Discourse analysis capitolo 2 | Dispense di Lingua Inglese

A2. TEXTS AND TEXTURE

According to the linguistic Halliday, meaning is the most important thing that

makes a text a text. It has to make sense. A text, in his view, is everything that

is meaningful in a particular situation. And the basis for meaning is choice.

Whenever I choose one thing rather than another from a set of alternatives, I’m

making meaning.

Texts are not only written: can be oral and written. Can also involve other

elements, linguistics, and verbal.

Word, colour, and context

TEXTS VS RANDOM COLLECTIONS OF SENTENCES

-A text has to make meaning (MAK Halliday)

How do we make meaning?

-By making choices: MEANING IS BASED ON CHOICE

A language is a system of meanings, accompanied by forms through which the

meanings can be expressed (Halliday)

TEXTURE = context and relationships (like semantic relationship) are the

quality that makes a particular set of words or sentences a text, rather than a

random collection of linguistic items.

The main thing that makes a text a text is relationships or connections.

Sometimes these relationships are between words, sentences or other

elements inside the text. These kinds of relationships create what we refer to

as cohesion. Another kind of relationship exists between the text and the

person who is reading it or using it in some way. Here, meaning comes chiefly

from the background knowledge the person has about certain social

conventions regarding texts as well as the social situation in which the text is

found and what the person wants to do with the text. This kind of relationship

creates what we call coherence. Finally, there is the relationship between one

text and other texts in the world that one might, at some point, need to refer to

in the process of making sense of this text. This kind of relationship creates

what we call intertextuality.

-A language speakers’ ability to discriminate between a random set of

sentences and one forming a discourse is due to the inherent texture in

the language and to their awareness of it (Halliday)

- Two important things make a text a text:

1. One has to do with features inherent in the language itself (ex.

Grammar) which help us understand the relationships among different

words and sentences and other elements in the text,

2. Features that exist in the mind of the people who perceive the text:

awareness of the conventions of language which help us to work out

the relationships among words, sentences, paragraphs, pictures and

other textual elements, as well as relationships between these

combinations of textual elements and certain social situations or

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A2. TEXTS AND TEXTURE

According to the linguistic Halliday, meaning is the most important thing that makes a text a text. It has to make sense. A text, in his view, is everything that is meaningful in a particular situation. And the basis for meaning is choice. Whenever I choose one thing rather than another from a set of alternatives, I’m making meaning. Texts are not only written: can be oral and written. Can also involve other elements, linguistics, and verbal. Word, colour, and context TEXTS VS RANDOM COLLECTIONS OF SENTENCES

A text has to make meaning (MAK Halliday) How do we make meaning?
By making choices: MEANING IS BASED ON CHOICE A language is a system of meanings, accompanied by forms through which the meanings can be expressed (Halliday) TEXTURE = context and relationships (like semantic relationship) are the quality that makes a particular set of words or sentences a text, rather than a random collection of linguistic items. The main thing that makes a text a text is relationships or connections. Sometimes these relationships are between words, sentences or other elements inside the text. These kinds of relationships create what we refer to as cohesion. Another kind of relationship exists between the text and the person who is reading it or using it in some way. Here, meaning comes chiefly from the background knowledge the person has about certain social conventions regarding texts as well as the social situation in which the text is found and what the person wants to do with the text. This kind of relationship creates what we call coherence. Finally, there is the relationship between one text and other texts in the world that one might, at some point, need to refer to in the process of making sense of this text. This kind of relationship creates what we call intertextuality.
A language speakers’ ability to discriminate between a random set of sentences and one forming a discourse is due to the inherent texture in the language and to their awareness of it (Halliday)
Two important things make a text a text:

One has to do with features inherent in the language itself (ex. Grammar) which help us understand the relationships among different words and sentences and other elements in the text,
Features that exist in the mind of the people who perceive the text: awareness of the conventions of language which help us to work out the relationships among words, sentences, paragraphs, pictures and other textual elements, as well as relationships between these combinations of textual elements and certain social situations or

communicative purposes. (COMMON KNOWLEDGE = the knowledge you share with other people in society).

Texts are always related to other texts and sometimes, in order to make sense of them or use them to perform social actions, you need to make reference to those other texts. TEXTS ARE CHARACTERISED BY RELATIONSHIPS
Relationships between words, sentences, and other elements inside the text. COHESION
Relationship between the text and the person who is reading/using it. Meaning derives from the background knowledge the person has about certain conventions regarding texts as well as the social situations in which the text is found and what the person wants to do with the text. COHERENCE
Relationships between one text and other texts in the world that might be considered in the process of making sense of this text. INTERTEXTUALITY B2. COHESION AND COHERENCE Texture comes from cohesion and coherence. Cohesion primarily has to do with linguistic features in the text, and coherence has to do with the kind of ‘framework’ with which the reader approaches the text and what he or she wants to use the text to do. Connectedness in texts is the result of readers mental operations on the text. Cohesion is the quality of a text that forces readers to look either backward or forward in the text in order to make sense of the things in the texts. To say that coherence is a matter of the ‘frameworks’ or sets of expectations that we bring to texts, does not mean that what is actually in the text is any less important. Concrete features must exist in the text which are often arranged in a certain order and conform to those expectations. COHESION Halliday and Hasan describe two broad kinds of linguistic devices to force readers to engage in this process of backward and forward looking which gives them a sense of connectedness in texts:

