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


Extended and text reference

Extended and text reference differ from other forms of cohesion in that the pronoun it and the demonstratives (this, that, these, those, the) are used to refer to a larger portion of text than a single entity. In the case of extended reference, the referent embodies “a process or a sequence of processes (grammatically, a clause or a string of clauses, not just a single nominal)” (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, 52). Text reference involves referring to an event, which may not be explicitly formulated in the wording of the text. Besides the pronoun it, the demonstratives this and that may also have this function. On the basis of their analyzed literary text (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland), Halliday and Hasan conclude that extended reference accounts probably “for the majority of all instances of demonstratives in all except a few specialized varieties of English” (ibid., 66). They also point to the distinction that in extended reference that/those are always anaphoric, while this/these can be both anaphoric and cataphoric. A typical example for the latter is when pointing forward to a subsequent text part is achieved by this/these + noun, where the two sentences are typically joined by a colon – which, as they interpret it, is an orthographic signal of cataphoric cohesion. The definite article with a noun that specifies its meaning may likewise be used for extended or text reference.

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//

BibTeXEndNoteMendeleyZotero

Kivonat
fullscreenclose
printsave