Lingua Inglese: Cohesion and coherence are the most important elements in a text, Co-reference, Use parallel structures to create balance and progression within your writing

Lingua inglese II

Register and context

The register is the form of language that is used, and we can talk of formal and informal register. The context is the accumulation of all the elements that create a text; the parts of a written or spoken statement that precede or follow a specific word or passage, usually influencing its meaning or effect. The context defines the structure of a text. We can have:

• Verbal context
• Social context

Verbal context refers to surrounding text or talk of an expression (word, sentence, conversational turn, speech act, etc.). The idea is that verbal context influences the way we understand the expression.

Traditionally, in sociolinguistics, social contexts were defined in terms of objective social variables, such as those of class, gender, age or race. More recently, social contexts tend to be defined in terms of the social identity being construed and displayed in text and talk by language users. Influenced by space.

Semiotic resources

Semiotic resources are different elements which combined all together give meaning: colours, videos, etc. Semiotic resources are the actions, materials, and artifacts we use for communicative purposes, whether produced physiologically – for example, with our vocal apparatus, the muscles we use to make facial expressions and gestures – or technologically – for example, with pen and ink, or computer hardware and software.

Sentence and clause

A sentence is traditionally (and inadequately) defined as a word or group of words that expresses a complete idea and that includes a subject and a verb. In simple terms, a sentence is a set of words that contain:

• A subject (what the sentence is about, the topic of the sentence)
• A predicate (what is said about the subject)

A clause is a statement or a question that consists of a subject and a verb phrase and constitutes a complete thought. Sentences can consist of a single clause, but they often include two: a main, or independent, clause and a subordinate, or dependent, clause.

A main clause can form a complete sentence. (The preceding statement is both a clause and a sentence.) A subordinate clause, by contrast, depends on a main clause to provide the primary proposition of the sentence, which is why it’s also called a dependent clause.

Utterance and its formal and functional aspects

An utterance can be defined simply as a section of spoken speech, separated by pauses or silence. When we analyze the formal aspect, we consider the subject, verb, object (this is a singular analysis because it studies the single units). The functional aspect relates to the context; for example, when we talk to an audience, we use a particular language.

Structure refers to the organization of form and content (so we talk of functions), it gives form and stability, and this organization gives the sentence. Cohesion and coherence are the most important elements in a text.

Cohesion and coherence

As Hasan and Halliday said in 1976, cohesion is defined as what gives a text a texture (texture → the quality that makes a text 'hang together' as a text - is a key focus of investigation in discourse analysis). Cohesion is established by cohesive devices. It is the grammatical and lexical linking within a text or sentence that holds a text together and gives it meaning. It is related to the broader concept of coherence.

There are two main types of cohesion: grammatical cohesion, which is based on structural content, and lexical cohesion, which is based on lexical content and background knowledge.

There are referential devices (cohesive links) that can create cohesion:

• Anaphoric reference occurs when the writer refers back to someone or something that has been previously identified, to avoid repetition. Some examples: replacing "the taxi driver" with the pronoun "he" or "two girls" with "they".
• Cataphoric reference is the opposite of anaphora: a reference forward as opposed to backward in the discourse. Something is introduced in the abstract before it is identified. For example: "Here he comes, our award-winning host... it's John Doe!" Cataphoric references can also be found in written text.
• Exophoric reference is used to describe generics or abstracts without identifying them (in contrast to anaphora and cataphora, which do identify the entity): rather than introduce a concept, the writer refers to it by a generic word such as "everything". The prefix "exo" means "outside", and the persons or events referred to in this manner will never be identified by the writer. Halliday and Hasan considered exophoric reference as not cohesive, since it does not tie two elements together into a text.
• Endophoric reference is used to describe another expression within the same text.

