A discourse analysis of english economics reports from VOA = phân tích diễn ngôn các bản báo cáo kinh tế từ VOA

Specialized Economics Reports ………16 chapterII: A Discourse analysis of English economics report from VOA ………...17 2.1.. Finally, English economics reports contain a lot of cohesive devic

Vinh university Foreign language department -***** -NguyÔn v¨n sü

A discourse analysis of English economics reports from VOA

(Ph©n tÝch diÔn ng«n c¸c b¶n b¸o c¸o kinh tÕ tõ VOA)

suggestions, valuable materials, and correction that help me to fulfill this study

I am grateful to my teachers in the Department of Foreign Languages for their helpful suggestions and encouragements that help me overcome difficulties in the process of my study

My warmest thanks to my loved family and my good friends who are willing to help me and always by my side, encourage me to complete my work

Vinh, summer, 2009

NguyÔn v¨n sü

Table of contents

Acknowledgement ……….i

Table of Contents ……….ii

Part A: Introduction ……….1

1 Rationale of the Study ……… 1

2 Aims and of Objects of the Study ………2

3 Scope of the study ………2

4 Research Methods ………2

5 Design of the Study ……… 3

Part B: Development………4

chapter I: theoretical background………4

1.1 Discourse and Text ……… 4

1.2 Coherence and Cohesion ………5

1.3 Cohesive Devices ……… 6

1.3.1 Grammatical Cohesion .7

………

1.3.1.1 Reference ……….7

1.3.1.2 Substitution ……… 9

1.3.1.3 Ellipsis ……….10

1.3.1.4 Conjunction ……….11

1.3.2 Lexical Cohesion ………12

1.3.2.1 Repetition ………13

1.3.2.2 Synonymy ……… 13

1.3.2.3 Antonymy………14

1.3.2.4 Hyponymy ……… 14

1.4 General Information about VOA Special English ……… 14

1.5 The Concept of an Economic Report ……… 15

1.6 Some Major Characteristics of an Economics Report ……….15

1.6.1 Information on Finance Ministries ………15

1.6.2 Union Budget ………16

1.6.3 Statistics and Data ……….16

1.6.4 Specialized Economics Reports ………16

chapterII: A Discourse analysis of English economics report from VOA ……… 17

2.1 General Information about Material Selected ……… 17

2.2 Cohesive Devices ……….17

2.3 Grammatical Cohesive Devices ………18

2.3.1 Reference ……… 18

2.3.2 Substitution ………20

2.3.3 Ellipsis ……… 21

2.3.4 Conjunction ……… 22

2.4 Lexical Cohesive Devices ………24

2.4.1 Repetition ……… 24

2.4.2 Synonymy ……… 25

2.4.3 Antonymy ……… 26

2.4.4 Hyponymy ……….26

2.5 The Frequency of Occurrences of Cohesive Devices in English Economics Reports from VOA ………27

Chapter III: findings and applications of the study ……… 29

3.1 Discussion ……… 29

3.2 Applications of the Study……… 30

3.2.1 Application of Discourse Analysis to Teaching Grammar…… 31

3.2.2 Application of Discourse Analysis to Teaching Vocabulary…… 33

3.2.3 Application of Discourse Analysis to Teaching Text Interpretation 37

………

Part C: conclusion……… 38

1 Recapitulation……….38

2 Suggestion for Further Study……….38

References

appendix

Part A: Introduction

1 Rationale of the study

Nowadays, English becomes the international language for most fields

in our life, especially economy The amount of material related to economycomes from so many companies all over the world, mainly English reports.Therefore, they will be necessary for all people, who want to open company

or to do business In fact, less information from our partners lead to thebreakdown or failure after a short time we are doing our business

In addition, during the time we carry out this research, we found thatEnglish Economics Reports are said to be a useful and typical demonstration

of grammatical as well as lexical cohesion usage Therefore, in the processes

of producing and receiving in learning English, learners are usually guided

to pay their attention on the logicality of the text In other words, theyshould be taught how to recognize or create coherence of the text Textualcoherence can be obtained by various cohesive devices that consist of bothgrammatical cohesive devices and lexical ones Each of them has its ownrole in creating complexity and unity the text Grammatical cohesion usuallyinvolves closed systems, but lexical one involves a kind of choice that isopen-ended They are considered the most common and contribute most totextual coherence

