ENGL 390: The Linguistic Structure of Modern English
Fall 2005
Dr. J. Rubba
© Johanna Rubba 2005

English Text

Sentences occur within the context of other sentences – within the context of a writer's evolving purposes. Each sentence is a move in a series of related moves in the joint action of communication; it helps further the cause – the purpose – of creating the text.
- Adapted from a passage by Craig Hancock

From sentence to text

+ Humans communicate in texts: continuous stretches of language.

+ Communication is purposeful: serves practical and social goals.

+Language is joint action: participants in communication work together to accomplish the goals of communication.

+ Every part of a text is a step (move) towards the goal(s).

+ How sentences fit in:

• “1) A sentence is not a complete thought. It is a move in a series of related moves.

• 2) Sentences vary widely in the amount of information they contain.

• 3) Sentences vary widely in the way that information is organized.

• 4) Sentences occur within the context of other sentences.

• 5) Sentences occur within the context of a writer's evolving purposes.”
Source: Craig Hancock, ATEG listserv e-mail post, 10/11/05

Text Structure

+ Texts have beginnings, middles, and ends.

• Conversation: greetings, turn-taking, closing salutations

• Fairy tales: orientation, problem, crisis, resolution, moral

• Academic essay: introduction, development, conclusion

+ Texts are coherent:

• Organized around topics (what the text is about)

• Movement between topics is clearly signaled.

• Syntax is used to organize information so that the text is coherent:

F Subject: given/topical info; predicate: comment/new info

F Adverbial placement: orientation

+ Your knowledge of phrase/sentence patterns is your resource for making communication coherent.

+ With every utterance, you make subconscious choices about how to arrange the information you communicate.

+ The need to organize info optimally (text-level meaning) determines your choices; determines structure of each sentence in a text

Levels of meaning in a text

+ A text communicates different kinds of meaning simultaneously.

+ Word choice, sentence structure, tone of voice serve three purposes at once:

+ Ideational/experiential: Concepts, categories being talked about

+ Social/interpersonal: speaker viewpoint on content and speaker

+ Text level: relation of concepts in content to each other: news vs. already known; central vs. peripheral topics; relation between topics; topic shifts, etc.

+ Ideational vs. social/interpersonal: e.g., politeness (speaker assessment of relationship with addressee)

• The more polite, the more indirect, and/or the more words to cushion degree of authority speaker claims (less to more polite):

F Tell me the time.

F What time is it?

F Can you tell me what time it is? (a request, not a question about ability)

F Could you tell me what time it is?

F Could you possibly tell me what time it is?

F I wonder if you could (possibly) tell me what time it is.

F Excuse me, could you tell me what time it is (please)?

F Excuse me, I left my watch at home and I’m afraid I’ll be late for a meeting. Could you possible tell me what time it is?

Levels of meaning in a text

+ Social: speaker attitude towards content and degree of certainty of truth of statement

• Ideational meaning: addressee cannot accompany speaker to Hawai’i

• Attitude:

F Oh, so you won’t be coming with us to Hawai’i.

F You can’t come with us to Hawai’i? Oh, well. Maybe another time.

F It’s too bad that you can’t come with us to Hawai’i.

F Aww, I wish you could come to Hawai’i with us!

F Oh my God, you can’t come with us to Hawai’i?!?

Levels of meaning in a text

• Degree of certainty (underlined items are hedges/mitigators of speaker certainty):

F It was the Butler in the kitchen with the knife. (no mitigator; bald assertion)

F I’m positive it was the Butler in the kitchen with the knife. (confident assertion)

F It must have been the Butler in the kitchen with the knife. (confident surmise)

F I’m pretty sure it was the Butler in the kitchen with the knife. (less confident assertion)

F I think it was the Butler in the kitchen with the knife. (less confident assertion)

F Maybe was the Butler in the kitchen with the knife. (not much confidence)

F It might have been the Butler in the kitchen with the knife. (even less)

F Maybe it the Butler in the kitchen with the knife? (even less)

F Well, it’s possible / I guess that it could have been the Butler in the kitchen with the knife, right? (even less)

F Do you think it might have been the Butler in the kitchen with the knife? (no confidence)

+ Application:

• Researchers have found that degree of certainty varies with the power status of the speaker.

