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Links in Discourse

The document discusses linguistic concepts such as theme and rheme, thematization, pro-forms, anaphora, cataphora, exophora, cohesion, and coherence. It provides definitions and examples. Theme refers to what a sentence is about, while rheme is what is said about the theme. Thematization involves changing the word order without changing structure. Pro-forms stand in for other words. Anaphora and cataphora refer to using pro-forms to connect to something previously or subsequently mentioned. Cohesion refers to unity between sentences using formal links, while coherence is how a text makes sense through organization and clarity of ideas.

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36 views14 pages

Links in Discourse

The document discusses linguistic concepts such as theme and rheme, thematization, pro-forms, anaphora, cataphora, exophora, cohesion, and coherence. It provides definitions and examples. Theme refers to what a sentence is about, while rheme is what is said about the theme. Thematization involves changing the word order without changing structure. Pro-forms stand in for other words. Anaphora and cataphora refer to using pro-forms to connect to something previously or subsequently mentioned. Cohesion refers to unity between sentences using formal links, while coherence is how a text makes sense through organization and clarity of ideas.

Uploaded by

hossin karimi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Professor: Dr.

Minoo Alemi
Presenter: Sahar Nasiri
Take a look at these sentences as linguistic forms:
subject
• The police dispersed the demonstrators. (active)
subject
• The demonstrators were dispersed by the police. (passive)
Take a look at these sentences as utterances( textual structures):
theme rheme
• The police dispersed the demonstrators.

theme rheme
• The demonstrators were dispersed by the police.
Thematization can also be brought about by changing the
sequence of constituents in a sentence without affecting its
structure as in:

• The police (T) dispersed the demonstrators early in the day.

• Early in the day (T) ,the police dispersed the demonstrators.


In linguistics, the topic or theme of a sentence is what is being
talked about, and the comment (rheme or focus) is what is being
said about the topic.

Theme: what the message is concerned with: the point of


departure for what the speaker is going to say

Rheme: everything else that follows in the sentence which consists


of what the speaker states about, or in regard to, the starting
point of the utterance.
As communication takes place, what is said at a particular point
naturally makes reference to what has been said before and a
context is created in the mind and signaled in the text in the
process of its production.

 Tony Blair was on his way to Bucharest … The Prime Minister astonished his
advisers…

 … by suddenly announcing that he was going to drum up local support…


Pro-form: a pro-form is a type of function word or expression that
stands in for (expresses the same content as) another word,
phrase, clause or sentence where the meaning is recoverable from
the context
Anaphora: the process of using a term as pro-form to make a
textual connection to something previously referred to.

Cataphora: the process of using a pro-form to make a textual


connection to what is to come.

Exophora: the process of pointing to something outside the


language of the text, which is understood in the context.
Cohesion: a feeling of unity in the stretches of language more than
one sentence by using linguistic devices(formal links) to signal
relations between sentences and parts of the text.

Cohesive devices: devices(formal links) which are used to hang the


text together or to give it unity.
• Consider the following text:

• Unfortunately in the weeks to come autumn leaves will create a


dangerous hazard, especially to the elderly when they fall and
become a soggy mess on the pavement.
• The point is that communication generally operates on a least
effort principle and we only use as much language as we need
to make the required contextual connection .
Coherence refers to the way a text makes sense to the readers
through the organization of its content, and the relevance and
clarity of the idea. A text is coherent if it develops a main idea.
 It is possible for a text to be cohesive but incoherent.
For example a text may be co-textually well connected with
cohesive devices but the reader can not key the text into a context
so as to make sense of it.
 We can not tell what a text is supposed to be about because:
we have no schematic frame of reference to refer these terms to
or the frame of reference keeps shifting.

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