GENRE
3.1 Definitions of Reference
Defining a word as diversely used as reference is not easy. Reference is a concept that is used in broader, narrower and sometimes overlapping senses, with a wide range of meanings in the domains of theoretical and applied linguistics. In order to avoid terminological confusion, this chapter shows how the notion of reference appears in a multitude of linguistic theories and which of these interpretations of the term are relevant for this study. The first part of this chapter reviews briefly the concept of reference as understood in syntax, semantics and pragmatics. I intend to distinguish those interpretations from the discourse-based operational definition to be used in this paper, which complies with its use in the field of discourse analysis in general.
Reference is basically achieved through a closed set of grammar words in texts, which contribute to various types of links of different lengths. These words are collected in the taxonomy of cohesive reference in Section 3.3. On the whole, what our discussion leads to is simplifying Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) highly complex taxonomy to a manageable analytical tool. With this background, the Chapter ends with discussing the longer chains of reference and the ways in which these links can be analyzed, interpreted, and how existing cohesion analysis methods can be utilized for our present research aim, analyzing reference.
3.1.1 Reference in theoretical linguistics. In theoretical linguistics, the concept of reference appears most commonly as either a sentence-level phenomenon (in syntax) or as the process or action that creates a textual realization of a real world entity (in semantics or pragmatics). In syntax, the relationship between a referring item and its
49
referent – usually within the same sentence – is called anaphora (or backwards anaphora). In her 2008 lectures on the study of anaphora Barbara H. Partee states that
We need syntax to describe the distribution of anaphoric expressions and their antecedents, and we need semantics to describe how the semantic value of anaphoric expressions is determined […] And as we progress we will find ourselves needing to bring pragmatics into the picture as well, because there is presumably a close connection between the anaphoric use of he and […] what is sometimes called a deictic use of he…” (Partee, 2008, pp. 1-2)
A semantic approach would define reference as the act of establishing a relationship between expressions and those objects, events or situations in the world that those expressions designate (de Beaugrande, 1990; Lyons, 1995). That is, referring means marking a unique object in discourse as existing in the real world. Reference is thus “a human action of entering a statement into a textual world” (de Beaugrande, 1990, p. 111), which is carried out by definite or indefinite noun-headed phrases, or quantified nouns or pronouns, for example. Deixis involves reference that expresses pointing to the spacio-temporal context with proximal (this, here, now) or distal terms (that, there, then) “centred upon the speaker’s here-and-now” (Lyons, 1995, p. 305).
The near-far distinction reflected in time adverbs and determiners is also a relevant concept in endophoric (or text-internal) reference, as they may imply the distance of the presupposed element in a text, for example. What de Beaugrande calls co-reference, which is “the use of alternative expressions in a text for the same text-world entity” (de Beaugrande, 1990, p. 111) is analyzed as endophoric reference in discourse analysis.
The difference in terminology reflects the two approaches to the treatment of referring expressions as pointing towards another textual element (endophoric) or as one of the
50
number of linguistic items in a text together pointing to the same real world entity (co-reference). While we will use the term endophoric reference here, obviously, the two described referring processes take place at the same time in the event of text production or interpretation, and ideally, an analysis of reference should reflect both.
The idea of reference in pragmatics emphasizes the collaborative work between the speaker and the listener in their “intention-to-identify” and “recognition-of-intention” (Yule, 1996, p. 19). The pragmatic perspective takes into account our intention to create meaning, and explains how in some cases it can refer to the same entity as Shakespeare, as in the conversation in [1.] between two students, as in Yule’s examples1:
1. i. Can I borrow your Shakespeare?
ii. Yeah, it’s over there on the table.
(ibid., p. 20)
The same phenomenon may occur in a conversation [e.g. 2.] between waiters, where the pronoun he refers to the cheese sandwich.
2. i. Where’s the cheese sandwich sitting?
ii. He’s over there by the window.
(ibid., p. 20)
This process also “appears to work, in terms of convention, between all members of a community who share a common language and culture” when they assume that “certain referring expressions2 will be used to identify certain entities on a regular basis” (ibid, p. 19). Conversational cooperation (Grice, 1975) manifests in speech and may override grammar-based interpretation (as in e.g. 2 above, where a noun phrase denoting an
1In the examples in this paper underlining will indicate the presupposed item and referring items will appear in bold.
2Referring expressions in Yule’s terminology designate proper nouns or common nouns as in the semantic approach.
51
object acquires a meaning that is then transferred to a person ‘he’). In written discourse, however, it is mainly the writer’s responsibility to create such a context of interpretation, so that readers can infer the intended meaning .
3.1.2 Reference in discourse analysis. In the realm of applied linguistics, and one of its major branches, discourse analysis, the interpretation of reference as an inter-sentential relationship that contributes to cohesion gained popularity with Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) Cohesion in English. Despite the now more than three decades that have passed since its publishing, and the fact that in some ways it is outdated, this is still a seminal text. Halliday and Hasan (1976) focus on text-level phenomena and do not regard sentence-internal relationships cohesive, because they “obviously cohere” (p. 6) or “hang together”, simply because they are “internally structured” (p. 7). Instead, they identify cohesive ties, which connect two or more sentences by establishing cohesive relations between them and claim that there is one specific meaning relation that is
“critical for the creation of texture” – and indeed, cohesion – and that is reference, “in which one element is interpreted by reference to another” (ibid, p. 11). According to their definition,
COHESION occurs where the INTERPRETATION of some element in the discourse is dependent on that of another. The one PRESUPPOSES the other, in the sense that it cannot be effectively decoded except by recourse to it. When this happens, a relation of cohesion is set up, and the two elements, the presupposing and the presupposed, are thereby at least potentially integrated into a text. (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p. 4)
This definition of cohesion applies to all the five types of cohesion they distinguish: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion.
