English language II

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English language II

• 13rd october 2009

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Textlinguistics

• The study of texts has become a defining feature
  of a branch of linguistics referred to as
  textlinguistics.
• Texts are seen as language units which have a
  definable communicative function, characterized
  by such principles as cohesion, coherence and
  informativeness (or informativity)
• On the basis of these principles, texts are
  classified into text types and genres.
• THIS MAKES TEXTUALITY

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Textlinguistics

• Text linguistics takes into account the form and
  contents of a text, but also its setting, that is
  the way in which it is situated in an
  interactional, communicative and cultural
  context.
• Both the author of a (written or spoken) text and
  its addressee(s) are taken into consideration in
  their respective (social and/or institutional)
  roles in the specific communicative context.
• For these reasons well see two important models
  suggested by P. Grice and MAK Halliday

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Text types and genres

• Text types can be categorised in
• - narrative texts
• - descriptive texts
• - expository texts
• - argumentative texts
• directive texts
• N.B. text types are often intermingled in the
  same piece of text (e.g. a newspaper report, a
  novel, a poem etc. usually contain all the text
  types)
• Genres can be fictional (in general novels, in
  particular sci-fi, adventure, detective, horror,
  love stories) or non-fictional (essays,
  scientific or technical texts, newspaper
  articles, biographies, ads, recipes etc.)

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After reading the following texts decide if they
belong to narrative or descriptive text types

• Perhaps it had something to do with living in a
  dark cupboard, but Harry had always been small
  and skinny for his age.
• He looked even smaller and skinnier than he
  really was because all he had to wear were old
  clothes of Dudley's and Dudley was about four
  times bigger than he was. Harry had a thin face,
  knobbly knees, black hair and bright green eyes.
  He wore round glasses held together with a lot of
  Sellotape because of all the times Dudley had
  punched him on the nose.
• The only thing Harry liked about his own
  appearance was a very thin scar in his forehead
  which was shaped like a bolt of lightning. He had
  had it as long as he could remember and the first
  question he could ever remember asking his Aunt
  Petunia was how he had got it.

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• He lashed her with the bag of Good Books sending
  divorcee Susan sprawling to the ground.
• Then he dragged her along the floor by the hair
  and kicked and punched her all over the body,
  shouting ITS THE DEVIL IN YOU! and SATANS
  GOT A HOLD OF YOU!
• Terrified Susan was only saved from further
  punishment when her screams of pain woke her
  13-year-old daughter Sasha. The brave teenager
  punched 34-year-old Baker . Then she and her
  mother locked themselves in a room and escaped
  through a window.

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Narrative and descriptive texts

• Descriptive texts are concerned with the setting
  of people and things in space.
• State/stative/static verbs and usually adjectives
  are used.
• In descriptions there is no passing of time.
• NO MOVEMENT

• Narrative texts have to do with time. What is
  characteristic is the passing, the sequencing of
  time events.
• There is the use of dynamic verbs and adverbials
  such as, and, then, first, second, lastly and
  many others
• You see things happening one after the other
• MOVEMENT

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Expository and directive texts

• Expository texts indentify and characterise
  phenomena.
• Dictionary definitions, teachers explications,
  metalanguage in general
• Example texts may consist of one or more words
  and of one or more sentences. Texts can be both
  written and spoken.

• Directive texts are those texts which contain
  directives, commands, instructions, rules etc.
• Usually imperatives are used.
• Example shake well before using. Do not ingest
  with alcohol. Take two teaspoonfuls before lunch.
  

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Argumentative texts

• Argumentative texts start from the assumption
  that the receivers beliefs must change.
• Someone must be persuaded about something.
• There is a starting hypothesis (main thesis), the
  support of this hypothesis with examples and
  pieces of evidence and then a conclusion which
  should convince the audience.
• Ads, essays, pieces of advice, recommendations
  parents/children, political discourse
  (campaigns), religious discourse (sermons) etc.
• Example youll lose weight in less than a week
  with these fantastic pants. Five kilos a week!!!
  Buy now because there are only ten pairs left.