Finally, English economics reports contain a lot of cohesive devices thatmake us difficult to understand, so it is necessary to study how Englisheconomics reports are built and how meaning of the author as well ascohesive devices are used in them Economic report has become one of themost popular and powerful means of communication and plays adisplaceable part in man’s life It not only provides information but alsofrom VOA, it is a place for us to learn and to enrich our knowledge Wehope that the choice of the study would help businessmen and all peoplewho are interested in doing business get more knowledge and understandmore about the importance of English Economics Reports in general andespecially from VOA For all reasons above, the author decides to choose to

study on “A Discourse Analysis of English Economics Reports from VOA”

2 Aims of the study

Originating from all reasons above, the aims of the study are:

- To emphasize the importance in English reports to business

- To clarify some special features of language used in them

- To give some statistics and descriptions of Cohesive Devices used inEnglish Economics Reports from VOA

- To suggest some implications for English Economics Report writers increating an effective English Economics Report and students in learningcohesive devices

3 Scope of the study

Due to the time and resource limitation, this study only focuses on theanalysis of ten English Economics Reports from VOA The grammatical andlexical cohesion provided by Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) description areused as the framework for data analysis The data in this thesis come fromVOA Special English Economics Reports, written by Mario Ritter in order

to show the state of economy in many countries over the world for the largenumber of readers, mainly businessmen

4 Methods of the study

To achieve the mentioned aims, the following methods are used:

- The descriptive method: to describe and investigate data through thestudy

- The analytical method: to analyze English Economics Reports

5 Design of the study

This study consists of three parts:

Part A is the introduction In this part the rationale of the study, aims ofthe study, scope of the study, methods and design of the study are presented Part B is the development This part is divided into three chapters:

+ Chapter I Theoretical background.

+ Chapter II A discourse analysis of English Economics Reports fromVOA

+ Chapter III Discussion and Implication

Part C is the conclusion In this part, it summarizes what is discussed inchapter I, II, and III of the study Some suggestions for further study areprovided in this part

This study ends up with References and Appendix

Part B: DEVELOPMENT Chapter I: theoretical background

1.1 Discourse and text

Discourse and text are still difficult for students to solve because of somesimilarities Sentences are linked in sequences, which may be called

‘discourses’ These units have a semantic representation, a “discourse

representation structure”, in terms of Kamp and Reyle (1993: 59), which isincremental, according to Kamp (1995: 254): “in order to make sense of adiscourse-internal sentence the interpreter must connect it with theinterpretation he has assigned to the sentences preceding it” In turn,discourses are organized into larger structures, up to texts Texts are notdefined in terms of coherence or relevance, but by the connection existingbetween their component discourses Similarly, a discourse is not defined interms of contextual information, but it is the result of connecting itscomponent sentences In order for this connection to take place, additionalinformation must be included This happens whenever a unit is connected toothers Connection is the general process that accounts for syntactic structureitself In every complex unit, there is information that is not represented by thecomponent units, but rather added to them so that the result is the complexunit itself Frequently this additional information is added as default, but itmay also originate in preceding units Thus, words are linked to each otherinto phrases, phrases into clauses, clauses into sentences, sentences intodiscourses, and discourses into texts Text types, or genres, account for theway discourses are connected; styles, or discourse types, organize in generalways the connection between sentences within discourses.

Also basing on a number of differences between them that somelinguists have ever defined Crystal (1992), for example, consider thatdiscourse is “ a continuous stretch of spoken language especially larger than

a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit, such as a sermon, argument,joke or narrative”; meanwhile, text is “a piece of natural occurring spoken,written, or signed discourse identified for purposes of analysis It is often alanguage unit with a definable communicative function, such as aconversation, a poster” According to Cook (1989): discourse is “stretches

of language perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposive” Text is “astretch of language interpreted formally, without context”

In a short word, the term text is used to refer to any written record of acommunicative event The event itself may involve oral language or writtenlanguage The term discourse refers to the interpretation of thecommunicative event in context.

