Page 274 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Linguistics

Notes Since lexical chains are present in every type of discourse it is advisable to familiarize learners
with the way they function in, not merely because they are there, but to improve students' perception
and production of expressive discourse. Reiteration is simply a repetition of a word later in the
text, or the use of synonymy, but what might require paying particularly close attention in classroom
situation is hyponymy. While synonymy is relatively easy to master simply by learning new
vocabulary dividing new words into groups with similar meaning, or using thesauri, hyponymy
and superordination are more abstract and it appears that they require tutelage. Hyponym is a
particular case of a more general word, in other words a hyponym belongs to a subcategory of a
superordinate with narrower meaning, which is best illustrated by an example: Brazil, with her
two-crop economy, was even more severely hit by the Depression thanother Latin American states
and the country was on the verge of complete collapse. In this sentence the word Brazil is a
hyponym of the word country - its superordinate. Thus, it should not be difficult to observe the
difference between synonymy and hyponymy: while Poland, Germany and France are all hyponyms
of the word country, they are not synonymous. Discourse analysts imply that authors of
communicative products deliberately vary discursive devices of this type in order to bring the
most important ideas to the fore, which in case of English with its wide array of vocabulary is a
very frequent phenomenon.
One other significant contribution made by discourse analysts for the use of vocabulary is noticing
the omnipresence and miscellaneous manners of expressing modality. Contrary to popular belief
that it is conveyed mainly by use of modal verbs it has been proved that in natural discourse it is
even more frequently communicated by words and phrases which may not be included in the
category of modal verbs, yet, carry modal meaning. Lexical items of modality inform the participant
of discourse not only about the attitude of the author to the subject matter in question (phrases
such as I believe, think, assume), but they also give information about commitment, assertion,
tentativeness.
Discourse analysts maintain that knowledge of vocabulary-connected discourse devices supports
language learning in diverse manners. Firstly, it ought to bring students to organize new items of
vocabulary into groups with common context of use to make them realize how the meaning of a
certain word might change with circumstances of its use or
co-text. Moreover, it should also improve learners' abilities to choose the appropriate synonym,
collocation or hyponym.
Application of Discourse Analysis to Teaching Text Interpretation
Interpretation of a written text in discourse studies might be defined as the act of grasping the
meaning that the communicative product is to convey. It is important to emphasize that clear
understanding of writing is reliant on not only what the author put in it, but also on what a reader
brings to this process. McCarthy points out that reading is an exacting action which involves
recipient's knowledge of the world, experience, ability to infer possible aims of discourse and
evaluate the reception of the text.
Painstaking research into schemata theory made it apparent that mere knowledge of the world is
not always sufficient for successful discourse processing. Consequently, scholars dealing with text
analysis redefined the concept of schemata dividing it into two: content and formal schemata.
Content, as it refers to shared knowledge of the subject matter, and formal, because it denotes the
knowledge of the structure and organization of a text. In order to aid students to develop necessary
reading and comprehension skills attention has to be paid to aspects concerning the whole system
of a text, as well as crucial grammar structures and lexical items. What is more, processing written
discourse ought to occur on global and local scale at simultaneously, however, it has been
demonstrated that readers employ different strategies of reading depending on what they focus
on.

Top-down and Bottom-up Text Processing
Distinguishing noticeably different approaches to text processing led to distinction of manners of
attending to written communicative products. Bottom-up processes are those which are involved

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