Friday, July 6, 2012

Describe


CHAPTER 2
DESCRIBING WRITTEN TEXT
Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen, widen, and expand our sense of life. They feed the soul.
Anne Lamott describes written text into:
a.       Different purposes, different writing
b.      Differences within a genre
c.       Text construction
d.      Cohesion
e.       Coherence
f.       Register
g.      Implications for learning and teaching
A.    Different purposes, different writing
During the planning phase of the writing process, we have to focus on the purpose of our writing since this will affect what language we choose and how we use it.
The following example of written text show clearly how different purposes provoke different kinds of writing (page 15).
Chanworth Toy Library for Children with Special Needs
Toy Librarian
12hrs per week – pay subject to experience
We are seeking an enthusiastic Toy Librarian to work in the Toy Library at
the Child Development Centre and within special schools.
This post is subject to a police check.
Closing date 1st October.
Applications in writing with two referees to Judith Kelly, Chairman,
Chanworth Toy Library, PO Box 32, Montley Wood, RC3 5WW.

From the text above, the writer having decided on a purpose (advertising a job), chose to construct the advertisement on the basis of what the members of community would be familiar with. In the other words, the members of a discourse community, that is people such as readers of this kind of English-language newspaper know what an advertisement does and should look like.
Dear Sir,
I refer to the Notice of Intended Prosecution/Section 172 Road Traffic Act 1988form sent you in relation to an alleged traffic offence
I am in receipt of your further correspondence and have noted the contents
I will, on receiving confirmation from the hospital, re-examine your file. If I decide to excuse the penalty, your payment will be refunded and the points removed from your license.
Your prompt response would be appreciated.
Yours faithfully,

Now compare with a letter below:






This letter uses specialized topic vocabulary (e.g. Notice of Intended Prosecution, alleged traffic offence) and also employs vocabulary and grammar which ensures its formal tone (I am in receipt of ……; Your prompt response would be appreciated).
The differences between letter and advertisement in genre, the letter is typical of its kind (both in terms of construction and in choice of language), whereas the advertisement was typical of its kind for the same reasons. These differences are called writing constructions genres.
Literary fiction is a genre of English which is different from science fiction. Newspaper letters are a recognizable genre, different from the notification letter above and different again from holiday postcards or application letter.
Knowledge of genres (understanding how different purposes are commonly expressed within a discourse community) is only one of the many knowledge or competences that a reader brings to the task of reading and which a writer assumes the reader will know.
These knowledge (which we can group under the general heading of schematic knowledge) comprise:
·         A knowledge of genres
·         General world knowledge
·         Sociocultural knowledge (that is the social and cultural knowledge which members of a particular social group can reasonably be expected to know)
·         Topic knowledge (that is knowing something about the subject being discussed).
B.     Differences within a genre
Although we can describe newspaper advertisements as a genre, it is clear that not all advertisement within that genre are the same. It depends on what is being advertised and how much advertisements cost a genre constraint. There are various sub-genres within a genre. Since within each genre and sub-genre we found typical text constructions, it is useful to look at how much constructions can be described.
C.    Text construction
Literature provides us with perfect examples of how a genre constrains writers, imposing construction patterns that help them to express their purpose. Look at the sonnet by William Shakespeare below (page 18)!
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! It is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hour and week,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

A sonnet isn a fourteen-line poem where each line – in English, at least – usually consists of ten syllables. The subject matter is most often romantic in nature, and there is generally some kind of a pause – or change in thought or subject – after the first eight lines. Interestingly, there two main rhyme schemes. Shakespeare, perhaps Britain’s most prolific sonneteer wrote using the Elizabethan rhyme scheme (i.e.  abab cdcd efef gg – where a , in Sonnet above, represents the minds, finds rhyme, and b represents the love, remove rhyme, etc.)
Interestingly, Cummings’ poem (page 19) is still constrained by the sonnet from (romantic in nature, 14 lines, 10 syllables per line, and a break after the eight line), but it is different in two aspects. Firstly he uses a variation of the Petrarchan rather than Elizabethan rhyme scheme (i.e. abbaabba followed by two or three other rhymes in the remaining six lines). Secondly, he brings his own idiosyncratic style to bear on the genre, he liked to write using almost no capital letters.
The following example, few people would have trouble in rearranging the sentences on the left into the properly sequenced paragraph on the right.