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• The following text consists of 1 main thesis, 3
  supporting arguments and 1 conclusion. Can you
  see/spot them?
• Childcare
• The government should provide more financial
  assistance to parents who use childcare.
• Childcare centres may assist children in their
  early development. They give children an
  opportunity to mix with other children and to
  develop social skills at an early age.
• Parents and children need to spend some time
  apart. Children become less dependent on their
  parents and parents themselves are less stressed
  and more effective care-givers when there are
  periods of separation.
• Parents who cannot go to work because they don't
  have access to childcare facilities cannot
  contribute to the national economy. They are not
  able to use their productive skills and do not
  pay income tax.
• Government support for childcare services assists
  individual families and is important for the
  economic well-being of the whole nation.

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Register and style

• Register (in stylistics and sociolinguistics)
  refers a variety of language defined according to
  its use in social situations, e.g. a register of
  scientific, religious, journalistic English.
• Style in linguistics is generally defined as a
  typical and distinctive way of using a language.
• THESE DEFINITIONS SOUND SIMILARTHATS WHY MANY
  TIMES THE TWO TERMS ARE MESSED UP

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In fact

• Style is the degree of formality in each register
  .
• In any register we may find casual, informal,
  formal and frozen styles.
• Im supposed to use a teacher or academic
  register . However, when I speak, I usually
  employ different styles.
• Casual you were listening? Dont fool me!
• Informal try again, youre not that far from
  the right answer
• Formal the test is over. Now put your pens on
  the desk
• Frozen (rigid) tutorial hours Tuesday 10-12,
  Thursday 10-12.
• So, 1 register may have different styles

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Task of the day

• Write a paragraph (two / three sentences) using
  the text types you learned. Specify which type(s)
  you used.
• TEN MINUTES

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English language II

• 15th October 2009
• Todays concepts
• Grices cooperative principle
• Hallidays context of situation
• In order to analyse texts and evaluate them the
  following aspects are central
• Cohesion , coherence and informativity
• Figures of speech /Idiomatic expressions / Puns
• Nominalisation
• Polisemy, monosemy, homonymy
• Pre-modification.

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P. Grices cooperative principle

• This principle is based on 4 maxims
• 1) QUANTITY Make your contribution as
  informative as is required (for the current
  purposes of the communication). Do not make your
  contribution more informative than is required.
• 2) QUALITY Do not say what you believe to be
  false. Do not say that for which you lack
  adequate evidence.
• 3) RELATION Be relevant, all the parts must be
  coherent.
• 4) MANNER Avoid obscurity of expression. Avoid
  ambiguity Be brief (avoid unnecessary
  prolixity) Be orderly

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MAK Hallidays context

• 3 components FIELD, TENOR, MODE
• Field refers to what is happening in the
  situation people use language differently
  depending on what they are doing. It reflects the
  fact that one needs different words to talk about
  different subjects. There are many terms that
  characterize particular subjects we are all
  perfectly capable of carrying on a general
  conversation about people, the weather, our
  holidays etc.
• These everyday uses of language are easy because
  they do not make great demands on our minds or
  linguistic abilities. But when we move from the
  general field of everyday conversation to that of
  the internet, genetic engineering or heart
  surgery, the number of people who understand the
  language is rather more limited.

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• Tenor refers to the relations subsisting between
  the people involved in the situation. Language
  use varies according to who is speaking to who,
  and what role and status these people have.
• Mode refers to what the language is being used to
  do, e.g. deliver a speech, sing a song, direct
  traffic. It also refers to the medium employed,
  e.g. spoken or written.
• Halliday defines the mode in the following way
  the particular status that is assigned to the
  text within the situation its function in
  relation to the social action and the role
  structure, including the channel or medium.

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• These three variables which make up the context
  of a situation determine the register.
• Variation in language clearly depends on when and
  where someone lives and on what his or her gender
  and social class identities are, but is also a
  function of
• what you are speaking about
• who your addressees are
• how well you known them
• whether you are addressing them orally or in
  writing.
• (Taylor, Language to Language)

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The (7) standards of textuality

• What distinguishes written or spoken texts from a
  random collection of words/sentences is the
  quality of textuality which is the result of 7
  factors described by De Beaugrande and Dressler.
• Here we need to know 3 of them in particular
  cohesion, coherence and informativity.
• Cohesion and coherence are text-centred notions,
  that is they refer to texts and no other element
  and they are central elements in text analysis.

