Due to the different communicative functions of various texts, the themes and contents of texts are different, the genres of articles are different, and the structures of texts are diverse. However, this does not mean that the structure of the discourse is a random combination. The structure of the discourse is an organized, coherent, and consistent organic language whole. Larger texts usually have a beginning, middle, and end.
The beginning of the story often explains the time, place, characters, etc. The middle part mainly describes the development of the story. The ending is a description of the ending of characters and events or a revelation.
The beginning of an argumentative text is often to point out the problem and explain what issue the article will discuss. The middle part is to analyze the problem raised at the beginning and demonstrate the argument. The end part is to explain what was pointed out at the beginning. Propose a solution to a problem or draw a conclusion.
The beginning of the letter is the title, the middle is the text, and the end is the conclusion and signature.
1. Linear expression problem: Discourses are composed of sentences arranged in a straight line.
This kind of linear expression (Inearization) with only length but no width and height can only represent the order of sentences, but not the level of sentences. Therefore, the discourse faces the problem of the order and arrangement of discourse. The order of utterances often determines the expression of the meaning of a sentence. For example: Julius Caesar's famous saying when he won the victory at the Caspian Sea (Portic): I came. I saw. I conquered. The order of the actions in the sentence is clear. This is a triadic structure. The sentence pattern is concise, the structure is compact, the meaning is prominent, the words are concise and comprehensive, and the words are sonorous and powerful. It fully shows the arrogance, triumph and arrogance of Caesar when he won the victory on the Caspian Sea.
2. Basic relationship structure:
There are three common relationship structures: general and particular, progression and compatibility.
1) General and particular (general and particular) means that the narrative starts from the general and then discusses the particular.
2) Progression: This relationship structure refers to the order of time, beginning and end of reasoning, etc. For example:
He gets up at 6:30. He dresses, washes and goes out to do morning exercise. Then he has breakfast. (in order of time)
He must be Bob's brother . I remember he's got a big red nose. (reasoning knot)
3) Compatibility refers to the "comparison" of related things, mainly in matching and contrast. ) two aspects. Such as:
The ordinary saw is not easy to use; a plane demands years of practice. (matching relationship)
The ordinary hand drill is not easy to use; this electric type is something any novice can handle. (Contrast relationship)
3. Discourse strategies (discourse strategies)
Relationship structure can be realized through discourse strategies. The most prominent ones are: step, stack, chain, balance
1) Sequence (step): The sequential relationship structure refers to the various elements in the discourse. Arranging sentences from first to last according to the development process of things is a relatively simple way to explain the relationship between things. The order of sentences in the text cannot be changed at will, otherwise it will lead to logical confusion and ambiguous semantics.
2) Hierarchy (stack): The hierarchical relationship structure refers to the accumulation of sentences layer by layer, but also refers to the upper and lower levels. Sentences do not develop in a horizontal line, but have a vertical hierarchical structure. This kind of discourse is usually composed of several levels of sentences and has a foundation, often called a "topic sentence", which connects different levels. , In this way, although the sentences in the discourse are not at the same level, they revolve around a center.
In the hierarchical relationship structure, some have a summary sentence in addition to the topic sentence; some hierarchical relationship structures can also be regarded as total score relationship structures. The organizational form of the total score relationship is to first state two one or two or more objects, and then explain them separately, that is to say, first sum up, and then talk about it in detail. Arranging the sentences in this way can make them echo and cooperate with each other, so that the context of the discourse is clear. , detailed analysis.
3) Chain: The chain relationship structure is different from the sequential relationship structure. They both talk from one point to another. However, there are also differences between the two structures. The sequential relationship structure develops in one direction and approaches the final goal in a planned and step-by-step manner; while the development direction of the chain relationship structure may be tortuous, often branching out and developing from a certain link. Come on. The narrative direction and goal of this structure are often difficult to predict; although it is connected one by one, the ending is unpredictable. For example:
Lonely people smoke heavily.