• Early theory: hedged speech was typical of women’s speech, while men’s speech was more direct and self-assured.

• Now, it seems that power status within the situation determines use of hedging.

• E.g., a female judge uses powerful language; a working-class male on witness stand uses “powerless language” (with hedges).

• If a class of people is less powerful, they will use powerless language.

Levels of meaning in a text

+ Text-level meaning:

• Language that connects earlier and later parts of the text to each other:

F Pronouns

F Transitional adverbs

F Introductory adverbials

F Use of grammatical roles (subject, indirect object, etc.)

Levels of meaning in a text

+ Opening text of Ch. 5 of “The Pine Barrens”, by John McPhee. Title of chapter is “The Capital of the Pines”

+ Chatsworth, in Woodland Township, is the principal community in the Pine Barrens. It is six miles north of ... Hog Wallow, and is surrounded on all sides by deep forest. From the air, two miles away, Chatsworth is not visible under the high cover of oaks and pines. The town consists of three hundred and six people, seventy-four houses, ten trailers, a firehouse, a church, a liquor store, a post office, a school, two sawmills, and one general store. Somehow, Chatsworth is a half-tone more attractive than any other town in the pines.

Levels of meaning in a text

Application: Syntactic maturity in writing

+ Maturity of writing is measured as complexity of syntax: putting more information per phrase/sentence by using various grammatical constructions.

+ One can improve syntactic maturity by packing more info into phrases and sentences:

• “Hemingway is my favorite author. His novels and short stories have intrigued me for years. My first encounter with him was in his novel The Old Man and the Sea. The novel has a great plot, exciting characters, and wonderful details. What I found most pleasurable about the novel was how easy it was to read. As a writer, I strive to find a similar style ... To study the linguistic features of Hemingway’s style, I used two of his most famous novels: A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls. In each novel I analyze five paragraphs. In A Farewell to Arms I use the first chapter of the novel. The first chapter introduces the setting of the novel ... In For Whom the Bell Tolls I chose the opening of the 18th chapter, which is in the middle of the book.” 146 words; is at the bottom end of college level

+ This student seems to think that a prose style like Hemingway’s is appropriate for academic work. Unfortunately, this isn’t true. His writing is likely to be judged at a lower level than appropriate for college. A better version:

• The novels and short stories of Ernest Hemingway have intrigued me for years. My first encounter with him was in his novel The Old Man and the Sea, which has a great plot, exciting characters, and wonderful details. I find his easy-to-read style pleasing, and strive to develop a similar style in my own writing ... For this project, I studied the linguistic features of Hemingway’s style in excerpts from two of his most famous novels: the first chapter of A Farewell to Arms, and the opening of the 18th chapter of For Whom the Bell Tolls, found in the middle of the book. 104 words; much more mature level; definitely college-level

Old/given vs. new information

+ New: assumed not to be known by listener/reader (N)

+ Old/given: assumed to be known by listener reader

• To ways to be given:

F 1. Prior mention in the current text (PM)

F 2. Part of background knowledge of the world (BK)

+ “WEST COVINA, Calif. (AP wire, 11/21/05) - Two men (N)were killed and two other people (N)were wounded in a shooting (N) at a weekend birthday party (N), police (BK) said. The shooting (PM) was reported around 2 a.m. Sunday and many of the guests (BK) told police (BK) there was no sign of trouble before the shooting started at the home (BK) where the party (PM) was held. "It was chaos for a while," said police Cpl. Rudy Lopez. "Most of them said they didn't see it coming.” Roberto Ruiz, 23, of La Puente died at the scene, Lopez said. Adam Rodriguez, 20, of West Covina died at a hospital. A 23-year-old man (N) and a 22-year-old woman (N) were treated for gunshot wounds. They (PM) were listed in stable condition at a hospital (N) Monday, said Lt. Marcos Plebani. Plebani said the shooting (PM) was under investigation and the shooter (BK) remained at large.”

