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,
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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
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Sequences
paragraph
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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2.
Too much tonsil tennis can be confusing. Much
better to keep the lads guessing and your head clear.
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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!
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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.
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