These relations have been called syntactical links:

• Co-reference: Pronouns (demonstratives, demonstratives), the definite article (indicates the semantic identity of an item with another)
• Ellipsis (when, after a more specific mention, words are omitted when the phrase needs to be repeated)
• Substitution when a word is not omitted, as in ellipsis, but is substituted for another general word. For example, "Which ice-cream would you like?" – "I would like the pink one", where "one" is used instead of repeating "ice-cream." (when an item is used to substitute something else: some, one, once, do, not)
• Conjunctions and connectives (set up a relationship between two clauses: and, because, or…)
• Collocation: Tense and time adverbials

Coherence is the unifying element in good writing. It refers to the unity created between the ideas, sentences, paragraphs and sections of a piece of writing. Coherence is what gives a piece of writing its flow. It also gives the reader a sense of what to expect and, therefore, makes the reading easier to follow as the ideas appear to be presented in a natural, almost automatic, way. When writing lacks coherence, the reader is forced to stop and reread.

The following are some important ways that coherence can be created within your writing:

• Organize information in a logical manner. Depending on the kind of information you need to present, this could mean following organizational patterns that emphasize a time sequence, a spatial arrangement, a cause and effect relationship, or a hierarchy, etc. Think about what organization pattern will be most appealing to your reader.
• Use appropriate transition words/phrases and conjunctions (coordinating and subordinating) to connect ideas within sentences and between sentences and paragraphs.
• Use referents, words or phrases that stand for previously mentioned words/ideas (pronouns, restatements) to create a natural flow of information for the reader to follow.
• Use consistent and appropriate verb tenses and time words.
• Use parallel structures to create balance and progression within your writing. Parallelism in writing refers to the repetition of structural elements in order to create a balance in the writing. This balance contributes to coherence.

Formal vs. functional grammar

In formal language theory, a formal grammar (when the context is not given) is a set of production rules for strings in a formal language. The rules describe how to form strings from the language's alphabet that are valid according to the language's syntax.

A formal grammar mainly consists of a set of rules for transforming strings. To generate a string in the language, one begins with a string consisting of only a single start symbol. The production rules are applied in any order. A production rule is applied to a string by replacing one occurrence of its left-hand side in the string by its right-hand side. The language formed by the grammar consists of all distinct strings that can be generated in this manner.

Functional theories of grammar, proposed in the 1970s by a Dutch linguist named Simon Dik, are those approaches to the study of language that see the functions of language and its elements to be the key to understanding linguistic processes and structures. This theory is called functional because it states that all constituents, whether affixes, words, phrases, or sentences, have semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic functions. Functional grammar allows linguists to analyze, compare, and parse the grammars of all human languages.

The functional approach is most likely the way our brain understands and uses language. Functional theories of grammar differ from formal theories of grammar, in that the latter seeks to define the different elements of language and describe the way they relate to each other as systems of formal rules or operations, whereas the former defines the functions performed by language and then relates these functions to the linguistic elements that carry them out. This means that functional theories of grammar tend to pay attention to the way language is actually used in communicative context, and not just to the formal relations between linguistic elements.

Functional grammar according to Dik

According to Dik’s Functional Grammar, each constituent has a semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic function. Semantic function refers to the role participants play in the sentence’s action, such as agent or recipient. The various perspectives, such as subject or object, are analyzed as the syntactic function. Pragmatic function concerns the meaning of the constituent in reference to its context.

Approaches to describing grammar

There are many ways of describing the grammar of a language. One approach sees grammar as a set of rules which specify all the possible grammatical structures of the language. In this approach, a clear distinction is made between grammatical (sometimes called well-formed) sentences and ungrammatical sentences. The primary concern is with the forms of grammatical structures and their relationship to one another, rather than with their meanings or their uses in different contexts. A grammarian interested in this kind of description will often use for analysis sentences that have been made up to illustrate different grammatical rules rather than sentences drawn from real world sources.

Another approach sees language as a system of communication and analyzes grammar to discover how it is organized to allow speakers and writers to make and exchange meanings. Rather than insisting on a clear distinction between grammatical and ungrammatical forms, the focus is usually on the appropriateness of a form for a particular communicative purpose in a particular context. The primary concern is with the functions of structures and their constituents and with their meanings in context. A grammarian interested in this kind of description is likely to use data from authentic texts (the term text is used here for both spoken and written language) in specific context.

