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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9. STAGE 5: THE NEW ANALYTICAL TOOL: REFERENTIAL COHESION IN RESEARCH ARTICLES AND MA THESES
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9.6. Results: Patterns of Referential Cohesion
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9.6.6. General observations relating to the structure and layout of the papers
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9.6.6.2. Reference across section boundaries

9.6.6.2. Reference across section boundaries

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

RAs as well as MA theses are papers that consist of various sections and subsections that might be expected to be interdependent, but, at the same time, self-contained units of discourse. In RAs any one of the subsections can be taken out of the paper and it will remain mostly interpretable in itself. The corpus of 20 RAs confirmed the assumption that neither demonstratives nor unspecified pronouns would start any section. The same was not observed in MA theses.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

A problem in MA theses is that a new section with a new heading is not treated as a separate unit. In Ras, titles were clear boundaries between paragraphs or sections that centered around one main idea, in accordance with Tankó’s (2011) description of a “good paragraph”, which is one that “as a whole will be unified, coherent, organized and complete” (ibid., 36). What stands for paragraphs should also be true for coherent sections and subsections of an academic paper; they should form “a clearly constructed logical whole in which coherence is established with invisible (the logical sequence of ideas) and visible devices such as transition words (therefore, consequently, however) and phrases (to begin with, as a consequence)” (ibid., 36–37). Thesis writers violate these criteria for a good paragraph in the most unexpected ways, as the examples below illustrate it. The demonstratives this and these in MA theses were sometimes used to refer to presupposed items even across section boundaries (8 instances in the thesis corpus). The example from LTH4 below shows an instance of referring across the boundary established by the section title: these in s. 278 refers to the difficulties described in s. 276 in the previous section.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

s. 276. However, none of these teachers were available for co-operation, so I ended up choosing other research subjects.
s. 277. 3.2 Modification of Research Question
s. 278. Because of these difficulties I had to modify my field of research to some extent. (LTH4)
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Such reference across section boundaries is not always an error. Hofmann (1989) observes that pronouns are only used to refer to an entity in a previous paragraph when the antecedent is the paragraph topic in the preceding paragraph. In the RA corpus, only one type of referring expression could establish long-distance ties, i.e., one that involves the definite article, but with all the other types of references, such examples are rare. Though the same cross-section boundary reference may take place with the definite article as in LTH3 s. 121 below (where the question above refers to a question in the previous section), with the definite article it is less disturbing, as it is more likely to trigger long-distance reference than any of the demonstratives.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

s. 120 4. Motivational strategies in the foreign language classroom
s. 121 In the final point about motivation I would like to present some answers to the question above.
(LTH3)
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

While it is not directly related to reference, to illustrate the prevalence of the phenomena of violating the criteria for an efficient paragraph, the example from LTH4 shows the inappropriate use of conjunctions or “transition words and phrases” (Tankó, 2011, 37). In s. 609 below, the conjunction expects a contrasting element from the previous section for its interpretation.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

?

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

608. 5.2 Different Views and Interpretations
609. On the other hand, the lack of culture teaching cannot be merely blamed on the language teachers.
(LTH4)
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Such errors obviously make papers more difficult to interpret as they temporarily block the interpretation process while reading.
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