1.2 Coherence and cohesion

Nunan (1993:116) clearly indicates the difference between cohesion andcoherence: “coherence is the extent to which discourse is perceived to hangtogether rather than a set of unrelated sentences or utterances and cohesion

is formal links showing the relationships among clause and sentences indiscourse”

Cohesion can be thought as all the grammatical and lexical links that tieone part of a text to another This includes use of synonyms, lexical sets,pronouns, verb tenses, time references, grammatical reference, etc Forexample, 'it', 'neither' and 'this' all refer to an idea previously mentioned.'First of all', 'then' and 'after that' help to sequence a text 'However', 'inaddition' and 'for instance' link ideas and arguments in a text

Coherence can be thought as how meanings and sequences of ideas relate

to each other

Coherence helps the text make sense as a whole at an idea level, andcohesion as rather more mechanical links at a language level You canimagine that it is possible for a piece of writing to contain plenty ofcohesion yet little coherence

Cohesion is the glue that holds a piece of writing together In otherwords, if a paper is cohesive, it sticks together from sentence to sentenceand from paragraph to paragraph Cohesive devices certainly include

transitional words and phrases, such as therefore, furthermore, or for instance, that clarify for readers the relationships among ideas in a piece of

writing However, transitions are not enough to make writing cohesive

Repetition of key words and use of reference words are also needed forcohesion.

Coherence is that when sentences, ideas, and details fit together clearly,readers can follow along easily, and the writing is coherent The ideas tietogether smoothly and clearly

Now, we consider the example below:

Mark is very conservative He comes from America

These above sentences are cohesive because of existing anaphoric

reference (Mark, he), but are only coherent if one already knows the culture

back ground of America or westerners we will be easy to understand the

relation between conservative and America, or is prepared to assume a

cause-effect relationship between the two sentences

1.3 Cohesive Devices

Cohesion is the grammatical or lexical relationship between the differentelements of a text Since cohesive relations are not concerned with structure,they may be found within (a) sentence(s) Halliday and Hasan (1976:4)stated that cohesion refer to “relations of meaning that exist within the text,and that define it as a text” and according to McCarthy (1991) “Cohesionoccurs where the interpretation of some element in the discourse isdependent on that of another” While cohesive devices in a text or language,according to Halliday (1985), are “the tools, means, words that are used insentences as the link between one part and other part of sentences in thetexts.” In other words, cohesive devices are the tools to show therelationship between parts of a text or sentences in a text Since, it is therelationship between one part and other part of sentences in the texts, so itdeals with grammar and vocabulary Thus, we shall discuss four types ofgrammatical cohesion: reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction, andthe lexical cohesion as reiteration including repetition, synonymy, antonymyand hyponymy

1.3.1 Grammatical Cohesion

Grammatical cohesive devices are the grammatical items that are used in

a text to connect sentences within it; articles can be the good example.Spoken and written discourses display grammatical connections betweenindividual clauses and utterances These grammatical links can be classifiedinto sub-categories of cohesive devices: reference, substitution, ellipsis andconjunction

Exophoric reference is “not simply a synonym for referential meaning”(Halliday and Hasan, 1976:33) The item referred is not in the text orreferred to another item in the text but it is referred to other item outside thetext Since each cohesive link has cohesive devices and presupposed itemsbut in this case, the reader cannot see the presupposed items in the textbecause the link in exophora seems incomplete

We consider the following example:

The election results were widely seen as strong statement by voters on the

economy A public opinion study reported by the Wall Street Journal found

that about sixty percent of voters considered the economy the top issue.

(VOA Special English Economics Report - 2008)

In this paragraph, “the Wall Street Journal” exists in the real world

Endophoric reference is the relationship where their interpretation lieswithin the text It occurs when an item in the text refers to another item in

the same text Therefore, the reader can see the referred item in the text.This reference is divided into anaphoric and cataphoric reference.