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Cohesion and coherence

• Cohesion refers to the surface structure of
  texts, on how words and sentences are organised
  to form a cohesive whole.
• Coherence refers to deeper structures (not
  surface structures) in texts. It involves a
  semantic (meaning) level.
• Both relate to connections within a text, the
  former refers to grammatical connectione, the
  latter to semantic connections

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• Hoey sums up the difference between cohesion and
  coherence as follows
• "We will assume that cohesion is a property of
  the text and that coherence is a facet i.e.
  side of the reader's evaluation of a text. In
  other words, cohesion is objective, capable in
  principle of automatic recognition, while
  coherence is subjective and judgments concerning
  it may vary from reader to reader."

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Informativity

• A text has to contain some new information. A
  text is informative if it transfers new
  information, or information that was unknown
  before.
• The degree of informativity varies from
  participant to participant in the communicative
  event.
• A book written in 1950 has an informativity that
  was high appropriate then.
• Sentences like
• The sea is water
• The days of the week are seven
• The first letter of the alphabet is A
• can give new information to a baby, but they are
  not informative at all for the rest of the world.

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Can you rebuild a text?

• Here is a short extract from a novel. The
  passage is made of thirteen sentences/parts.
  These sentences have been jumbled so that they do
  not occur in the sequence of the original
  version.
• Try to rebuild the original sequence considering
  that this passage is part of an already started
  action.
• This should be an attempt to produce a sequence
  resulting cohesive and coherence for you,
  notwithstanding the original version. Write the
  letters of your sequence and try to explain why
  you chose such an order identifying the
  linguistic devices which bind the text together.

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• A. I dunno.
• B. She laughed. "Who would that be? The guy who
  took the pizza orders?
• C. But when his mum and her boyfriends argued,
  you could listen for hours and still miss the
  point, the thing, the fruit and homework part of
  it.  
• D. It was like they'd been told to argue and just
  came out with anything they could think of.
• E. Not when you're a thirty-eight-year-old
  working mother.  
• F. He'd heard more or less the whole argument,
  and he hadn't understood a word of it
• G. When Marcus and his mum argued, you could hear
  the important bits too much, too expensive, too
  late, too young, bad for your teeth, the other
  channel, homework, fruit.  
• H. Did he have another girlfriend? I don't
  think so." 
• I. There's a time problem. Ha! There's an
  everything problem. Why? Does it bother you?    
  
• J. No, Marcus, I haven't got another boyfriend.
  That's not how it works.  
• K. there seemed to be a piece missing somewhere.
• L. Marcus wasn't surprised that she couldn't
  explain what had happened.
• M. "Have you got another boyfriend?"

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L F - K G C D H M B J E I - A

• Marcus wasn't surprised that she couldn't explain
  what had happened. He'd heard more or less the
  whole argument, and he hadn't understood a word
  of it there seemed to be a piece missing
  somewhere.
• When Marcus and his mum argued, you could hear
  the important bits too much, too expensive, too
  late, too young, bad for your teeth, the other
  channel, homework, fruit. But when his mum and
  her boyfriends argued, you could listen for hours
  and still miss the point, the thing, the fruit
  and homework part of it.
• It was like they'd been told to argue and just
  came out with anything they could think of.
• "Did he have another girlfriend?"
• "I don't think so."
• "Have you got another boyfriend?"
• She laughed. "Who would that be? The guy who took
  the pizza orders? No, Marcus, I haven't got
  another boyfriend. That's not how it works. Not
  when you're a thirty-eight-year-old working
  mother. There's a time problem. Ha! There's an
  everything problem. Why? Does it bother you?"    
  
