Clause Relations

Clause relations are the building blocks of these sequences, as demonstrated with the following examples (Hoey 1994:27). The clause-relational approach to written text, where it was stressed that the units of written discourse, rather than always being co-extensive with sentences (though they sometimes are), were best seen as functional segments (of anything from phrasal to paragraph length) which could be related to one another by a finite set of cognitive relations, such as cause-consequence, instrument-achievement, temporal sequence, and matching relations such as contrasting and equivalence. Individual segments of texts combined to form the logical structure of the whole and to form certain characteristic patterns (such as problem-solution). The sequencing of segments and how the relations between them are signalled were viewed as factors in textual coherence (see Winter 1977; Hoey 1983).

In fact, the. problems which could be subsumed under the notion of cohesion by conjunction in the last reader activity can also be viewed from a clause-relational standpoint, in that inappropriate use of coniunctions creates difficulties for the reader in relating segments of the text to one another coherently. But we also noted between how conjunctions signal clause relations and how certain lexical items do the same is somewhat blurred, and that conjunctions such as and, so and because have their lexical equivalents in nouns, verbs and adjectives such as additional, cause (as noun or verb), consequent(ce), instrumental, reason, and so on. Therefore, as well as activities that focus on conjunction and other local cohesive choices, activities aimed at the lexicon of clause-relational signals may also be useful. Segment-chain activities can be used for this purpose. An opening segment (which could be a sentence or more) and a closing segment of a text are given to a group of four or five students, and each individual is given the start of a segment containing a different lexical clause signal. Individuals complete their own segment with as much text as they feel necessary, and then compare their segment with everyone else's in order to assemble the segments into a coherent text. This involves not only being satisfied with the individual segments but deciding on an appropriate sequence for the chain of clause relations that will lead logically to the given closing segment, and making any changes felt necessary to improve coherence.

In the following example, groups of advanced German learners were given an opening sentence:

'Young people nowadays are exposed to a lot of violence on television, in films, and so on', and the conclusion: 'This would suggest that some sort of control or censorship may be necessary to solve the problem.' Individual segment-cards had starters such as:

The result is . . .

The reason is . . .

The fact is that . . .

This contrasts with . . .

Typical of the texts produced by the groups was:

(6.4)     Young people nowadays are exposed to a lot of violence on television, in films, and so on. The result is that floods of blood suffocate the TV news and films all over Europe. This contrasts with countries where there is a strict control of TV and films. The reason is an uprooted, deculturalized young generation which has ceased to stick to the strigent values of their elders. The fact is that the situation has got worse and worse recently. This would suggest that some sort of control or censorship is necessary.

(Author's data 1989)

This particular group were unhappy with the relationship between the sentence beginning 'The reason is . . .' and the rest of the text, as they felt that since nothing had been said about young people's behauiour, it was pointless to give a reason for it, and a 'deculturalized generation' could hardly be cited as the reason for violence on television. The opinion was also voiced that the final text was a little unnatural with so many frontplaced phrases such as 'the reason is . . .', once again raising new decisions on theme and rheme which had to be taken in relation to the text as a whole. The group finally decided to move the words 'the result is that' from sentence 2 to sentence 4 to replace 'the reason is', and then to reverse the order of sentences 3 and 4. The aim of the activity was to reproduce some of the processes of choice that are involved in using the lexicon of clause-relational signals, once again as an alternative to only examining textual products containing such items. This does not mean that cohesive and clause-relational features cannot also be usefully .tackled on readymade texts; alongside the process approach to writing, there is a healthy tradition of problem-solving methods that include exercises in inserting missing linking and signal words in texts. These force the learner to make vocabulary choices that take more than the individual sentence into account (e.g. Coe, Rycroft and Ernest 1983).

  

REFERENCES 

McCarthy, Michael. 2010. Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Pres 

Cunningham, Cindy. Applying Written Discourse Analysis In a Japanese EFL Class. The University of Birmingham