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


Vague reference

Errors were categorized as having vague reference if one specific presupposed item could not be found, either because the reference of the item was too broad, or it pointed to two or more possible items. These problems were not immediately apparent. Due to the tolerance of vagueness and ambiguity in texts as open-minded readers approaching texts with the intention of making sense of them, many of the examples cited below will not occur as outright problematic. In the process of the reference analysis of these texts; however, it occurred that in RAs those determiners and comparative items do have clear and specific presupposed items that in MA theses did not. In RAs, studies in the literature review section are often referred to by determiners or items from our comparative reference category; however, always with some sort specification of which studies they are talking about (often in the same sentence as a citation). This specification is not provided in many low-rated theses, as in s. 214 from LTH9 below, where in addition to the vague item many we also find research in a plural form. In this sentence many would need either specification in the same sentence or to establish a cohesive tie with something else in another part of the text.

Referential Cohesion in Academic Writing

Tartalomjegyzék


Kiadó: Akadémiai Kiadó

Online megjelenés éve: 2024

ISBN: 978 963 664 049 1

This monograph aims to contribute to the study of written discourse and to writing pedagogy within the field of teaching English for academic purposes. The study has both a theoretical and an empirical focus. Due to the lack of an analytical tool available for the reliable cohesive reference analysis of extended texts, to explore the patterns of referential cohesion in research papers, it has been necessary to develop a new analytical tool. In practice, the study advances the theory of cohesion analysis by refining the cohesive reference-related aspects of Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) taxonomy of cohesion to transform it into a reliable and valid analytical tool for cohesive reference analysis in academic discourse in particular. The analytical tool is then applied to present a corpus-based comparative analysis of research articles and EFL (English as a Foreign Language) writers’ MA theses. This is accomplished by a multi-stage investigation, using quantitative and qualitative approaches at every stage to ensure that quantitative data is supported by qualitative insights and vice versa. The present empirical study points out considerable differences regarding the cohesive reference patterns among research articles produced by expert writers and the subcorpora of high- and low-rated theses by novice EFL writers. A major outcome of the investigation is that it yields significant pedagogical implications for both teachers and learners of academic writing: provides clues for the design of tasks for the development of the relevant aspects of EFL discourse competence together with additional practical activities for a variety of applications of the theory-based analytical tool.

Hivatkozás: https://mersz.hu/jenei-referential-cohesion-in-academic-writing//

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