In Translation Studies only van Dijk’s (1980) Theory of Macrostructure has been adapted for the description of the macrostructures of source and target texts. Tirkkonen-Condit (1985) uses van Dijk’s (1980) Theory of Macrostructures to describe, compare and contrast the argumentative text structures in source and target language texts. Tirkkonen-Condit (1985) adapts van Dijk’s (1980) Model in a way that she works with two macrorules only, the zero and the deletion rules instead of the four rules included in the original model. Tirkkonen-Condit (1985) justifies her decision by referring to pedagogical purposes: she wishes to provide translator trainees with practical, professional advice that will enable them to decide which discourse strings should and should not be included in translated summaries of argumentative texts. In the present study, the use of the Macrostructure Model developed by Tirkkonen-Condit (1985) is justified by the following. To some extent, the production of macropropositions has been argued to be slightly intuitive even by Kintsch and van Dijk (1978, p. 374) and, in line with Tirkkonen-Condit’s (1985) Macrostructure Model, the application of the zero and deletion macrorules leaves no space for such intuition as a result of the simplicity and thus reliability of their application. Furthermore, the application of only these two macrorules also excludes purposeful or subjective textual manipulation on the part of researcher, the possibility of which should be reduced to the minimum to ensure the reliability of the analysis performed with the help of the macrostructure model used in the present undertaking. This is especially important as the Critical Discourse Analysis constituent model developed in the scope of the present book for the analysis of argumentative political discourse and included in the Political Bias Screener can, to some extent, produce subjective results (cf. 4.6.2).

 

Therefore, the superstructure effect, as elaborated on by Tirkkonen-Condit (1985), will operate in a way that the summary (textual realisations of the macrostructure) of the translation of an argumentative source language text will preserve the text type specific characteristic features of the argumentative source text. Plainly put, translated summaries of argumentative source texts will retain the text type specific features of argumentative texts. This in practice means that the macrostructure (summary) of all superstructure elements is realised in the macrostructure of the entire text in question. In other words, the textual summaries of the superstructure elements (i.e. local summaries) are preserved in the macrostructure of the entire text.