A study on grammatical and prosodic means as cohesives devices in narrative discourse

INTRODUCTION Rationale Linguistics has become a big scientific area and thanks to many linguists, there have been a lot of studies, researches, books, article, etc about linguistics. In the past, linguistics and language studying have mostly examined in terms of phonological, lexical and syntactic features and sentences which are preferably taken out of the context. Then the theory of Chomsky of the power of linguistics and some other researches born and have gradually changed the previous views. Nowadays, linguistics has been studied “in their full textual, social and psychological context” (Cook: 1989: ix). It means that language now is studied comprehensively how people communicate successfully, what parameters help them to take language into communication or in other word discourse, “the language in use for communication” (Cook. 1989). Discourse has been approached by many linguists as Halliday, M.A.K (1985), Crytal, D (1992), Coulthard, M. (1985), Moore, J. et al. (1980), Reichman, R (1985), etc. They have contributed a lot on the theory of discourse. In Vietnam, we have Assoc. Prof. Dr Nguyen Hoa, Assoc. Prof. Dr Vo Dai Quang, Dr. Hoang Van Van, Dr. Tran Ngoc Them. And there are some other studies on discourse as Bui, N. A. (2003), Dam, T.H. (2007), etc. Cohesion is an important factor of discourse which has attracted a lot of attention of linguists. The most significant research on cohesion is “Cohesion in English” by Halliday and Hasan (1976). In which, grammatical items are analyzed in terms of the way they link sentences together. Besides that, Halliday and Hasan (1976) also give “a brief discussion of the cohesive function of intonation”. And Coulthard, M. (2001) also introduces the significance of intonation in discourse. These researches theoretically discuss how grammatical means and intonation can relate meanings within one sentence or within sentences to make them coherent. Moreover, they also get the practical value that help language user to apply these theories into everyday communication to gain the best result. People who can use grammatical and intonation as effective means of cohesion, can easier get successful in communication. Doing this thesis, I wish to understand more about cohesion as well as to improve my ability to use language as an effective mean of communication but understanding about cohesion is not an easy task to do. In this thesis, I examine here the four types of grammatical cohesion: reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction in terms of their cohesive function. And intonation is an important factor in creating cohesion that can’t be ignored. It is impossible to say that the thesis can cover all factors relating to grammatical means and intonation as cohesive devices in narrative discourse but I do hope that it can benefit something for the readers. Aims and objectives of the study The aims of the study are to explore the grammatical and prosodic means as cohesive devices in narrative discourse. Specifically, the thesis is targeted at the following objectives: How reference, ellipsis, substitution and conjunction function as cohesive devices in narrative discourse. How prosodic means in general and intonation in particular become cohesive devices in narrative discourse Scope of the study As far as I mentioned before that cohesion in discourse is such a broad category that it is very difficult to cover every aspect so what I focus on here is cohesion in narrative discourse by analyzing grammatical means and intonation as cohesive devices in narrative discourse in general and the film “The Perfect Man” in particular. Methodology The major research method of the dissertation is inductive which uses particular facts and examples to form general rules and principles. In this study, the particular examples from which the general rules and principles are formed, are resulted from the film “The Perfect Man” on HBO . Besides that, analytic method is also used as a minor method to analyze the examples of the film. Moreover, the major technique of the study is description supported by systemization as a minor. Structure of the study The study consists of three main parts * Introduction: introduces the rationale, the aims, the scope, method and structure of the study * Development: this part consists of three chapters: Chapter I: theoretical background: provides overview of discourse, narrative discourse, cohesion and intonation in English Chapter II: Grammatical means as cohesive devices in narrative discourse Chapter III: Intonation as a mean of cohesive device in narrative discourse * Conclusion: give some summary of concluding remarks of the thesis and suggestions for further researches. DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW I. Literature review The concept of discourse has been discussed for a long time and linguists have given various definitions. Halliday (1985:318) defined “discourse is a multidimentional process” whereas Cook defines “discourse is stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposeful”. Sharing the same idea with Cook, Crystal (1992: 25) states “discourse is a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence, often constituting a cohesive unit such as a sermon, an argument, a joke or a narrative”. Besides that, Widdowson defines “Discourse is a use of sentences to perform acts of communication which cohere into larger communicative units, ultimately establishing a rhetorical pattern which characterizes the pieces of language as a whole as a kind of communication”. Besides that, there exist a number of other definitions of discourse which illustrate the perspectives of discourse from different aspects. Hatim and Mason (1990) define discourse is “a matter of expression of attitude” and is “a mode of speaking and writing which involve the participants in adopting a particular on certain area of socio-cultural activity: racial discourse, scientific discourse, domestic discourse”. Other linguists who study discourse as Coulthard, M., Nunan, D., Coulthard, M., Montgomery, M., Moore, Reichman, R., etc. Vietnamese have also studied discourse as Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Hoa with “An Introduction to Discourse Analysis” or Nguyen Thi Viet Thanh with “He thong lien ket loi noi tieng Viet”. In addition to that, there are some other studies on discourse of Nguyen Trong Du (2003), Bui Nguyet Anh (2003), Nguyen Thi Bich Lien (2004), Dam Thanh Hang (2004), etc. These studies have contributed a lot to the development of linguistics and