Grammatical cohesion (depends on grammar)
Lexical cohesion (depends on the meanings of words and involves the repetition of words or words from the same semantic field) GRAMMATICAL COHESION: devices used to create grammar cohesion:
CONJUNCTIONS (using ‘connecting words’)
REFERENCE (using a pronoun to refer to another word)
SUBSTITUTION (of one word or phrase with another)

Substitution is similar to reference except that, rather than using pronouns, other words are used to refer to an antecedent, which has appeared earlier or will appear later. Beside wearing a meat dress, Lady Gaga has also worn a hair one, which was designed by Chris March.
Substitution can also be used to refer to the verb or the entire predicate of a clause. If Lady Gaga was intending to shock people, she succeeded in doing so. ELLIPSIS
Ellipsis is the omission of a noun, verb, or phrase on the assumption that it is understood from the linguistic context. There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us, and not we, them. (Virginia Woolf) Bob wants to go to the store, and Jane wants too as well. LEXICAL COHESION: occurs as a result of the semantic relationship between words. It is characterised by:
Repetition of words
Repetition of words related to the same subject (LEXICAL CHAINS – helps to bind the text together). Lady Gaga, who came under fire recently for wearing a meat bikini on the cover of Vogue Hommes Japan, wore a raw meat dress at last night’s VMAs. It was one of the many outfits she wore throughout the night.
Lexical chains make the text cohesive and highlight the topic or topics that the text is about, so they provide context for determining the meaning of ambiguous words.
They also evoke feelings and expectations in the readers/addressees.
Some texts may make use of a lot of these devices, whereas others may use very few of them. Halliday and Hasan refer to texture in text as being either ‘tight’ (meaning that there are many cohesive devices) or ‘loose’ (meaning that there are fewer). What often determines the extent to which these devices are used is how much they are needed for readers to make the kinds of connections they need to make to understand the text. Communication generally operates according to the principle of ‘least effort’. COHERENCE Coherence has to do with our expectations about the way elements in a text ought to be organized and the kinds of social actions that are associated with a given text.

We sometimes need to apply our experience with past texts and with certain conventions that have grown up in our society in order to understand new texts we encounter. We have expectations about the way elements in a text ought to be organized. There are a number of different kinds of interpretative frameworks that we use to make sense of texts. One kind is: GENERIC FRAMEWORK is based on the expectations we have about the kinds of information that we expect to encounter in texts of different kinds and the order in which we expect the information to be presented, along with other types of lexical and grammatical features we expect to encounter. Part of what forms such generic frameworks is that different parts of a text are not just lexically and grammatically related, but they have also conceptually and procedurally related – they appear in a certain logical and predictable sequence. Texts following the ‘Problem-Solution’ pattern, for example, begin by presenting a problem and then go on to present one or more solutions to the problem. This important principle in discourse analysis has its origins largely in cognitive science and early research in artificial intelligence by people like Schank and Abelson (1977), who pointed out that many human activities are governed by conventional, sequentially ordered, multi-step procedures (which they called ‘scripts’), and Rumelhart, (1975), who pointed out that, in a similar way, texts like narratives also exhibit conventional structures based on predictable sequences of actions and information (which he called ‘schema’). William Labov argued that stories have a predictable pattern:

ABSTRACT
ORIENTATION
COMPLICATING ACTION
RESOLUTION
CODA CULTURAL MODELS But not all of the knowledge we use to make sense of texts comes from our knowledge about the conventions associated with different kinds of texts. Some of this knowledge is part of a conceptual framework that we build up based on our understanding of how the world works. These frameworks can be called ‘cultural models’, which reflect the values of a particular group of people in a particular place at a particular point in history. Texts reflect our expectations, values and beliefs and reinforce them. INTERTEXTUALITY

system comprising three levels of coding, or ‘strata’: the semantic (meanings), the lexicogrammatical (forms) and the phonological and orthographic (expressions).

Means are realized (coded) as forms, and forms are realized in turn (recoded) as expressions. Meaning is put into wording and wording into sound or writing.
The term ‘wording’ refers to lexicogrammatical form, the choice of words and grammatical structures. The more general meanings are expressed through the grammar, and the more specific meaning through the vocabulary. So, cohesion is expressed partly through the grammar and partly through the vocabulary. We can refer therefore to GRAMMATICAL COHESION and LEXICAL COHESION. Cohesion is a semantic relation. But, like all components of the semantic system, it is realized through the lexicogrammatical system.

Discourse analysis capitolo 2, Dispense di Lingua Inglese

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A2. TEXTS AND TEXTURE