Gabriella Jenei: Referential Cohesion in Academic Writing • A descriptive and exploratory theory- and corpus-based study of the text-organizing role of reference in written academic discourse
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8. STAGE 4: THE REPRESENTATION OF ERRORS IN THE COHESIVE REFERENCE ANALYSIS OF STUDENT ACADEMIC WRITING
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8.3. Taxonomy: reference errors in academic writing
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8.3.2. Vague reference

8.3.2. Vague reference

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

A cohesive item was analyzed vague if its referent was somewhere in the text, but its exact location could not be determined either because its meaning was too broad or because there were two or more possible anaphors in the preceding text. Consider sentences 113–116 below, where the referent of the meaning is too broad; in order to make this part of the text more reader-friendly, the reference of the meaning could be specified: whether it is the meaning conveyed by particular structures or phrasings or the meaning intended by some character in the story, for example.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

s. 113 Authors have a wide choice of possibilities when presenting the speech and thoughts of their characters.
s. 114 These possibilities range from the verbatim rendering of....
s. 115 Through the conscious use of these different structures and phrasings, the author can make the Readers feel sympathy towards one character or contempt for another.
s. 116 The variety of speech modes also affect the meaning and [...].
(TH14)
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

An item can also be vague when the text contains possible referents, but it is difficult to point to the referent intended by the writer. The extract below (from TH12) contains vague items with two or more possible referents.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

s. 122 Language games can be grouped according to several aspects.
s. 123 They can be differentiated on the basis of their form or the material they make use of (Bartha, 1994).
s. 124 According to Bartha, there are card-games, board games, [...], cooperative games and communicative games of which he notes [...].
s. 125 These have two types: cooperative games and competitive games.
s. 126 Hadfield (1990) makes approximately the same grouping but she refers to this (this differentiation? the two types?) as the technique the students use and she lists role play and even simulations under this heading (communicative games? the technique?).
(TH12)
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

First, in s. 125 these is a problematic item, as it probably refers to communicative games in s. 125, though the identity of the referent is not clear, as one of the types of communicative games in s. 125 is identical with the categories listed in s. 124. The reader might read on for clarification, but finds an even more confusing sentence, s. 126, where a number of items are vague. For example, the same grouping and this in s. 126 might refer to the two types of communicative games in s. 125, or to the differentiation on the basis of their form or the material in s. 123. Also, in s. 126 it is not obvious whether this heading refers to communicative games in s. 124 or to the technique in the same sentence, or to something else in the text.
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