language users benefit much from them. II. Discourse I.1 What is discourse? To answer the question, linguists have different ways of understanding and defining discourse. Tradition linguists have concentrated on phonological, lexical and syntactical features which are considered the basic of foreign language knowledge. Today’s view, however, consider language as a synthetic phenomenon. In other words, in the study of language, one should take into account a good number of social, cultural, and situational factors that are assumed to affect language use and its features. Stretches of language can only be obtained if they are considered “in their full textual, social, psychological context” (Cook. 1989). The concept of discourse is still discussed, but basically, it may be defined as “the language in use for communication” (Cook. 1989). In “Longman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics”, discourse is defined as a general term for examples of language use, i.e. language which has been produced as the result of an act of communication. Whereas grammar refers to the rules a language uses to form grammatical units such as clause, phrase and sentence, discourse refers to larger units of language such as paragraphs, conversations, and interviews. And according to Widdowson (1979: 98) “discourse is a use of sentences to perform acts of communication which cohere in larger communicative unit, ultimately establishing a rhetorical pattern which characterizes the piece of language as a whole as a kind of communication”. As far as the scope of discourse is concerned, discourse not only to spoken interactions, interviews but also to written and printed words such as newspapers, articles, letters, stories, recipes, instructions, etc. (Carthy: 1993). Thus, the majority of linguists seem to share a common view when defining the concept of discourse. Their definitions, though expressed in different ways, all emphasize the two most important aspects of discourse: The structure of discourse: discourse is a well-form of organization above the level of sentence. The function of discourse: discourse servers as a mean of communication I.2 Discourse and text A distinction is usually made between the word “text” and “discourse”, however, so far, there have been many ways of viewing the term. For some linguists, these two terms seem to be used almost interchangeably. Text is defined as a piece of spoken or written language. A text maybe considered from the point of view of its structure and/or its functions (Longman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics). It is impossible to fully understand a text without reference to the context in which it occurs. A text consists of one word or it may be of considerable length (Swales 1987: 13). Actually, text structure reveals in linguistic terms what is generally considered to be extralinguistic, that is, this “public function” (for an example of press news, see Garrido 1998c). Mann, Matthiesen and Thompson (1992: 41) posit three different levels of structure: “holistic” or text structure, “relational” structure (where rhetorical relations obtain) and “syntactic” structure, or sentence structure. Instead of this three-layer structure, there is only a hierarchical one, from text to discourse, from discourse to sentence, or, rather, from sentence structure to discourse structure, and from discourse structure to text structure. Sentences are linked in sequences which may be called ‘discourses’ and then organized into larger structures, up to texts. And texts are not defined in terms of coherence or relevance but by the connection existing between their component discourses. Similarly, a discourse is not defined in terms of contextual information, but it is the result of connecting its component sentences. In order for this connection to take place, additional information must be included. This happens whenever a unit is connected to others. Frequently this additional information is added as default, but it may also originate in preceding units. Thus words are linked to each other into phrases, phrases into clauses, clauses into sentences, sentences into discourses, and discourses into texts. Halliday, for example, use “text” refers to “discourse”: he sees a text as a “semantic unit” characterized by cohesion. Some other linguists tend to avoid using the term “discourse” and “text” altogether, preferring “text” for all record instances of language in use. Other linguists, on the other hand, clarify the difference between “text” and “discourse”. They argue that discourse is language in action, while text is the written record of that interaction. Crystal (1992: 72), for example, proposed that discourse is “continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence”, whereas text is “a piece of naturally occurring of spoken, written or signed discourse identified for the purposed of analysis”. And according to Guy Cook (1994: 74), ‘a text’ means “the linguistic forms in a stretch of language and those interpretations of them which do not vary with context. I use the general term ‘text’ to mean language regarded in this way.” He also said that text is dependent on its receiver, and therefore variable. Nevertheless, he believes the term is sufficient constant to be used on the sense defined above. Brown and Yule (1983:3), cited in Nunan (1993: 6), also argue that text is “the representation of discourse and the verbal record of a communication act”. In other words, there is a disagreement about the meanings in the terms “discourse” and “text”. All, however, seem to agree that both text and discourse need to be defined in terms of “meaning” and that coherent text/ piece of discourse are those that form a meaningful whole. To make it easy, discourse is a general term to refer to all the act of verbal communication, whereas text is simply a verbal record of the whole communicative process (that is discourse) in which many situational factors are involved, it can be both written and spoken, and there is no limit to the size of the text. Thus text is purely linguistics, formal object while discourse has both linguistic and non-linguistic property. I. 3 Narrative discourse As far as concerned, a narrative discourse is a discourse that is an account of events, usually in the past, that employs verbs of speech, motion, and action to describe a series of events that are dependent one on another, and that typically focuses on one or more performers of actions. A narrative is a text, composed in any medium, which describes a sequence of real or unreal events. It is common to make a primary distinction between