first is that a speaker/writer should start from what the hearer/reader already knows. The second is that when a sequence is described its elements should be given in the order in which they take place. So it would be better to start with going to the Arts building, which you are informed is three blocks down from the canteen, and then to tell which floor you need, and finally where on the corridor it is:

Three blocks down from here is the Arts building. Go to the second floor. It’s the third office on the left.

Spoken text is entirely linear, and written text tends to be so. In other words, we have to listen in the order in which the words are spoken, and we often read the text in the order in which it is presented, though, as we shall see, this varies with the kind of text, and how visual it is. Because language text is largely linear, the order in which we present information is crucial in organising our material effectively.

In fact, reading a text is very much like making a journey from one point to another. If a longish text is well organised it will be possible for the writer to give a map and visual cues to the reader – indicate in advance and by graphic devices how the text is sectionalised, what point in the text we have reached and where we are going next. These are a great help to the reader and make the organisation clear. But a map is impossible without an underlying organisation. So let’s examine the various ways in which information can be organised and presented in text.

1.1 Information in the clause and sentence

First of all we can consider how information is ordered in the sentence or clause. To analyse clauses for their information structure we can divide them into two parts called theme and rheme. Assuming the basic elements of the clause can be labelled Subject, Object, Verb and Adverbial, the theme will be the first of these elements to occur in the clause. Let’s look at some examples.

1
Subject	Verb	Object	Adverbial
A strong earthquake	struck western	China	on Monday morning
Theme…	|Rheme…
2
Object	Subject	Verb	Adverbial
Western China	a strong earthquake	Struck	on Monday morning
Theme…	|Rheme…
3
3Adverbial	Subject	Verb	Object
On Monday morning	a strong earthquake	Struck	Western China
Theme…	|Rheme…

There are various additional grammatical tricks we can use to redistribute information. First, we can use the passive:

4
Subject	Verb	Adverbial
Western China	was struck	by a strong earthquake
Theme…	| Rheme…

Or we can introduce a second clause:

1. 5 It was western China that was struck by a strong earthquake on Monday morning
2. 6 It was on Monday morning that western China was struck by a strong earthquake
3. 7 It was an earthquake that struck western China on Monday morning

Theme–rheme and given–new

In general, the most straightforward way of organising information in a text is to put old or given information, information the reader and writer already have, in the theme position, and information which is new to the reader towards the end of the rheme. We can see this if we imagine the sentences above are replies to questions.

Activity 1

Please refer to the companion website for the activity material.

The guiding principle is, then, that the most important new information goes at the end of the rheme, and given or old information goes in the theme. If in your writing you bend this rule then you should have very good reasons for doing so.

Activity 2

Please refer to the companion website for the activity material.

1.2 The structure of the paragraph

Thematic strings or thematic development

Besides looking at the themes of individual clauses, we can consider the pattern of themes over a whole paragraph or passage. A clear pattern of thematic development will often be a sign of good organisation. Consider this short news item about Nelson Mandela’s death, where the three themes, underlined, all refer to the dead man:

Nelson Mandela death

Anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela died on December 5th 2013. Mandela, also affectionately known as Madiba, spent 27 years in prison, many of them on Robben Island, before his release in 1990. He went on to become the first president of South Africa in the fully democratic post-apartheid era, serving from 1995 to 1999.

Or look back at the text about the late Christopher Reeve’s horse-riding accident in the introduction (p. 4), where the themes are as follows:

• Superman star Christopher Reeve
• His family
• Sources
• The actor’s publicist Lisa Kastelere
• She
• Horse-mad Reeve
• Witnesses
• Doctors
• Reeve, 43 and 6 ft 4 in
• Doctors
• Reeve
• They
• Reeve

There is an obvious pattern here. The themes always refer to people, as normal in human-interest stories. Almost half of the themes refer to Reeve. The other people referred to are those who have reacted verbally to the accident or its aftermath.

Activity 3

Please refer to the companion website for the activity material.

We have seen that the words in the theme of sentences and clauses have a very important role in making a text hang together, technically, giving it cohesion. Or to put it another way, repeated references to the same people or semantic areas throughout a text may well help the text cohere; but if the expressions which refer to them are in the theme position this cohesion will be more obvious and more organised.

We noted patterns of referring to one person in the Mandela text, various persons in the Superman text, and to seasons in passage 2 in Activity 3.

Paragraph structure

Thematic development is one area to consider when organising our text, but equally important is paragraph structure. Walter Nash (1980) suggested four quite typical ways of organising paragraphs in continuous prose, which he calls the Step, the Stack, the Chain and the Balance. These are not rigid patterns, and may be combined or modified, but they often give a basic shape to paragraphs and sections of writing.

The step

Heat fat in frying pan. When hot add peas. Turn and stir-fry slowly over a medium heat. Add chicken broth and continue to stir-fry for one more minute. Sprinkle with salt, sugar and sherry and stir-fry gently for one further minute and serve.

This is part of a recipe, one example of a procedure – a text type that tells you how to carry out a process step by step in the right order. The step is probably the basic design which underlines procedures, as well as narratives, both of which depend upon an ordering of events in time. Notice that, in this recipe, there is very little attempt to make the text hang together internally, not much cohesion: only the means of cooking is repeated – ‘stir-fry’ – but none of the ingredients is mentioned more than once; and there is no pattern of thematic development. Rather, it is the external activity which gives it coherence, along with the repetition of commands or imperatives: ‘...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Front-Other Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table Of Contents
• List of images
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Typographical conventions
• Introduction
• Part A Critical linguistics: reading meanings off the text
• 1 Genre and die organisation of text
• 2 Text and conceptual meaning
• 3 Text and interpersonal meaning
• Part B Critical discourse: reading meanings into the text
• 4 Interpreting discourse
• 5 Reading and writing positions
• 6 Intertextuality
• Part C The authority and power behind discourse and resisting it
• Ads, consumer capitalism and the crisis of inequality
• 8 News, institutional power and the crisis of democracy
• 9 Environmental discourse, poetry and the ecological crisis
• 10 The power of fiction and comedy
• Glossary
• References
• Index