52
Nevertheless, their distinction between these seems somewhat arbitrary, especially when it comes to drawing a line between reference and lexical cohesion.
Research into cohesion in discourse analysis initially tended to focus on either lexical or grammatical forms of cohesion (e.g. Halliday and Hasan, 1976; Hasan, 1984).
Later, especially in the study of lexical and referential cohesion (e.g. Hoey, 1991; Biber et al., 1991), it seems that this distinction has become rather fuzzy. For example, we may read in Biber et al. (1991, p. 232) that “establishing reference requires both lexical and grammatical means”. Instead of drawing a straight line between lexical and grammatical cohesion, they use the semantic notion of degrees of co-reference (p. 234), which depends on the amount of shared knowledge among the participants of discourse and the communicative purposes of the text. These degrees are realized by the linguistic forms (pp. 234-235) summarized in Table 3, where the shaded area covers items that are more likely to appear in spoken language. The anaphoric linguistic forms mostly cover Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) forms of reference: pronominals, demonstrative pronouns and the definite article, however, note that these forms do not include comparatives.
First mention (referent):
a detailed definite description
indefinite noun phrase
proper noun
e.g. the tallest people in the world e.g. an old lady, a boat
e.g. Jack Kerouac, Heroes’ Square
1st or 2nd person pronoun
demonstrative pronoun with situational reference
e.g. I, we, you
e.g. this chair, those bicycles Subsequent (anaphoric) mention
repeated noun or synonym
noun phrase with a definite article or demonstrative determiner
3rd person pronoun
demonstrative pronoun referring to linguistic context
e.g. Jack – Jack, dog – animal
e.g. dog – the dog / this dog / that animal e.g. Jack – he, the tallest people in the
world – they
e.g. Section 2 – in this section, the car race last year – that race
Table 3. Degrees of co-reference (based on Biber et al., 1991, my examples)
53
Table 3 shows the linguistic forms that the first mention of an item in a chain of reference may occur in. In this paper, this item is called the presupposed item.
Subsequent items that co-refer with the referent have the common characteristic that they all refer to the same entity in the text-world and need an appropriate antecedent. In Table 3 the first item in the list of subsequent linguistic forms is a repeated noun or a synonym. This category is generally agreed to belong to the territory of lexical cohesion analysis (Károly, 2002; Hoey, 1991; Hasan, 1984). When the anaphoric noun phrase is accompanied by the definite article or a demonstrative determiner, the phrase is regarded as referential, therefore, as traditionally belonging to grammatical cohesion on the grounds that the definite article and demonstrative determiners usually have the property of pointing to some other linguistic entity elsewhere in the text. Still, the boundary between lexical and grammatical cohesion is not so straightforward. The clearly grammatically referential categories then are pronouns and demonstratives used as heads, but this is very rare in academic writing. With possessive pronouns, demonstratives and the definite article, the identity of reference can only be achieved by considering the meaning of the content word. Consequently, the meaning of the noun that follows the function word needs to match the first mention form or the referent, which means that one cannot carry out an analysis of cohesion without considering lexical categories of cohesion. We will return to this issue in Section 3.2 on cohesive and non-cohesive types of reference.
54
In this study we define cohesive reference as a discourse process that occurs when certain linguistic items cannot be interpreted in their own right, but need a grammatically and/or semantically matching presupposed element in the text or in the co-text (that is, textual context) for their interpretation as an existing textual entity.
Besides, we will treat reference as non-cohesive when it is exophoric or the presupposed element is found within the same sentence as the referring item. A referent is meant here as the real world entity that a linguistic expression designates.
Besides, a referring item or element is understood as the linguistic item that triggers the referential process by signaling identity with a presupposed item or antecedent and/or by lacking a detailed enough description for its interpretability in its own right.
When reference refers to an entity explicitly mentioned elsewhere in the text, it is an instance of endophoric reference, whereas exophoric reference points to an entity in the situational context. Within endophoric reference, assuming the directionality of reference, an important distinction is usually made between anaphoric and cataphoric reference (see e.g.: Paltridge, 2006, pp. 130-132). Anaphoric reference is the act of referring usually by a pro-form (e.g. pronouns, demonstratives) to some entity mentioned earlier in the text. This referred item is called the antecedent and can be a text of any length from a single phrase to a paragraph, or even several sentences from various text parts (e.g. these results would usually point to various earlier text segments). In the following examples antecedents are underlined and bold type indicates the referring expression.
27. Students select, complete and then check their answers to the exercises with answer papers provided by the teachers.
28. However, this procedure has proven to be problematic on the paper-based course for the following reasons: 1) when correcting
55
answers, it is uncertain whether students: a) fully understand their errors and b) actively engage in the process of self-correction and, 2) for those students who choose to work outside of lesson time, there is potentially a wait of up to one week between lessons (and longer during holidays) before they can check their answers.
29. In a bid to overcome these challenges, this research focuses on the contribution that computer-mediated feedback can make.
(RA6)
Cataphoric reference uses a reference item to establish cohesive relationship with an item used later in the text. This is rare in general, but is particularly rare in English academic writing, where the clear statement of intentions of the writer and purpose of the given text is provided as early as possible in the text; making backward reference much more likely. Some expressions are still used, though, with cataphoric reference items; for example, the following is a fairly frequent cataphoric phrase in academic writing, especially in guiding the reader through the structure of the paper, e.g.:
31. It is towards this issue that the following discussion is directed.
32. INTERACTION IN THE READING PROCESS