Appunti e analisi inglese II

The seventh standard is the intertextuality. According to intertextuality

there is a certain dependence between texts. The writer in the article talks

about a tweet which is a form of text, but if the reader doesn’t understand

the line in which the writer talks about it, he will not understand the next

lines.

These seven standards are constitutive principles of communication

through texts, if one or more are not satisfied to the point that

communication id compromised, the text is considered a non-text.

The information flow

In English, a text can be understandable if follows a certain kind of

informations order. Informations may be, NEW if they are just introduced into

the conversation; GIVEN if the infromations are already active in the

speakers’ consciousness. There are three types of Givennes:

Predictability : The speaker assumes that the hearer can predict or

1. could have predicted or could have predicted that a particular linguistic

item will or would occur in a particular position within a sentence. Ex. :

A . What does Mary likes?

B . She likes hot dogs.

The sentence-structure “Mary/She likes x” is a given, predictable

information, while x=hot dogs is a new unpredictable information. It’s

something that the hearer couldn’t have predicted.

For example, in the line “A tweet from a member of…” and after “The tweet

was accompanied by…” the determiner “the” means that the writer

assumes that we know what twitter he’s talking about, because the

element “tweet” has already been introduced. So the writer assumes that

we can predict what tweet he is talking about.

Salency : the speaker assumes that the hearer has or could

2. appropriately have some particular thing/ entity in his/her

consciousness at the time of hearing the sentence. So known

informations automatically become new when they’re introduced for the

first time in a discourse, even if the speaker assumes that the reader

have some particular entity in his consciousness.

A . I saw Ariana Grande on youtube.

Ariana Grande is a known item because she is a famous singer, but it is a

new information because it couldn’t have predicted.

For example in the article, when the writer mentions for the first time the

prime minister of Japan or when he mentions for the first time “tweet” he

assumes the reader know who is the prime minister of Japan and what’s a

tweet.

Shared Knowledge : The speaker assumes that the hearer “knows”

3. assume or can infer a particular thing, but is not necessarily thinking

about it.

A . Yesterday night I was at the party. She was very beautiful, Mary.

The referent “she” (Mary) is not new here, even if it is not mentioned in the

preceding context. This is because Mary is part of the “party scenario” , we

already know she was there.

For example, in the subheading mentions the “Hacktivists” then in first line

of the text he mentions the “Hackers” so he assumes that we can infer that

he refers always to the same referent that is “Hacktivists”.

Identifiability and Discourse entities

A referent is the concrete object or concept that is designated by a word or

expression. th

Ex. There was only one Hideki Tojo, 40 prime minister of Japan during the

second world war. He can be referred to in a text in many ways such as, the

prime minister, the pm, he, Mr. Tojo.

A noun phrase to be qualified as Given, mush have its referent explicity

introduced in the discourse or be present in the physical context.

An identifiable referent is one the speaker assumes the listener will be able to

identify. An identifiable referent is one that is :

Assumed to be already shared by the listener;

• Verbalized in a sufficiently identifying way;

• Contestually salient

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The identifiable can be identificated by proper names, common nouns,

demonstrative pronouns etc etc.

Ex. Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister, PM, Mr Abe

A text is a set of instructions from a speaker to a hearer. It will contain

discourse entities, attributes and links between entities. Discourse entities are

semantic objects and they can have multiple syntactic realisations within a

text. They may represent an individual, a clas of individuals and they are

generally represented by nouns.

New Entity

When a writer introduces an entity into the discourse, we may say that is new.

There are two types of new entities:

Brand new

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Brand new must be created by the hearer

Unused

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When the hearer already knows the entity and simply has to place it in the

discourse.

Evoked entity

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Entities can also be evoked . An evoked entity is a referent which is given

information due:

To previous mention in the text

• To the prominence of the referent in the extralinguistic context

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There are two types of evoked entities:

Textually evoked

1.

A textually evoked entity is a referent that is given information because it has

been preciously included in the text.

Situationally evoked

2.

A situationally evoked entity is a referent that is given information because of

the prominence of the referent in the extralinguistic context.

INFERABLE ENTITY

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