For anaphoric reference, the reader has to look back for the referred item

in the text in order to find the interpretation of the item Brown and Yule(1983:192) stated that it means, “The reader looks back in the text for theirinterpretation”

For example: Sam Zell, one of the nation's biggest property owners, took

control a year ago He led a stock buyout for eight billion dollars He borrowed almost all of it

(VOA Special English Economics Report-11 December 2008)

The above example, the word “He” refers back to “Sam Zell” and “it”refers back to “eight billion dollars” to find our interpretation

Cataphoric reference is the reference which the referred item is in thefollowing part in the text Therefore, in order to find the interpretation of theitem, the reader has to look forward the text McCarthy (1991:42) stated it is

“the reverse of anaphora reference and is relatively straightforward.” Inaddition, Brown and Yule (1983:192) stated that it means, “The reader looksforward in the text for their interpretation”

For example, in the sentence, The news only confirmed what many people

already knew: that the world's largest economy is weak and may not

recover soon

(VOA Special English Economics Report-4 December 2008)

“The news” refers to “the world largest economy is weak and may notrecover soon” In this way, the writer guide the readers to the item forward

in terms of cataphoric

1.3.1.2 Substitution

Substitution is the referred item replaced by another item in the text.Brown and Yule (1983:201) said substitution is “the replacement of anexpression that is obvious from the context by another element in a text” InEnglish the substitute may function as a noun, as a verb, as a clause Thesecorrespond to the three types of substitution: nominal, verbal, and clausalsubstitution.

Nominal substitution occurs when a noun in the previous sentence is

substituted by another word or element usually by one, ones, and same.

Nevertheless, the meaning of the nominal group containing the substitute isnever exactly the same as the nominal group that is presupposed

Example: 1 I like to read this short story because the long one would make

me bored.

2 I love you - - I wish I could say the same to you.

The verbal substitution in English is do (Halliday and Hasan, 1976,

p.112) which may substitute either for a verb or for a verb plus certain otherelements in the clause

Example: Do John visit you everyday? - He can’t do at weekends, because

he has to visit his parents.

Clausal substitution is the substitution in which the presupposed item is a

clause In clausal substitution the entire clause is presupposed and thecontrasting element is outside the clause

Example: Is there going to be an earthquake? – It says so

Here the “so” presupposes the whole of the clause “There is going to be

an earthquake” and the contrastive environment is provided by the “say”

which is outside it

1.3.1.3 Ellipsis

Ellipsis is omitting some items in the text, which is required by thegrammar, but the writer thinks the items are clearly understandable by thereader, for that reason it does not need to be repeated Actually, ellipsis is

substitution by zero or in other words, the item referred is replaced bynothing Here is the case where ellipsis occurs, when sentences or clauseswhose structure has the missing information The missing information is like

an empty slot and in ellipsis; nothing is inserted into the slot but the itemitself There are three types of ellipsis discussed below

Nominal ellipsis means ellipsis with the nominal group The structure ofthe nominal group is that a head with optional modification The modifyingelements include some that precede the head and some that follow it Inother words, in nominal ellipsis, “the noun may be omitted and replaced bydeictic, numerative or epithet.” Halliday and Hasan (1976:147) Thefunction of head is normally served by common noun

E.g: The father and the mother were so busy making money that the two

children left to their own devices Naturally, both ≤≥ were resentful

In this case, the father and the mother are omitted after the word “both”

in term of deictic element

Verbal ellipsis is the omission of verb There are two types of verbalellipsis; they are lexical ellipsis and operator ellipsis In lexical ellipsis, it isthe lexical verb that is always omitted Lexical ellipsis is ellipsis ‘from theright’; it always involves omission of the last word, which is the lexicalverb Any verbal group consisting of a modal operator only can berecognized as operator ellipsis Unlike lexical ellipsis, operator ellipsis isellipsis ‘from the left’ that involves the omission of operators In thisellipsis, the subject also is always omitted from the clause We considerthese following examples:

A Have you been swimming? – Yes, I have <> (lexical ellipsis)

B What have you been doing? – <>Swimming (operator ellipsis)

Clausal ellipsis often occurs in the form of answer to the question In thiscase, the answer whether yes or no or other response can be considered asthe substitute

Example: Can you put my car in the parking lot?

1 Yes (I can)

2 If you get out

Both answers 1 and 2 are the substitutes for the question “Can you put

my car in the parking lot?” as the clause Yes in (1) omits “I can put your car in the parking lot” and “if you get out” in (2) also omits “I can put your car in the parking lot”

1.3.1.4 Conjunction

Conjunction is the relation of a wit of idea with the others By means ofconjunction, we see the way in which what is to follow is systematicallyconnected to what has gone before Conjunction does not depend on eitherreferential meaning or on identity or association of wording

The additive relation of conjunction is the addition to the things thathave been said or discussed earlier It is different from those of co-ordination relation Additive relation often seems to have the sense of ‘there

is something more to be said’ while co-ordination does not Additive

devices are such as and, in addition to, moreover, furthermore, or,

similarity, for example, in particular, likewise, e.g.: Some economists

think the plan needs to provide as much as one trillion dollars or more to be

effective.

