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


Summary

This part of the monograph discussed the interrelated nature of textual structures and discussed that linguistic aspects of text construction contribute to discourse-level features, which, by providing a thick description of language use, have implications for the understanding of genre construction. The relevance of EAP teaching, as a bridge for students to achieve membership in the discourse community, was also discussed. Here, I pointed to the special difficulty NNS writers have in constructing texts for publication in academic journals. Then the progress of written discourse analysis was discussed starting from the 1970s, when Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) still most widely used cohesion analysis method was conceived. I pointed out the need to focus on the interactive role of the reader and writer in the composition process, emphasizing the complexity of the task of composing linear texts on the basis of non-linear thought processes. A model that captures non-linear processes is Lautamatti’s (1987) TSA model; therefore, the basic idea of text representation used in the analytical approach will be applied in the development of the analytical tool for reference analysis to reveal new features of reference so far undiscovered.

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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