• "I dunno."
•  

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All texts present grammatical and lexical links

• GRAMMATICAL LINKS
• Co-reference anaphoric and cataphoric
  references. Pronouns that refer back to a
  previously mentioned item are anaphoric (John
  came in. He sat on a chair) HE is here an
  anaphoric reference (it refers to John).
• When the reference is to an item that comes
  after, it is called cataphoric (Thats strange!
  Look! Theres a dog flying). THAT refers to
  something explained after another example This
  is no good news for any of you. You are all
  fired!
• Definite article it connects parts of sentences
  in that, as you know, the definite article has a
  peculiar function in English the boys are stupid
  AND boys are stupid have completely different
  meanings.

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• Ellipsisomission of one or more elements from a
  construction, especially when they are supplied
  from the context you can leave me, but I hope
  you wont OR - I left university. Why?
• Conjunctions and other connectives and, but,
  however, in addition, nevertheless, who, which
  etc.
• Tenses the use of the same tense in a text
  creates cohesion. When different tenses are used
  it usually means that there is a time shift or
  the person writing cant write well.

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Lexical links

• Vocabulary items are fundamental to create
  cohesive and coherent texts, that is, to
  establish semantic and formal relationships.
• Lexical fields if you read for example a text
  dealing with English food and drinks, youll
  probably find lexical sets like roast beef,
  cheese salad, sandwich, steak, baked beans, tea
  etc. OR cafeteria, kitchen, pub, restaurant, club
  etc.
• Semantic relationships repetition of words, use
  of synonyms, hyponyms, hypernyms, oppositions,
  metonymy
• Collocations words which tend to occur with
  other words. Lets take as an example the noun
  language first language, second language,
  foreign language, dead language, classical
  language, modern language, spoken language,
  written language, colloquial language, sign
  language, body language, legal or technical or
  scientific language to speak a language,
  understand a language, learn a language, study a
  language etc. are all examples of collocations.
• A famous quotation on collocations by the
  linguist Firth You shall know a word for the
  company it keeps.

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What else can you see in texts?

• Figures of speech metaphors, similes, metonyms,
  personification etc.
• Idiomatic expressions
• Puns (wordplays)
• Nominalisation particularly in written
  communication, the prevalent use of nouns instead
  of verbs
• Polisemy and monosemy when a word has multiple,
  but related meanings, is said polysemous. When
  a word has ONLY ONE meaning it is called
  monosemous (usually highly specialised lexis)

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• Homonymy two words are spelled the same, but
  they do not have related meanings. Their
  etymology differs.
• Premodification the use of a series of words
  before the main word called headword.
• Ex. The sum will be calculated on the basis of
  the unlawfully received payments
• Payments is the headword
• the unlawfully received premodifies the headword
• Ex. her screams of pain woke her 13-year-old
  daughter Sasha

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The language of advertising

• The truth isnt the truth until people believe
  you, and they cant believe you if they dont
  know what youre saying, and they cant know what
  youre saying if they dont listen to you, and
  they wont listen to you if youre not
  interesting unless you say things imaginatively,
  originally, freshly,
• It is insight into human nature that is the key
  to the communicators skill. For whereas the
  writer is concerned with what he puts into his
  writings, the communicator is concerned with what
  the reader gets out of it. He therefore becomes a
  student of how people read or listen.
• Bill Bernbach (a legendary figure in the history
  of American advertising) emphasizes the
  importance of language in the modern world of
  advertising.

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• Promotional language is designed to push the
  reader to read on, to explore the product or
  service being offered in greater detail.
  Linguistic components such as H.P. Grices
  Cooperative Principle, grammatical constructs,
  jargon, lexical plays and semantic value are all
  critical to this process.
• Every linguistic element of an ad is based on
  intricate psycholinguistic models of human
  language processing.
• Words, Images, Sounds work together.

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No lesson this coming Tuesday so

• Make the right use of your free time!!!! HOW?
• My advice (???) is
• EITHER
• CHOOSE A VIDEO AD (YOUTUBE) YOU LIKE AND TRY A
  SHORT ANALYSIS ON YOUR OWN
• OR
• 2) SHOOT A VIDEO COMMERCIAL OR CREATE A PRINT AD
  (YOU CAN PROMOTE WHATEVER YOU LIKE, ALSO
  NON-SENSICAL PRODUCTS/SERVICES, PEOPLE ETC.)
• YOU CAN WORK IN GROUPS OF ANY NUMBER