Adversative conjunction is one type of conjunctions and the basicmeaning of the adversative relations are contrary to expectation or the thingsthat expected from the previous sentence are different from the end of thewhole text The expectation may come from the content of what is beingsaid or from the communication process Adversative conjunction includes

but, however, nevertheless, yet, on the other hand, in fact, conversely,

etc., as in:

Some papers fell more than ten percent The two largest newspapers,

however, USA today and the wall street journal, reported little change.

Causal conjunction expresses the causal relation including the relation of

result, reason, and purpose Example of causal conjunction are because, as the result, so, consequently, for this reason, as in:

But over the next year the nonprofit network predicts a big deficit because

of less giving by companies in the downturn So this week it cut seven

percent of its jobs and canceled two programs.

In this example, “because of” and “so” are causal conjunction

Temporal conjunction specifies the time sequence relationship, which

exists between sentences such as: then, subsequently, before, after that, finally.

E.g.: economists generally wait for production to shrink for six months in

arrow before they declare a recession.

1.3.2 Lexical Cohesion

Lexical cohesive devices are the reiteration including the exact repetition

of words and the role played by certain basic semantic relations betweenwords in creating textuality Lexical relation is the stable semanticrelationships that exist between words and which are the basis ofdescriptions given in dictionary In this study, we focus on reiteration onekind of lexical cohesion that consists of major types such as: repetition,synonymy, antonymy and hyponymy

McCarthy (1991) stated, “Reiteration means either restating an item in alater part of the discourse by direct repetition or else reasserting its meaning

by exploiting lexical relations” A reiterated item may be a repetition of thesame item in the previous text, a synonymy, an antonymy, a hyponymy or ageneral word (Lexical reiteration are mostly accompanied by the referenceitem typically ‘the’)

1.3.2.1 Repetition

Repetition is a type of reiteration in which the writer repeats exactly alexical item previously appearing in the text

Example: One of America's largest media companies has sought protection

from its creditors in bankruptcy court The Tribune Company owns the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun and other

newspapers It also owns twenty-three television stations and the Chicago

Cubs baseball team.

(VOA Special English Economics Report- 11 December 2008)

In this example, “Company”, “Tribune”, and “Chicago” are all repeatedtwice

1.3.2.2 Synonymy

“Synonyms are words belonging to the same part of speech and possessing one or more identical or nearly identical denotational meanings, interchangeable in some contexts” (Nguyen Manh Hung, M.A and Le Quoc

Hanh, M.A 2006: 71)

In other words, synonymy is the same thing as paraphrase and it has beenused with reference to lexical items In other words, it has two or moreforms, with very closely related meaning or pairs of words that have thesame or nearly the same meaning in one or more connotation or association

in the same language

For example, “rose” in the following is synonymous with “increase”

The LIBOR for overnight loans between banks rose above six percent Banks are holding onto money in case they need it for a sudden increase in

For example: Businesses large and small are finding it harder to get credit

a bad sign for an already weak economy

(VOA Special English Economics Report-2 October 2008)

1.3.2.4 Hyponymy

Hyponymy is a relationship between two or more words, in which themeaning of one of the words includes the other word

For example: President Bush invited leaders of the group of twenty

countries to Washington on November fifteenth to discuss financial crisis.

