Texture in text - A discourse analysis of a news article.pdf

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1、TextureinText:ADiscourseAnalysisofaNewsArticleUsingHallidayandHasan’sModelofCohesionPaulA.CRANE1.IntroductionThestudyandanalysisofactuallanguageinuseisthegoaloftextanddiscourseanalysis.MichaelHalliday,oneofthelinguistscreditedwiththedevelopmentofsystemiclinguisticsandfunctionalgr

2、ammar,definestextasanyauthenticstretchofwrittenorspokenlanguage.AccordingtoHalliday(1994:xiv)thehistoricalstudyoflinguisticsfirstinvolvedstudyingthemorphologyoflanguagefollowedbystudyingthemeaningofwordsatthesentencelevel.Ultimatelythegoalofsuchanalysiswastofindthemeaningofthefor

3、msoflanguage.However,inHalliday’sview,thereverseapproachismoremeaningful:“Alanguageisinterpretedasasystemofmeanings,accompaniedbyformsthroughwhichthemeaningscanbeexpressed.”Beyondthegrammarandlexisoflanguage,understand-ingthemechanismsforhowtextisstructuredisthebasisforhiswork.Wh

4、atmakesanylengthoftextmeaningfulandcoherenthasbeentermedtexture.Textureisthebasisforunityandsemanticinterdependencewithintextandatextwithouttexturewouldjustbeagroupofisolatedsentenceswithnorelationshiptooneanother.Eggins(1994:85)referstothetermputforthbySchegloffandSacks̶131̶(197

5、3/74)“sequentialimplicativeness”whichproposesthatlanguagefollowsalinearsequencewhereonelineoftextfollowsanotherwitheachlinebeinglinkedorrelatedtothepreviousline.Thislinearprogressionoftextcreatesacontextformeaning.Contextualmeaning,attheparagraphlevelisreferredtoas“coherence”whil

6、etheinternalpropertiesofmeaningisreferredtoas“cohesion”.Coherencehasboth“situational”coherencewhenfield,tenor,andmodecanbeidentifiedforacertaingroupofclausesand“generic”coherencewhenthetextcanberecognizedasbelongingtoacertaingenre.Cohesionrelatestothe“semanticties”withintextwhere

7、byatieismadewhenthereissomedependentlinkbetweenitemsthatcombinetocreatemeaning.Therefore,textureiscreatedwithintextwhentherearepropertiesofcoherenceandcohesion,outsideoftheapparentgrammaticalstructureofthetext.UsingtheNewsweekarticleRuinsWithAViewasabasis,thetextualaspectofmeanin

8、gthroughcohesionwillbeanalyzed.Theprinci