OntheApplicationofGrammaticalCohesioninNewsDiscourse-最新文檔

1、On the Application of Grammatical Cohesion in News Discourse: A discourse is the combination of various sentences. These sentences are supposed to be not only cohesive in construction, but coherent in semantics. With the theory of cohesion this paper analyzes how they are applied in a news discourse

2、 in order to help readers and learners gain deeper understanding of a news discourse.1 IntroductionAccording to Halliday a discourse is defined as a semantically integrated spoken or written text. (Halliday, 2000) The reason why a discourse can be one is that there is some discourse quality in it. A

3、s far as news is concerned, it?is the communication of selected information on current events which is presented by print, broadcast, Internet, or word of mouth to a third privy C or mass audience. As we all know, news is also a kind of discourse; therefore, there must be some discourse quality in i

4、t, as well. No matter whether a piece of news being presented through writing or expressed by speaking, both of them should be cohesive in logical level and there is nothe previous sections orto it. The first kind ofpointing outwards ),pointing inwards ).exception in news, either. Generally speaking

5、，accordingto Thompson， cohesion refers to the linguistic devices by which the speaker and writer can signal the experiential and interpersonal coherence of the text， and thus a textphenomenon (Thompson, 2008)2 The Application of Cohesive Devices2.1 ReferenceReference is the set of grammatical resour

6、ces thatallow the speaker to indicate whether something is being repeated from somewhere earlier in the text, or whether it has not yet appeared in the text. Weh ave to, for this reason,turn to somewhere else, either in the following ones, for reference reference is known as exophoric( whereas the s

7、econd is endophoric ( (Thompson, 2008) And the endophoric reference can be further divided into anaphoric and cataphoric ones. There are three main types of cohesive reference. They include the third-person personal pronouns, demonstratives and comparative. (Halliday and Hasan, 2001) In most of the

8、new, these three main types of cohesive reference are repeatedly utilized. Some representative third-person pronouns, demonstratives and comparatives are to be analyzed for instance.His, which often appears in some news,indicatesthe privy C s. With this means the number oftheprivy C s can be greatly

9、 reduced, ignoring repetition and reaching the concise effect.He shares the sameeffect.Interesting enough, in the exemplified sentence: “I acknowledge that I made some significant mistakes” andsaying he was “deeply sorry for the problems this case had caused to my students, my colleagues and my unit

10、”, Iactually is an exophoricreference, referring the privyC himself, for we cannot turn to the text for the reference to I. Halliday argues that the exophoric use is probably the original one; and with the first- and second- person pronouns ( I, me, you, etc.), this remains the central use. (Hallida

11、y, 2001)I,consequently, refers tothe person who is speaking nowin the real world rather than the person just referred to in the text.As we have mentioned, it is a demonstrative. In some news, the demonstrative often appears many times,refers to some concrete issues. For example, a unit in the unit s

12、aid Friday that it had found a prominent researcher , the privy Cs paper in He wrote this month to the editor of the journal, inwhich the paper waspublished, saying he was retracting the paper, but gave no reason for doing so and the subjective clause where on this spectrum the privy Cs errors may f

13、all, whichis an cataphoric reference, and that spurred a three -year investigation o f the privy C s work going back at least as far as the year of two thousand two. As far as typical approaches of comparative reference are concerned, we have more, such and than etc. These three words occur once res

14、pectively in some news. In sentence The unit itself had faced growing criticism for not releasing more details of the inquiry since the newspaper reported on August, more suggests that the unit itself has already releasedsome details of theinquiry. Such, as in sentenceAt le ast some of theprivy C s

15、students disagreed with his interpretation of one such experiment three years ago, indicatesthat the privy C has done the experiment and implies that some of his students do not think his experiment proper.And with than , the writer links what happensnowand usual issues to the monkey.2.2 Ellipsis an

16、d SubstitutionEllipsis and substitution are two closely relatedtextual means to connect elements of texts. Ellipsis is the set of resources by which full repetition of a clause or clause element can be avoided, and by which it can be signaled to readers that they should repeat the wording from a pre

17、vious clause. In ellipsis the element is simply missed out. Substitution, on the other hand, is using a linguistic token to put in the place of the wording to repeat some words, phrases or clauses from elsewhere. (Thompson, 2008)The subject plus be verbs is often omitted bythe author to reach a succ

18、inct effect. In sentence likethe unit s findings against him, ifsustained, ,obviously, the unit s finding s are or they are is omitted. And in sentence likeThe sanctions to beimposed on the privy C are confidential, but could include involuntary leave, extra oversight, and restrictions on the abilit

19、y to apply for grants and supervise students, a doctor said , because the subject for both the one in first sub-clause and that in the second sub-clause are the same, the subject in the second sub-clause is missed out.Similarly, some of the privy Cs students or they is also omitted by the author in

20、sentenceAt least someof the privy C s students disagreed with his interpretation of one such experiment three years ago, and reported their reservations to the the unit authorities in a letter that was obtained t his week. The above analyses, obviously, are all instances of ellipsis.Regarding substi

21、tution, the other ellipsis according to Thompson, so is frequently employed. In the following sentences the privy C presumably tried to repeat the third experiment as well but if so, he apparently failed to do so. He wrote this month to the editor of a journal, in which his paper was published, sayi

22、ng he was retracting the paper, but gave no reason for doing so,so is simply utilized three times, representing tried to repeat the third experiment as well , repeat the third experiment as well and to retract the paper Hence one can see that by using the adverbial so a great quantity of phrases or

23、sentences can be omitted, so a succinct effect can be reached.2.3 ConjunctionConjunction refers broadly to the combining of any two textual elements into a potentially coherent complex semantic unit. Wea ctually have three basic levels at which conjunction can be investigated: within the clause (thr

24、ough prepositions), between clauses (through conjunctions); and between clause complexes or sentences (through conjunctive Adjuncts). (Halliday, 2000)Regarding the first type of conjunction, prepositions within the clause,because of and despite are t hetwo representative ones, as maintained by Huang

25、, Guowen. (Huang， 1988) After being investigated, however, they are not found in some news. It may not hurt to take another preposition for as an alternative into account. The preposition for , occurring thirteen times, conjunctsits prepositional objectives with the rest ingredients in each sentence

26、; in addition, it denotes some inner connection among these elements. Prepositions, consequently, can serve the function of conjunction as well.To take and, one of the crucial conjunctions, for example, although it appears many times in some news, only some of them are the conjunctions between claus

27、es after investigation, and the subjects of the two in the three are omitted. And the omitted subjects, who often appear in the second sub-clause, are the same ones as those in the first sub-clause. Therefore, there is merely one in strict sense. It goes like this: I acknowledge that I made some sig

28、nificant mistakes and I amd eeply disappointed that this has led to a retraction and two corrections.As to the third sort of conjunction conjunctiveAdjuncts between clause complexes or sentences but, whose part of speech has been switched from conjunction into adverbial, is the only evident one, app

29、earing some times in some news.3 ConclusionAs researched in the previous parts, cohesion theoryis crucial in text studies. A detailed research on the application of cohesion in discourse may reveal how the distinctive ingredients in that text are connected together through limpid language form. (Halliday & Hasan,2001) Additionally, with the