Coherence Logical Relations

8/13/2019 Coherence Logical Relations

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S. IRIMIEA, DA, 2006 1

TEXTURE

TEXT COHERENCE


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Coherence

Coherence- the capacity of a text to make sense

Cohesionthe surface feature of a texts, independednt of the reader

Coherence- results from the interaction between the reader and the text

Coherence and cohesion do not funciton independently- writers use cohesive devices intentionally

to make their text easier to follow, ie more coherent.

Coherenceis usually approached from two perspectives:

The micro-level, when the readers have certain expectations of how the proposition(ie

meaning) of a sentence is likely to be developed in the sentence or sentences that follow.

At the macro-levelcoherence is enhanced if:

The text is organised in away that answers the readers likely questions

The text is organised in a way that s familiar to the reader

The reader can easily discern what the text s about


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Micro-level coherence. LOGICAL RELATIONS

Micro-level coherence refer to sentence-by-sentence analysis

LOGICAL RELATIONS- indicate how whole texts(even extermely short ones) cohere

because of the kinds of expectations that are both set up and satisfied by theircomponent parts.

This happens both:

at the level of the whole text and

at local level, ie from sentence to sentence, such that at any time in a text, any

one sentence both reflects what has been said or aniticipates what s going to

come. The sentence represents the text at that point.

Ex The genes carry all the information needed to make a new plant or animal.


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Micro-level coherence. Logical relations

Ex Each part s called a gene. The genes carry all the information needed to make a

new plant or animal. They decide its sex and also what characteristics it inherits.

This is possible because of:

The cohesive clues, such as the def art the that goes with genes

The information that is distributed in a predictible way


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THEME-RHEME/TOPIC and COMMENT

In English sentences have a simple two-way division between what the sentence is about(its

Topic) and what the writer or speaker wants to tell you about that topic(the Comment)

The topic is often associated with what is already known, or given. Given in formation is retrievablebecause it has been explicitely mentioned at some point in the text, or is inferable, or context, or

because it is shared knowledge

Giveninformation usually precedes new information in the sentence. Newinformation is placed in

the commentposition

The topic= the launch pad of the message

topic=theme

Comment= rheme

The tendency to place new information at the end is called end weight


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Sample text

GENETICS

The science of genetics explains why living things look and behave as they do.Advanced animals have two sexes, male and female. Each individual producessex cells. If a male and a female cell join, the female cell grows into a newindividual. Each parent passes on certain characteristrics to its offspring. The

process is called heredity.

Heredity works in an amazing way. Inside every cell are tiny chromosomes,largely made of a chemical called DNA. Different parts of each chromozomecarry different coded messages. Each part is called agene. The genes carry allinformation needed to make a new palnt or animal. They decide its sex and alsowhat characteristics it inherits.

Some inhereted characteristics are stronger that others. They are dominant.Weaker ones are recessive. Genes for brown eyes, for example, dominate overthe weaker genes for blue eyes.


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John Sinclair(Trust the text, 2004: 15):

The text at any particular time carries with it everything that a competent reader needs

in order to understand the current state of the text


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Reader expectations

The readers approach a text assuming it will make sense, until proven otherwise

Some texts will not make sense without some difficulty

Some texts will make sense as the text approaches the end, as the writer, purposefully

tests the readers faith in the coherence of the text.

There are cases of accidental juxtaposition(when the sentences that are juxtaposed do

not make sense)

e.g. OUR PRAYERS ARE WITH THE TROOPS

TRY OUR FRESH TENDER HOME COOKED TURTLE


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Rogue sentences

Tortoise and turtle

(1) Unlike other reptiles, tortoises and turtles have hard shells to protect their

bodies.

Tortoises are land animals. (2) They live in warm countries and eat plant food. (3) A

tortoise cannot run away from an enemy. (4) Instead, it tucks its head and legs into its

shell. (5) Some tortoises can live to be much more than hundred years old- older than

other animals.

(6) Turtles live in the sea. (7) Some seaweeds can be eaten. (8) They have flattershelles than torotises abd use their legs as paddles for swimmoing. (9) On land they

are very clumsy.


