Theme zones in English media discourse: Forms and functions

Fetzer, Anita

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2008.04.016

Cited by 22 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…However, it is their overt (Ov) and non-overt (Non-ov) representation that is of prime interest to our contrastive analysis of British and German texts. This is systematized in Research on the primarily overt representation of the discourse relation of Contrast in English discourse (Doherty 2003;Fetzer 2008) is confirmed by our analysis, where not a single occurrence of non-overt representation has been found. All of the other discourse relations under investigation are represented more frequently in a non-overt manner, and the discourse relation of Explanation with its function of signifying causality is represented non-overtly only.…”

Section: The British Editorialssupporting

confidence: 80%

“…Sometimes, however, the speaker /writer provides explicit hints, or contextualization cues in interactional-sociolinguistic terminology, how s/he intends the reader/hearer to connect the propositions. These "hints" can be represented through word order, Brought to you by | University of Iowa Libraries Authenticated Download Date | 6/8/15 1:03 PM especially the sequential organization of the "theme zone" (Fetzer 2008), or through lexical means, for instance discourse connectives; particles or adverbs, such as denn, aber, dazuhin, etc. in German; or because, but, moreover, etc. in English, which are often represented in the initial position or theme zone, as discussed below.…”

Section: Narrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…make the intersubjective processes of reasoning explicit, signaling how the author intends her/his local contributions and the overall editorial to be taken and how the reader is intended to interpret it. Since the object languages English and German of our contrastive analysis are both Germanic languages and thus related quite closely, we may expect the use of similar cohesive ties for the overt coding of discourse relations in similar contexts, yet in a different fashion (but see Clyne 1987;Fetzer 2005Fetzer , 2008House 1996).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Discourse relations in English and German discourse: Local and not-so-local constraints

Fetzer¹,

Speyer²

2012

Intercultural Pragmatics

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This paper examines the overt and non-overt coding of discourse relations in the argumentative discourse genre of editorial based on a contrastive study of British English and German editorials. Particular attention is given to the linguistic coding of discourse relations positioned adjacently and non-adjacently, and to the question of granularity. The analysis of the German editorials is based on the syntactic unit of sentence, while their British counterpart is based on the syntactic unit of clause.In the data at hand, the two languages code the discourse relation of Contrast overtly in adjacent and non-adjacent positioning but employ different strategies as regards the overt coding of the coordinating discourse relation of Continuation and the subordinating discourse relations of Elaboration, Explanation, and Comment. The rate of overt marking for adjacently positioned coordinating relations is higher in the German data. In the British data, there is hardly any difference between the overt marking of adjacently positioned discourse relations holding between clauses and sentences. The overt marking of subordinating discourse relations is lower in the German data, and in the British data, there is a clear preference for coding adjacently positioned subordinating discourse relations in an overt manner on the level of clause.1 In this paper, discourse genre is used as a functional hyperonym for communicative genre, activity type and communicative activity type (cf., Levinson 1979; Linell 1998). Brought to you by | University of Iowa Libraries Authenticated Download Date | 6/8/15 1:03 PM Discourse relations in English and German discourse 415The socio-cognitive construct of coherence is connected intrinsically with cohesion and cohesive ties, viz. linguistic items which express the nature of the connectedness between clauses and sentences, sentences and paragraphs, and paragraphs and discourse as a whole (Hasan and Halliday 1987;Halliday 1994). In general, discourse contains numerous cohesive ties, but there are discourses that do not contain any cohesive ties but are considered to be coherent, and there are discourses that display numerous cohesive ties but are considered to be incoherent. Both kinds can be found in literary discourse and are constitutive, e.g., comedy, where discourse coherence is construed on a meta-level. However, there is no coherent discourse without coherence strands, to use a term from Givón (1993), that are referential continuity, temporal continuity, spatial continuity, and action continuity. The communicative value of discourse relations can be implicit in these coherence strands, and it can be marked overtly by using cohesive ties. It is the linguistic coding of discourse relations with discourse connectives and meta-communicative comments in adjacently and non-adjacently positioned discourse units, which is at the heart of our analysis.The goal of this paper is to analyze the linguistic coding of the discourse relations Continuation, Contrast, Elaboration, Explanation, and Comment in t...

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Section: The British Editorialssupporting

confidence: 80%

Section: Narrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Discourse relations in English and German discourse: Local and not-so-local constraints

Fetzer¹,

Speyer²

2012

Intercultural Pragmatics

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“…Among overt signals, pragmatic word order refers to non-congruently configurated theme zones, which are adopted from Systemic Functional Grammar, in particular multiple themes and theme zone [9,15,16]. They realize both anaphoric and cataphoric reference by connecting what has just been said/written with what is going to be said/written.…”

Section: Linguistic Realizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is shown in (8), where adverbial 'more particularly' signals the defining condition of topic specification for Elaboration overtly, with narr#5/4 introducing a lower level of discourse rather than keeping the discourse on the same level -a potential interpretation of connectedness of the bare DUs that is reflected in excerpt (9), where the dyad assigned Continuation. (8) …”

Section: Elaborationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discourse relations: Genre-specific degrees of overtness in argumentative and narrative discourse

Hofmockel

Fetzer

Майер

2017

AAC

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Abstract. Based on a contrastive approach that compares the argumentative genre of editorial with the narrative genre of personal narrative across two production modes, single-authored data and data elicited in an editing-based task, this paper examines the impact of genre on the realizations of discourse relations, paying particular attention to the argumentative genre and its preferential realizations of Contrast, Continuation, Elaboration and Explanation/Result. Discourse relations are conceived of as sociocognitive constructs that are encoded in coherence strands and may additionally be signalled overtly with discourse connectives, metacomments and/or pragmatic word order. Quantitative analyses of single-authored and co-constructed data reveal systematic differences in the variation of degrees of overtness between editorials and personal narratives. In the argumentative genre, Explanation, Continuation and Comment tend to be realized with a lower degree of overtness, Elaboration with a higher degree of overtness. Contrast is realized overtly throughout the data, irrespective of genre.

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Contextualising Contrastive Discourse Relations: Evidence from Single-Authored and Co-constructed Texts

Fetzer

2017

Modeling and Using Context

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Theme zones in English media discourse: Forms and functions

Cited by 22 publications

References 8 publications

Discourse relations in English and German discourse: Local and not-so-local constraints

Discourse relations in English and German discourse: Local and not-so-local constraints

Discourse relations: Genre-specific degrees of overtness in argumentative and narrative discourse

Contextualising Contrastive Discourse Relations: Evidence from Single-Authored and Co-constructed Texts

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