The group includes leading industrial economies and large developing ones

like China and India

(VOA Special English Economics Report-23 October 2008)

In this example, the word “country” is the superordinate of “China and India” In contrast, China and India are hyponym of Country

1.4 General Information about VOA Special English

VOA Special English communicates in clear and simple English by radiowith people whose native language is not English It also helps people learnmore about American English Also, it provides listeners, even those whoare native English speakers with information Especially,

Special English owns three important elements which make it unique

First, it has a limited vocabulary of 1500 words and it is often used withsimple words that describe objects, actions or emotions Some are moredifficult They are used for reporting world events and describingdiscoveries in medicine and science

Also, Special English is written in short, simple sentences that containonly one idea

In addition, Special English is spoken at a slower pace, about two-thirdsthe speed of Standard English This helps people learning English hear eachword clearly It also helps English speakers understand complex subjects

Special English broadcasts around the world seven days a week, fivetimes a day Each half-hour broadcast starts with ten minutes of the latestnews followed by 20 minutes of feature programming There is a differentshort feature about science, development, agriculture and environment, and

on the weekend, about news events and American idioms These programsare followed by in-depth 15 minute features about American culture,history, science medicine, space, important people or short stories

1.5 The Concept of an Economics Report

An economic report is a document which contains detailed informationand analysis of an economy In present day, financial issues of an economicreport has become extremely important as it provides very important data.Economic reports are normally available on a monthly basis but they arealso published quarterly or yearly at times

1.6 Some Major Characteristics of an Economics Report

There are many characteristics of an economics report However, fourfollowing ones seem most important and necessary

1.6.1 Information on Finance ministries

An important characteristic of economic reports is information provided onfinance ministries of respective countries Normally there are a number offactors involved in a finance ministry, but most common among them aredepartments on economic affairs, financial services, and expenditures

A union budget plays an important role in either making or breaking aneconomy It provides directions in which an economy would be top in aspecial financial year Economic reports include various important details

of union budgets like speech which is made by finance minister uponpresentation of budget, economic surveys and details of union budget Theyalso incorporate areas where budget may have changed as well as

highlighting areas that have achieved in prominence in that particular unionbudget.

1.6.3 Statistics and Data

Another important feature in context of economic reports is Statistics anddata They are held in high regard as they provide an accurate picture ofcondition of an economy There are several important features in this aspectlike monthly economic reports, information on state loans, summary ofnational data, external debts and borrowings of governmental bodies likecentral government

1.6.4 Specialized Economics Reports

Nowadays a number of specialized economic reports are available thatfocus on particular areas of an economy like a certain industry Normally,both government-appointed entities as well as independent organizationsthat are well known for their authenticity write these economic reports.These reports provide detailed analyses of these industries and provide acertain amount of idea regarding their potential for growth It also providesinformation on companies that form an integral part of that particularindustry

Chapter II: A Discourse analysis of English economics reports from VOA

2.1 General Information about Material Selected

As the title of the thesis, we show much our concern about Englisheconomics reports from VOA, one of the most typical and hottest events inthe world Ten pieces of material have been selected from VOA specialEnglish, which tell us about the financial issues: bankrupt, financial crisis,credit and crisis of confidence, financial choices, aid of Congress and loans

of Auto industry Some more concern about economic problems: high fuelprice, economic recovery plan and US seizes Fannies Mac and Freddies

Mac The following table will give the general information about thematerial selected

Table 2.1: General information about the selected material

The above data show us the relationship between paragraphs andsentences in discourse and text Based on the statistics we can easily find outthe average proportion of paragraphs per sentences is about one per three

On average, each paragraph includes two or three sentences This tells thatthe function of English economics reports from VOA is to summarize andgive the detailed and short information that an event happened

2.2 Cohesive Devices

Cohesive devices are considered common in different discourses or texts

e.g narratives, instructions, reports, business letters etc They reflect

specific text structures or genres and will be judged by readers as more orless appropriate and coherent according to the closeness of the particulartext's structure and the genre that is expected for that type of text Thedifference between discourses is the frequency of using of cohesive devices.Some discourse use this device frequently but others use other devices thatdepend on impressive purpose of the writer However, all devices are usedwith the aim of making the coherent discourse In this part, we indicate theaverage proportion of cohesive devices, which is introduced by Halliday andHasan including five different types of cohesion: reference, substitution,ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion They play an important part in thetext and combine together to create a coherent text

2.3 Grammatical Cohesive Devices

Grammatical cohesion may be defined as the surface making of thesemantic links between clauses and sentences in written in discourse and

between utterances and turns in speech Halliday and Hasan (1976) statesthat grammatical cohesion consists of four types: Reference, Ellipsis,Substitution, and Conjunction The following table will show you the results

of our investigation of ten pieces of English Economics Reports from VOA

of the most common devices used in English Economics Reports fromVOA It is rather understandable for the fact that it is an effective cohesivedevice to make an Economics Report clearer and more coherent This isillustrated in the example below:

Sam Zell, one of the nation's biggest property owners, took control a year ago.