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Sentence insertion

H. Widdowson-Teaching Language as Communication

(1)The aims of a language teaching course are very often defined with reference to the four

language skills understanding speech, speaking, reading, and writing.(2) These aims, therefore,

relate to the kind of activity which the learners are to perform. (3) But how can we characterize this

activity? (4) What s it that learners are expected to understand, speak, read and write? (5) Theobvious answer s: the language they are learning. (6) we might mean a selection of lexical items

recorded in a dictionary combined with szntactic structures recorded in garmmar. (7) In this view,

the teaching of a language involves developing the ability to produce correct sentences. (8) Many

teachers would subscribe to this view and it has been productive of a good deal of impressive

language teaching material. (9) We may readily acknowledge that the ability to produce sentences

s a crucial one in the learning of a language. (10) It s improtant to recognize, however, that it s not

only ability that learners need to acquire. (11) Someone knowing the a langauge knows more than

how to understand, speak, read and write sentences. (12) He also knows how sentences are used

to communicative effect.


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A: In some respects, however, it s unsatisfactory.

B: but what exactly do we mean by this?


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Passive constructions

Passives allow for the possibility of replacing the object of a verb in the mainslot(normally the domain of the grammatical subject- and at the same time placing newinformation in the rheme slot.

E.g. Brutus stabbed Caesar to death.Caesar was stabbed to death by Brutus.

Using the active voice alone it would be diffciult to maintain topic consistency overextended stretches of text.

Napoleon regained power in 1815. He ruled for a hundred days. But Wellington

defeated him at the battle of Waterloo. Napoleon surrendered to the Brtitish and theyexiled him to St helena, where he died in 1821.

Napoleon regained power in 1815. He ruled for a hundred days. But he was defeatedby Wellington at the battle of Waterloo. He surrendered to the Brtitish and he wasexiled to St helena, where he died in 1821.


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Cleft sentences

Cleft sentences are used, like the passive, to alter the normal order of sentence

elements, in order to place more emphasis on new information.

eg Robin paid.

It was Robin who paid.

The cleft sentence or construction adds extra emphasis in order to contradict, correct

an earlier statement or inference


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The TEXTUALISATION PROCESS

Textualisation exercise: turn into a coherent text the senteneces

The process involves:

Transforming active constructions into passive ones in order to achieve end-weight

Re-arranging the order of elements in the senteneces

Combining sentences using relative pronouns or linkers

Using referring pronouns(it)Changing verb forms in order to re-position events relative to other events


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Macro-level coherence

At macro-structure level the relationships are expressed through:

topics

key words

lexical chains internal patterning

lexical patterns

key sentences

schemas

scripts



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Topics

At the macro-structure level the topics are topics of the text, and as such they are the

topics of several sentences that occur in the text. The topics are at a large extent

carried by words that appear in the headline or titles or in the recurring key words,

which, most of the time, are nouns.



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Macro-level coherence: key words

Key words= words that occur with a frequency that is significant when compared

to the normal frequency of these same words, as determined by corpus data.

The key words prominance is not accidental, but due to the fact that the word is

intimately related to what the particular text is about.

eg. Heredity, genes, characteristics, weaker, cell, female, sex, male, cary, eyes, each,

individual

The topic of a text is largely carried by its words, (Michael Hoey, 1991, Patterns of

Lexis in Texts, OUP)

These words tend to be nouns


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Lexical chains

Lexical chainsare strings of related lexical items that run through texts. They can retrieve

graphically entire texts.

However, words and word chains alone do not render a text coherent. They can create

lexical cohesion, but that does not necessarily mean coherence.



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Internal patterning

Ex

(1) A draft version of the honey bee genome has been made available to the public- a move that

should benefit bees and humans alike. (2) The honey bee (Apis mellifera) is multi-talented. (3) It

produces honey, pollinates crops and is used by researchers to study human genetics, ageing,

disease and social behaviour.(11) The genoms publication is good news for beekeepers and victims of bee stings alike.

(23) This is the first time that the amassed sequence data have been made publicly available.

The internal patterning of a text is realised locally in the way words- or their synonyms or

derivativesare carried over from one sentence to the next.

The carrying over occurs over longer stretches of text, over entire texts.


