Techniques of Description

Spoken and Written Discourse

Gwyneth Fox, Michael Hoey, John M. Sinclair

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9781134881406
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book is a tribute to Malcolm Coulthard, who has been remarkably active and influential across a wide range of English Language Studies. He is particularly well-known for his pioneering work in spoken and written discourse analysis and most recently, for his work in forensic linguistics. This collection of specially commissioned, state-of-the-art pieces by leading international linguists is dedicated to the man and his achievements and provides a showcase for the most exciting developments in applied discourse studies. All the papers share common assumptions about language study: that descriptions should be data-based, data-tested and replicable. The collection as a whole contains original and important new research on descriptions, with intriuging applications to forensic, gender and literary studies.

1
WRITTEN DISCOURSE STRUCTURE

John M.Sinclair

1 INTRODUCTION

This is a preliminary exploration of a new position on the structure of written text. It analyses a newspaper article by Randolph Quirk.

As a convenient starting point, let us assume that the text at any moment is seen as the sentence currently being interpreted. A reader is attending to one short stretch of the text at any time (and so, no doubt, is the writer when writing—at least the writer is responsible for making the text interpretable sentence by sentence).¹

To Winter (1986)² structure is necessary because we cannot say everything at once. In any ‘state of the text’, then, we can expect guidance in the text to both what has gone before and what is yet to come. The sentence is regarded as the likeliest unit to carry the status of ‘text of the moment’.

The relation between the state of the text and previous text is derived from an appreciation of the interactive quality of language. Language in use, whether written or spoken, is involved in the process of creating and sharing meaning between two participants. It therefore consists in part of features which organise the sharing of meaning, as well as features which create the meaning.

These features are usually inseparable. Each word, each intonation participates in both aspects of the organisation of an utterance. As an example, here is a sentence from a recent letter to me:

We begin our fourth programme on 9 July.

As printed, out of context, it seems to be a simple piece of information. But on placing the sentence in context it can be seen as an integral component of a strategy of persuasion. The next sentence, the only other one in a brief paragraph, reads:

Can we have an official response from you regarding these suggestions?

The implication is that my response should be quick and definite, and since their commitments increase heavily on 9 July, I should, if possible, complete our business before that date.

The juxtaposition of these two sentences in a paragraph, without an overt connection, invites us to relate them by postulating a meaning of the same nature as ‘so’ though not identical to it. The absence of an explicit connection does not mean that the sentences are not connected in interpretation. We deduce, however, that provision for such a connection in the structure of each successive sentence is so important that, if it is not expressed, it is inferred.

The words and phrases which express connections between sentences are such as so, therefore, on the contrary. They are often called ‘logical operators’. I would argue that they are part of the interactive apparatus of the language, progressively determining the status of a previous sentence in relation to the current one. In spoken English there are words and phrases which are clearly specialised towards expressing the interactive side of discourse meaning. These are the ‘interactive signals’ such as well, ah, anyway, you see, after all, I mean. The central tenet of the present argument—that a text is represented at any moment of interpretation by a single sentence—allows us to see that the logical operators and the interactive signals have essentially the same discourse function. One is associated with the speaker, but they both give coherence to the text and independence to the sentence. The similarity between them has been obscured by the strong physical presence of a written text, which is misleading since a text is actually interpreted bit by bit in a dynamic process.

1.1 Encapsulation

There is support in the details of text organisation for the view that each new sentence takes over the status of ‘state of the text’, and therefore that the previous sentence relinquishes that role. The support takes the form of a default hypothesis and the associated arguments.

The default hypothesis is that each new sentence encapsulates the previous one by an act of reference. By referring to the whole of the previous sentence, a new sentence uses it as part of the subject matter. This removes its discourse function, leaving only the meaning which it has created.

As a default hypothesis, this should be generally true and applicable and the analysis replicable. All cases where it is not true should be covered by explicit arguments. In a small proportion of cases we may accept that the encapsulation can be implied by the writer and reasonably inferred by the reader. If no such inference suggests itself, the text is interpreted as not coherent at this point. Texts are not expected to be totally explicitly coherent, and individual judgements on doubtful instances are expected todiffer. The writing and reading of text is a human and not a mechanical activity.