+ “The guests” - it is part of our general knowledge that a party includes guests.

+ “Police” - it is understood that police would arrive at the scene of a shooting.

+ “The home” - it is part of our general knowledge that parties are often held at private homes.

+ “The shooter” - it is part of our general knowledge that a shooting is carried out by someone who shoots the gun.

Topic structure & grammatical roles

+ Example: grammatical role “subject” and text topic/subtopic: subject choice in a magazine article

+ Analysis of a text: ‘Existential Cowboy’ by Richard Rayner, New Yorker May 18, 1998.

+ Covers about 29 columns of text over 12 pages. It is about actor/director/producer Robert Redford.

+ Subjects by quantity:

• Robert Redford = 500x

• Traits, possessions, experiences of Redford’s = 55x

• Movies, scenes, scripts, parts of movies = 85x

• Characters or objects in movies = 56x

• Other workers in the film industry = 77x

• People in anecdotes involving Redford :

• John Huston = 25x Paul Newman = 6x

• Mike Nichols = 13x Cary Grant = 3x

• Jack Nicholson = 4x Ava Gardner = 3x

• Woodward and/or Bernstein = 33x

• Misc. others = 56x

• Members of Redford’s family = 15x

• The author of the article = 48x

• Geographical locations or parts of same = 9x

• Situations or events (‘this’, ‘it’, ‘that’) = 37x

• Generic ‘you’ as subject = 21x

• Miscellaneous different objects, ideas, abstractions, etc. = 141x

Grammatical roles in a text

+ Other grammatical roles also play a part in maintaining topic coherence:

+ Redford is coded as:

+ direct object = 23x indirect object = 6x object of preposition = 46x possessive =100x
reflexive pronoun (himself) = 14x modifier (‘un-Redford-like’) = 2x vocative (‘Hey, Bob!’) = 4x

+ Object of preposition: with Redford, for Redford, about Redford, etc.

+ Possessive: Redford’s wife, films, success, strategy, etc.

+ These roles connect Redford with subtopics

+ Assure the reader that whatever is said has to do with the main topic, Redford

Speech vs. writing: processing conditions

+ Speech: real time

+ Speech must be rapidly planned, instructions sent to vocal tract, uttered; planning of next utterance is going on while speaking

+ Listener is present to resolve unclarity and misunderstandings

+ From Glengarry Glen Ross, by David Mamet:

“Levene: John ... John ... John. Okay. John. John. Look: (Pause.) The Glengarry Highland’s leads, || you’re sending Roma out. Fine. He’s a good man. We know what he is. He’s fine. All I’m saying, || you look at the board, || he’s throwing ... || wait, wait, wait, he’s throwing them away, he’s throwing the leads away. All that I’m saying, || that you’re wasting leads. I don’t want to tell you your job. All that I’m saying, || things get set, I know they do, you get a certain mindset .... A guy gets a reputation. We know how this || ... all I’m saying, || put a closer on the job. There’s more than one man for the || ... Put a || ... wait a second, put a proven man out ...”

Speech vs. writing: processing conditions - cont’d

+ Writing: more time for planning (composing), checking, revising

+ But reader is not present: need for transitions, clear given vs. new signals; accurate assessment of knowledge shared with reader

+ Reader has time to re-read, gets more information in a shorter time

+ But can’t ask for clarification

+ Example below:

• Introduces topic or subtopic

• Maintains topic coherence

• Assumes not in reader’s background knowledge

• Assumes is in reader’s background knowledge

“Neurology of dreams

There is no universally agreed-upon biological definition of dreaming. Dreams are typically associated with REM sleep, a phase of brain activity
which occurs towards the end of the sleep cycle. REM sleep is characterized by rapid horizontal eye movements, stimulation of the pons, increased
respiratory and heart rate, and temporary paralysis of the body. Subjects awakened during REM sleep usually report having been dreaming. However, a small fraction of subjects also report dreaming in other phases of sleep. Some neurologists even group mental phenomena such as daydreaming under the umbrella of dreaming.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream#Neurology_of_dreams