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Words from the first sentence still pop up in later sentences:

(1)A draft version of the honey bee genome has been made available to the public- a

move that should benefit bees and human alike

(11) the genomes publication is good news for bee keepers and victims of bee stings

alike.

nominalization: the geneomes publication

should benefitbecomes is good news: nominalization

public- publication:derivation

benefit- good news: synonymy

In the last sentence:

(1)A draft version of the honey bee genome has been made available to the public- a

move that should benefit bees and human alike

(23) This is the first time that the amassed sequence data have been made publicly

available.



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Michael Hoey (1991, Patterns of Lexis in Texts, OUP) demonstrates how patterns can

extent over the whole length of a book.

He argues that it is the cohesion induced by these recurring patterns that accounts for

the sense we make of a texts coherence. This view leads Hoey to question the whole

cohesion-coherence dichotomy


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Key sentences

Key sentencesare sentences that begin the text, come near the beginning, and

which reflect the content of the headline, title and subtitle. Other key sentences are

sentences that repeat or paraphrase at least two, maybe three elements of that key

sentences, admits Thornbury (2005, pg 55).



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The text makes sense only if it corresponds to the mental representations of

the world outside that the reader is familiar with. Thus, particular texts activate

the mental scheme or representation that the reader has about the topic or

subject matter.

A schema is the way knowledge is represented mentally and varies from

person to person according to the breadth and depth of personal cognitive

potential.

Scripts,on the other hand, representthe ways in which we expect things to

happen (Thornbury, 2005, pg 55).While schemas have the form of a diagramme, scripts are more likely to have

the form of a list of events, or a sequence of events or actions etc.



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Thornbury gives a conclusive example forscripts: the sequence of events involved in

catching a bus. This would necessarily contain:

wait at the stop

board bus

sit down

pay the ticket to the conductor when he approaches.



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Scripts

Scripts are culture-determined, but there are macro-scripts that follow thesame course. For example, the macro-script for descriptions would normallybe organized according to the following parameters (Thornbury, 2005):

from general to particular

from whole to part

from includingto included

from large to small

from nearer to further, from back to front, or outer to inner

from possessor to possessed

from now to then



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Other types of macro-scripts are:biographies, narratives, processes, news storiesetc.

The script of a biography orpersonal profile follows usually the chronological

sequence of life events. For example, Mary Stephens (1992, pg 90) uses the following

script suggestions:

Brief summary childhood/teenage major event in life family life

development of career conclusion



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The script of narratives or processes and that of encyclopedia entries is

similar, in that they follow the sequence of the basic events, happenings or

ideas.

The news story or the newspaper article exhibits the following macro-script:

outcome of events/condensed summary expansion comments from

spokesman/witnesses etc reference to future developments



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1. Atkinson, D. (1999) Scientific Discourse in Sociohistorical Context, Lawrence Erlbaum

Associates, Publishers.

2. Bakhtin, M.M. (1986) Speech genres and other late essays,Austin, TX: University of Texas

Press.

3. Bhatia, V.K. (1993)Analysing genres,Longman.4. Eggins, S., (1996),An Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics,Pinter.

5. Crombie, W., (1985), Discourse and Language Learning, OUP.

6. Fowler, R. (1981) Literature as Social Discourse: The Practice of Linguistic Criticism, London:

Batsford Academic.

Guy Cook. (1900) Theories of discourse, OUP

8. Hoey, M., 1991, Patterns of Lexis in Text, OUP.

9. Hoey, M., 2001, Textual Interaction, London, Routledge.



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10. Jaworsky A., Coupland, N., (1999) The discourse Reader, Routledge, London.

11. Nord, C., (1991), Text Analysis in Translation,Rodopi.

12. Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, 1998.

13. Santos, T., (2001) The Place of Politics in Second Language Writing, in Tony Silvaand Paul Kei Matsuda (Eds.) On Second Language Writing, Lawrence Erlbaum

Associates, Publishers, London.

14. Swales, J.M., (1981), Aspects of article introductions, Birmingham, UK: The

university of Aston, language Studies Unit.

15. Swales, J.M., (1990), Genre analysis : English in academic and research settings,

Cambridge, England : CUP.

16. Thornbury, S.,2005, Beyond the Sentence,Macmillan Books for Teachers.


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Coherence Logical Relations