The former approach to grammatical analysis is often called formal while the latter approach is normally called functional.

The two approaches are not mutually exclusive. Formal analyses must at some stage take account of meaning and function, and functional analyses must at some stage take account of form. However, most descriptions of grammar can be located primarily within one or other of these two approaches.

The difference between formal and functional approaches can be briefly and simply illustrated with the following sentence: (1) I had also been rejected by the law faculty.

In analyzing the voice of this sentence, both formal and functional grammarians would agree in calling it a passive voice sentence. However, a formal grammarian would be primarily interested in finding the best abstract representation of the structure of the sentence and in how it might be related to the structure of the active voice sentence:

(2) The law faculty had also rejected me.

For example, rules can be set out to show how sentence 1 may be derived from sentence 2. These would specify:

• The movement of the constituent the law faculty to a position at the end of the sentence following the preposition by
• The movement of the constituent me to the front of the sentence and its change in form to I
• The change from had…rejected (an active form of the verb) to had…been rejected (a passive form of the verb).

A functional grammarian would also take note of such formal differences between the active and passive structures. However, he or she would be more concerned with questions such as:

• How the communicative effect of the message in the sentence is different when it begins with I rather than with the law faculty
• What effect is of putting the law faculty at the end of the sentence
• What features of the context may have led the writer to select passive rather than active voice.

These kinds of questions would lead the linguist to consider the role of the voice system in organizing information within sentences and texts, and in contributing to coherent communication.

Behaviour potential and meaning potential

Language is a means through which people can express what they can do, by converting all this into what they can mean (Halliday 1996). What they can mean (the semantic system) is encoded into what they can say (the lexicogrammatical system or grammar and vocabulary). For Halliday, the role of grammar is to encode the meanings encapsulated into various functions onto patterns and structures.

Register

The register is an important element in language that helps us to understand what situational factors determine what linguistic features. Register may be subdivided into three different categories: field, mode, and tenor of discourse (Halliday 1964).

Halliday chose the term “field of discourse”; it refers to the setting in which communication takes place, the topic or subject matter, and the participant/s involved. Registers are classified according to the communicative event: if language plays a fundamental part, the field will be the subject-matter, while if language plays a minor role, the field will be the whole situation type. There is also the “mode of discourse” that is intended as the medium used or mode of language explained by Halliday as the role played by the language activity in the situation. This distinction refers to the spoken or written mode.

The tenor of discourse refers to the relationship established among participants. Examples are those between parent/child, doctor/patient, teacher/student. All these relationships bring different uses of language, and so a different tenor of discourse.

Everyone shifts from one register to another one. Halliday also made reference to dialects, which he considers as central to the relationship of language and social man. Unlike registers, dialects are varieties established by the user. However, Halliday said that dialects can become a part of register. If, for example, an English speaker uses Standard English in a formal context and then switches to a regional dialect with friends in an informal context, then dialect becomes intertwined (intrecciato) with notions of register.

Context of culture and context of situation

The concept of context has been extensively studied by different linguists, among them, Halliday proposed the concept of context consists of three strata: context of culture, context of situation, and co-text. Context of culture and context of situation are outside of language itself. Co-text, also known as linguistic context, is certainly inside of language itself.

There is a close interdependent relationship between language and context. Context determines and is constructed by the choice of language. On the one hand, language, when considered as a system—its lexical items and grammatical categories—is related to its context of culture. The context of culture defines the potential or possibilities which language makes available to the community of speakers. It ‘defines’ ‘the potential’, i.e., ‘the range of possibilities’.

The cultural context in which human communication occurs is perhaps the most defining influence on human interaction. Culture provides the overall framework wherein humans learn to organize their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in relation to their environment. Although people are born into a culture, it is not innate. Culture is learned. Culture teaches one how to think.