Out-of-sequence sentences
Sequences paragraph
But then the phone rang,  and it was his friend Sarah asking if he wanted to go and see a movie.

He agreed immediately, and was out of the door in almost no timer at all.

He didn’t have any ideas.

Paul was sitting at home, wondering what to do.
Paul was sitting at home, wondering what to do. He didn’t have any ideas. But then the phone rang,  and it was his friend Sarah asking if he wanted to go and see a movie. He agreed immediately, and was out of the door in almost no timer at all.


The sequencing sentences to make paragraph
Situation (Paul was sitting at home ………)

Problem (He didn’t have any ideas)


Solution/response (But then the phone rang, ………)


Evaluation/result (He agreed immediately, …….).

All text can be analyzed in terms of its construction. All genres and sub-genres (of which sonnet is an extreme example) have relatively strict formulae governing their construction.
D.    Cohesion
Cohesion is grammatical and lexical relationship within a text or sentence. Cohesion can be defined as the links that hold a text together and give it meaning. It is related to the broader concept of coherence.
When we write text we have number of linguistic techniques at our disposal ticks to make sure that our prose ‘sticks together. We can use lexical and grammatical devices to help the readers understand what is being referred to at all times, even when words are left out or pronouns are substituted for nouns. We can see lexical and grammatical cohesion at work in the extract from the newspaper article below.
Grandparents ’juggle career and caring’
People in 50s and 60s feel pressure to work on
John Carvel
Social affairs editor
Growing pressure on people in their 50s and 60s to stay in paid work is set to divert grandparents from helping their working daughters and sons with childcare, according to a report today from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
It found a shortage of young people in the population – confirmed by the national census on Monday – would make
Employers do their utmost to retain older staff.
This would shrink the number of retired people  who were able to care for their grandchildren or fail older relatives, said researchers from the Institute of Education in London.
After a survey of more than 1,000 employees over 50 and recently retired local authority staff, they identified a pivot generation of people combining work, and care roles.
Two-thirds of people between 50 and retirement were in paid employment, one-third had grandchildren by the age of 50, and 60% had living parents.
Nearly half the local authority staff had some caring responsibility. One in three looked after an elderly relative or friend, one in six provided care for a grandchild and one in 10 did both.

Lexical cohesion is achieved in the article above by the use of two main devices:
1.      Repetition of words – a number of content words are repeated throughout the text
Examples: grandparents (twice), grandchildren (twice), people (five times)
2.      Lexical set chins – the text is cohesive because there are lexical sets which interrelate with each other as the article progresses
Examples:
a.       Grandparents, daughters, sons, grandchildren, relatives, grandchild
b.      Work, employer, staff, employees, retired, employment
c.       Two – thirds, one – third, 60%, one in three, one in 10, etc
Grammatical cohesion is achieved in a number of different ways
1.      Pronoun and possessive reference – at various points in the text a pronoun or more frequently a possessive is used instead of a noun.
Example:
a.      Growing pressure on people in their 50s and 60s … the word “their” is used to refer back to people
b.      The second word “their” in paragraph 1 refers back to grandparents
c.       Whereas the word “their” in paragraph 2 refers to employers
2.      Anaphoric reference can operate between paragraphs
Example:
a.       The word “this” which starts paragraph 3 refers to the whole of paragraph
b.      Whereas the word “they” in paragraph 4 refers to researchers from the Institute of Education in the previous paragraph.
3.      Article reference – articles are also used for text cohesion. The definite article “the”
is often used for anaphoric reference.
Example:
In paragraph 4, the writer refers to retired local authority staff, but when they are mentioned again in paragraph 6 the writer talks about the local authority staff
4.      Tenses agreement – the writers use tense agreement to make texts cohesive
5.      Linkers – the words describing text relationships of addition (and, also, moreover, furthermore), of contrast (however, on the other hand, but, yet), of result (therefore, consequently, thus), of time (first, then, later, after that ) etc.
6.      Substitution and ellipsis – the writers frequently substitute a short phrases for a longer one that has preceded it.
Example:
He shouldn’t have cheated in his exam but he did so because he was desperate to get into university the phrase did so substitutes for cheated in this exam. 
E.     Coherence  
A text has a coherence if it needs to have some kind of internal logic which the reader can follow with or without the use of prominent cohesive devices. When a text is coherent, the reader can understand at least two things:
1.      The writer’s purpose
The reader should be able to understand what the writer’s purpose is. A coherent text will not mask the writer’s purpose.
2.      The writer’s line thought
The reader should be able to follow the writer’s line of reasoning if the text is a discursive piece.
Good instruction manuals show coherence at work so that the user of the manual can clearly follow step-by-step instructions and therefore complete the assembly or procedure successfully.