4) Balanced relationship structure: This structure is like both a serial relationship structure and a hierarchical relationship structure. It is said that it is like a serial relationship structure because the discourse in this relationship structure is often extended from a certain link; it is said that it is like a hierarchical relationship structure because it pays special attention to the balance of hierarchical relationships. This balanced relationship structure says the right thing. Also talk about the opposite, talk about the hot but also the cold, take care of the left and right, echo the front and back, give both pros and cons, talk about both pros and cons, be tactful and thoughtful, and seek balance. Such as:
For the spring break. Cumbria is hard to beat. There is of course a strong risk of bad weather during the early months of the year. On the other hand, the early tourist is rewarded by empty roads and feeling that he has the countryside to himself. Not all the hotels ar open, it is true, and you may be obliged to drive on to the village. But this is wall offset by the welcome that awaits you in a guest house where you may turn out to be the only resident. Early visitors to Cunbria rarely regret their initiative.
Great place, weather is not bad, roads are clear and rural views, not all hotels are open (drive to next hotel, Tourists will stay and be warmly entertained, and tourists who go early rarely regret it
4. Other organizational structures of discourse:
Some discourses can be organized in terms of time (tempral) or space (spatial) ) and other words as clues; some texts mainly use "topic items" as clues.
5. Analysis plane:
There are the following types of analysis planes:
1) Phonetic plane: refers to the plane that analyzes suprasegmental features such as stress, sound field, volume, tone quality, pitch, legato, transitional sounds, pauses, intonation, rhythm, etc. Poems and advertisements can analyze alliteration, vowel rhyme, harmony, counter-rhyme, side rhyme, rhyme, phonetic variation, etc.
2) Writing plane: refers to layout, shape, presentation, the arrangement of sentences and the expression of discourse meaning, the spelling form of words, capitalization form, hyphen marks The use of italics and the division of paragraphs, etc.
3) Vocabulary and semantic plane: refers to word formation, word complexity, word stylistic color (written, spoken, slang), word meaning changes (word meaning rising and falling, expansion, reduction, transfer, etc.) , the rationale of the word (metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy, analogy, etc.), the semantic characteristics of the word, lexical variation, dialect variation, register variation, variation in historical periods, word arrangement, word recurrence, word co-occurrence ( collocation), the meaning of the word, the occurrence rate of the word, the number of syllables in the word, lexical set, etc. Further analysis of various such words, such as: analysis of adjectives including which situation they represent (mental, auditory, visual, color, evaluation, description, etc.); you can also analyze the adjectives Grammatical functions, whether they can be used as comparative dynamic adjectives, static adjectives, etc.
4) Syntactic plane: analyze the complexity of sentence types, clause types, word order of various components, passive structures, subject types, arrangement of components and distribution of old and new information, use of time and place, sentences anaphora, substitution and omission, the complexity of noun phrases, the use of verb phrases, the use of other types of phrases (prepositional phrases, adjective phrases, adverb phrases), the use of function words (conjunctions, prepositions, determiners, Interjections), direct quotations, indirect quotations, the combination of long and short sentences, grammatical variations, the use of loose sentences, dropped sentences and balanced sentences, the emergence of parallel sentences, etc.
5) Discourse plane: It mainly analyzes the structure of the discourse, the transition between paragraphs, cohesion and coherence; it can also analyze the introduction, main body and conclusion of the discourse, logical connectors and other links of the discourse. The use of etc.
Expository text analyzes the coordination of topic sentences and auxiliary sentences. News analysis structure and different writing methods (chronological justice, news introduction grammar, inverted pyramid method, highlight narrative method, etc.) Conversation analysis turn replacement, conversation structure, rules, etc.
The analysis of the discourse direction plane mainly focuses on time, place, relationship between characters, factuality, narrative perspective (person narration, stream of consciousness narration), etc.