two basic components of narrative: narrative plot and narrative discourse. The term plot is generally understood to refer to the abstract storyline of a narrative; that is, to the sequence of elementical, chronologically ordered events which create the ‘inner core’ of a narrative. Narrative discourse, by contrast, encompasses the manner or means by which that plot is narrated. Narrative discourse, for example, is often characterised by the use of stylistic devices such as flashback, prevision and repetition-all of which serve to disrupt the basic chronology of the narrative’s plot. Thus, narrative discourse represents the realised text, the understandable and noticable piece of language which is produced by a story-teller in a given interactive context. In a narrative, something happens, such that we seen a “before” by another state of affairs and this later is, ideally, not merely temporally but casually related to the formal state. Narratives are most commonly narrated in words, in speech (as in oral literature and jokes) or (chiefly) in writing; but they can be enacted dramatically on stage, or visualized in the imagines of film and gesture of mimime”. Narrative is distinguished from the description- a telling of the ways things are. It is also distinguished from much expository writing and expression of opinion which are often explanations of the way things are, or an argument for the way we believe things should be. So what makes a difference between a narrative and other types of discourse is the fact that a narrative is a text in which something humanly interesting has happened, or a significant change in the situation has occurred. Narrative can be told, and, in some cases, do not require verbal language (as in the way of mimime); thus, narrative form is medium-independent. Like any kind of formal organization, narrative form is able to exploit the particular characteristics of the media similarly verbal narrative will exploit the characteristics of language. Cohesion in English II.1 What is cohesion? Each language has its own patterns to convey the interrelationships of persons and events; there is not any language that may these patterns be ignored, if the translation is to be understood by its readers (Callow.1974:30). The topic of cohesion has always appeared to be the most useful constituent of discourse analysis or text linguistics applicable to translation. (Newmark.1987:295). Halliday and Hasan’s Cohesion in English (1976) define cohesion “is a semantic one; it refers to relation of meaning that exist within the text, and that define it as a text” Cohesion connects a string of sentences to form a text rather than a series of unrelated statements. Cohesion is the network of lexical, grammatical, and other relations which link various parts of a text. These relations or ties organize and, to some extent, create a text, for instance, by requiring the reader to interpret words and expressions by reference to other words and expressions in the surrounding sentences and paragraphs. Cohesion is a surface relation and it connects together the actual words and expressions that we can see or hear. Cohesion may be defined as the formal linguistic realization of semantic and pragmatic relations between clauses and sentences in a text (Quirk et al. 1985: 1423 cited in Guy Cook. 1994: 29) Cohesion, as contrasted with register, is not concerned with what a text means. Rather, it refers to a set of meaning relations that exist within the text (Halliday and Hasan. 1976). These relations are not of the kinds that link the components of a sentence and they differ from sentential structure. The discovery of these meaning relations is crucial to its interpretation. For instance, in the following text: Mary bought a new pencil. She put it in her drawer. The interpretation of the elements she and it depends on the lexical items Mary and Pencil. So, cohesion is in the semantic relation that is setup between these elements. According to Halliday and Hasan, the function of cohesion is to relate one part of a text to another part of the same text. Cohesion is the quality of well-formed discourses (texts) that gives them an internal unity, making them "hang together." Sentences flow smoothly from one to another within that discourse. He also assumes that there are appropriate interpropositional relations marked, either explicitly or implicitly. There is a unity of vocabulary. Pronominalization natural to the language enables the reader to know that he is reading about the same participant (topic) introduced earlier in that discourse. Halliday and Hasan were two linguists who published good studies of cohesion within English discourse. Every language has its own cohesion strategies. According to Halliday and Hasan, there are five types of cohesive devices in English and in the lexicogrammatical system of the language. They are reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. Reference, substitution, and ellipsis are grammatical; lexical cohesion is lexical; conjunction stands on the border line between the two categories. II. 2. Cohesion versus coherence In history of linguistics study, there have been some of the disagreement stems from diverse views of what cohesion is and how it differs from coherence. Coherence refers to the ways in which the parts of a piece of writing are linked together to form a whole which is often confused with cohesion. While cohesion links among sentences and within them, coherence is the broader characteristic of unity of the text as a whole. According to Richards et. al. (1992:62), “cohesion is the grammatical and or lexical relationships between the different elements of a text. This may be the relationship between different sentences or between different parts of a sentence”. And coherence is “the relationships which link the meanings of utterances in a discourse or of the sentences in a text” (Richards et. al.1992:62). Cohesion is only one component of coherence. In addition to cohesion, at least one other factor must be present for a text to have coherence; that factor is organization. Other factors like situational consistency add coherence to text.... Cohesion exists within text and adds to the coherence of text. It may be useful to think of coherence as something the reader establishes-or hopes to establish-in the process of reading connected discourse ... coherence is both a text-related and a reader-related phenomenon. Larson, who provides a fine summary of major studies on cohesion in composition research agrees with this definition and goes on to say, “The determination of coherence is fundamental