F.     Register
Register (in this context) means level of formality. Academic writing should be formal without being pompous. It should also be geared to its intended audience.
In linguistics, a register is a variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting.
Register is a word used to denote the actual language that we use in a particular situation when communicating with a particular group of people. One aspect of register is the choice of topic vocabulary. In this case of the Mahler text, phrase like sparely scored, muted born, and accompanimental flutter exemplify this kind of choice.
The following is an example of register:
Good night Out
Here are our top tips for a good night out:
1.       Don’t wear skimpy clobber. You’ll catch your death. Splash out on a cosy jumper. Cover your legs and they’ll stop shaking!
2.       Too much tonsil tennis can be confusing. Much better to keep the lads guessing and your head clear.
3.       Ease up the slap. We all like a bit of lippy and there’s nothing wrong with blusher or shadow, but you don’t want to look like a neon sign!

The extract above comes from a magazine for young teenagers, is written in an entirely different register, even though it touches on similar topics. The vocabulary in this piece reflects a significantly less formal tone. Terms like: skimpy, clobber, tonsil tennis, lads, ease up on the slap (=use less make up), and lippy (=lipstick) are all slang terms which were current when the piece was written.
G.    Implications for learning and teaching
Writing in a particular genre tends to leads to the use of certain kinds of text construction. It must have implications not only for the way people write in their first or main language, but also for the ways in which we teach people to become better writers in a foreign language. People write in different registers depending on different topics and on the tone the wish adopt for their intended audience. If, for example, a class of people studying business English need to learn how to write job application letters, they will need to know how the application letters are put together and what register they are written. If the students wish to learn they how to write essays for some exam, they will benefit from knowing how essays are constructed. Writing within genres in the language classroom implies a significant attention to reading.
·         Reading and writing
Students might well enjoy writing lonely hearts advertisements. If we ask our students to read lonely hearts advertisements, we can ask them to analyze the texts they have in front of them. We do not have to tell the students everything. We can get them to look at five or six versions of the same new story. At lower level, we may not able to expect that students can analyze complete texts and then go on to write imitations of them. But we can through parallel writing, get them to look at a paragraph. In other words, where students are asked to write within a specific genre, a prerequisite for their successful completion of the task will be to read and analyze texts written within that same genre.
·         The genre trap
If we limit students to imitating what other people have written, then our efforts may end up being prescriptive (you must do it like this) rather than descriptive (for your information, this is how it is often done). A focus on genre can avoid these pitfalls if we ensure that students understand that examples they read are examples rather than models. We will also need to accept that genre analysis and writing is not the only kind of writing that students or teachers need or want to but also we may often encourage students to write about themselves. We need to remind ourselves that understanding a genre and writing within it is only one part of the picture for our students.
H.    Conclusions
From the discussing above we can conclude that we have:
·         described writing in terms of genre.
·         discussed what genre means and looked at examples of texts within certain genres.
·         shown how, even within one genre, there can be varieties of text construction.
·         analyzed a number of texts in terms of their construction, showing how strict genre formats can both constrain and stimulate authors.
·         seen examples of cohesive devices within a text.
·         discussed the issue of coherence
·         seen how writers choose their words depending on genre, topic, and tone.
·         said that genre analysis implies that students should read before they write so that they can see how texts are organized and what language is used.
·         pointed out however, that if written genre are used only for students to copy slavishly then they may be counter-productive. a sensible approach to genre, therefore, is to show students many examples within a genre and to use genre studies in conjunction with other kinds of writing activity.

No comments:

Post a Comment