Discourse relations across genres and contexts
A contrastive analysis of English and German discourse
This paper presents an analysis of the linguistic realization of discourse relations across and within English and
German discourse, comparing the genres of newspaper editorial and personal narrative. It concentrates on Continuation, Narration
and Contrast, and Elaboration, Explanation and Comment. Particular attention is given to (1) their overt realization with textual
themes and pragmatic word order, and (2) the (non)adjacent positioning of discourse units realizing the relations. The
methodological framework is an integrated one, supplementing Systemic Functional Grammar with Segmented Discourse Representation
Theory. In the English and German narratives, there is a strong tendency to realize discourse relations overtly. The overall overt
realization is significantly higher for narratives in both languages with editorials being significantly less overt. There are
also significant differences in the overt realization of non-adjacently positioned units realizing discourse relations with
significant distributions in all cases, although the distribution in the narratives is less significant.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The granularity of discourse: Micro meets macro
- 2.1Micro units
- 2.2Discourse relations
- 2.3Macro units
- 3.Method
- 4.Contrastive analysis
- 4.1Editorials
- 4.2Personal narratives
- 4.3Editorials and personal narratives
- 5.Discussion
- 6.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
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Fetzer, Anita & Matthias Klumm
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