Our hypothesis is that there is an underlying structure to discourse where each new sentence makes reference to the previous one, and encapsulates the previous sentence in an act of reference. It is a common discourse strategy for the discourse to refer to itself; where it is prominent and unexpected it is called plane change (Sinclair, 1981). This chapter argues that a less marked kind of self-reference is the basic coherence of text. If encapsulation were an absolute rule, and not just a default hypothesis, then the nature of text structure would be obvious. The current sentence would encapsulate the previous one, which in its turn had encapsulated its predecessor, and so on back to the beginning of the text. The current sentence would then be encapsulated in an act of reference in the next to come, and so on until the end of the text.

Any sentence, then, would be a precise manifestation of the whole text up to that point. Detail expressed in earlier states of the text would be recoverable through the encapsulations. The last sentence of a text would thus be a manifestation of the entire text, presented in an appropriate form for the discourse function which it was performing.

As a model of text structure, this is very attractive. It explains how texts can be organised and how their dynamism may be created and fuelled. It provides the basis for a powerful definition of coherence, and reduces cohesion to the identification of the act of reference only.

Other kinds of cohesion, referring to less than a sentence, are not regarded as textual in nature. We may clarify this point—for it is an important one— by suggesting that there are two quite different processes going under the name of cohesion. Failure to appreciate the distinction between them has hampered the development of models of text structure.

The first I would call ‘point-to-point’ cohesion, where, for example, a pronoun can be related back to a noun phrase earlier in the text, and can be said to ‘refer’ to it. This kind of pattern is clearly of frequent occurrence, and is the basis of most accounts of cohesion. It includes the rich field of lexical cohesion, where the recurrence of a word or phrase, or the occurrence of something reminiscent of a previous item, is noted. Each constituent of these patterns is less than one sentence long; normally a word or phrase, or at most a clause.

In contrast, the second process deals only with sentences or, occasionally, clause complexes, and it does much more than effect a tenuous connection between isolated constituents of sentences. It is the process of encapsulation, and it reclassifies a previous sentence by ‘demoting’ it into an element of the structure of the new sentence.

This kind of cohesion is clearly structural; the other is not so clearly structural. The model of text that I am putting forward has no place for retention of the actual words and phrases of a text so that such connectionscould be established (though see Section 2.3 on Verbal echo below).

The question remains as to where in a model ‘point-to-point’ cohesion should be located. An argument which I shall develop elsewhere is that when the discourse function of a sentence is superseded by the next one, its linguistic properties are discarded, and only what it expresses is retained. It is no longer a linguistic entity, but a part of shared knowledge. If it contains words and phrases of ‘point-to-point’ reference, these are interpreted with reference to shared knowledge, not to previous text.

If, by a process of progressive encapsulation of one sentence by the next, each sentence in turn encapsulates all previous sentences, then there is no need to search for actual stretches of text as referents, antecedents and the like. Nor is it ...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• MALCOLM COULTHARD: A SHORT APPRECIATION
• PUBLICATIONS OF MALCOLM COULTHARD
• INTRODUCTION
• 1. WRITTEN DISCOURSE STRUCTURE
• 2. A QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF POLARITY AND PRIMARY TENSE IN THE ENGLISH FINITE CLAUSE
• 3. A COMMON SIGNAL IN DISCOURSE: HOW THE WORD REASON IS USED IN TEXTS
• 4. GRAMMAR AND LEXIS SOME PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
• 5. DESCRIBING KNOWLEDGE ABOUT LANGUAGE: PUPILS, TEACHERS AND THE LINC PROGRAMME
• 6. PRINCIPLES OF CONVERSATION IN BEOWULFIAN SPEECH
• 7. LANGUAGE, CHARACTER AND ACTION: A LINGUISTIC APPROACH TO THE ANALYSIS OF CHARACTER IN A HEMINGWAY SHORT STORY
• 8. REPRESENTATIONS IN PROSE: SETTING THE SCENE
• 9. TELLING TALES
• 10. SPOKEN DISCOURSE MARKERS IN WRITTEN TEXT
• 11. A COMPARISON OF ‘POLICESPEAK’ AND ‘NORMALSPEAK’: A PRELIMINARY STUDY
• 12. FROM DISCOURSE ANALYSIS TO CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS: THE DIFFERENTIAL RE-PRESENTATION OF WOMEN AND MEN SPEAKING IN WRITTEN NEWS