He led a stock buyout for eight billion dollars He borrowed almost all of it.

(VOA Special English Economics Report-11 December 2008)

“He” is called anaphoric reference because of referring back to Sam Zell and “It” Eight billion dollars, which have been said before These items are

directively indicating that information is to be retrieved from elsewhere Thisrelation has the effect of linking the two parts into a coherent unity of a singletext Besides, by using anaphoric reference, the drafter can avoid overusingand repeating the items before but the clause is still clear and airtight

Actually, our survey results in the most typical occurrences of anaphoricreference accounting for 38.5% (130 occurrences of the whole 328grammatical cohesive devices) This is easily explained by the fact that wealways need the definiteness when mentioning any people or events not only

in economics reports but also in any other written material

Another type of reference is cataphoric reference that also exists in Englisheconomics reports:

The news only confirmed what many people already knew: that the world's largest economy is weak and may not recover soon.

(VOA Special English Economics Report- 4 December 2008)

As we can see from the above example, “the news” is cataphoric referencebecause it looks forward to another item in this text From that we can easilyunderstand: “what is the news?” and “how is the news?” According to oursurvey, the using of this device is rather little, about 8% (28 occurrences inwhole of 328 grammatical cohesive devices) but it is a fairly effectivegrammatical cohesive device in the creation of coherence

2.3.2 Substitution

The term of substitution can be defined as the replacement of one item byanother There are some special words in English, which contribute tocohesion by substituting for words that were already used The most typical

words are one, do and so Halliday and Hasan (1976) divided substitution into

three types: nominal substitution, verbal substitution and clausal substitution

In VOA Special English Economics Reports, substitution is not popularcohesive devices even rarely seen as the economics reports aim to create theclarity and sufficiency of information of the events It only holds 2.7% (9

times in whole 328 grammatical cohesive devices) However, our survey willshow you some examples about it.

For example: (1) The group includes leading industrial economies and large

developing ones like China and India.

(VOA Special English Economics Report- 4 December 2008)

(2) Spreading the risk this way meant high returns with little danger Or so

Example: (1) They will not only own shares that should be paid back with a

reasonable return, but also <> will receive warrants for common shares in

participating institutions.

(VOA special English economics report- 8 January 2009)

(2) Now, I do not believe it’s too late to change course But it will be <> if we

don’t take dramatic action as soon as possible.

(VOA Special English Economics Report- 8 January 2009)

In these examples we have marked the place where the words are left out

with the symbol <> It is not hard to say which words have been omitted: they

in (1) and too late to change course in (2).

Our analysis has shown a rather low number of ellipses exhibited inEnglish Economics from VOA It holds 3.2% with 8 occurrences in whole

328 Since the language of VOA Special English Economics Reports issimple, understandable, clear and unambiguous, ellipsis usually does notappear much Therefore, it is quite easy for us to get information andunderstand what writer aims

2.3.4 Conjunction

Halliday and Hasan (1976: 226) stated, “Conjunction elements are cohesivenot in themselves but indirectly, by virtue of their specific meanings; they arenot primary devices for reaching out into the preceding (or following) text, butthey express certain meanings which presuppose the presence of othercomponents in the discourse” In this thesis, we will adopt the scheme of fourcategories: additive, adversative, causal and temporal

In our investigation, the average proportion of conjunction device account for48.5% (164 occurences in whole of 328 grammatical cohesive devices) Ourstatistics show that conjunction is the highest number of grammatical cohesive

devices The words “and’ and “but” seem to be the most common to expresscoherence in this type of discourse This word may simply add moreinformation to what has already been said or introduce new information Wecan see it in the following example:

The heads of the Big Three American automakers came to Washington to ask for money on their private jets, critics noted The chiefs of General

Motors, Ford and Chrysler asked for twenty-five billion dollars in new

loans Congress already approved twenty-five billion in September to help the industry develop fuel-efficient vehicles.

Democratic leaders in Congress proposed to offer the additional loans with

money from the financial rescue program approved last month But

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson objected He says the seven hundred billion dollars is just for investing to strengthen the financial system.

On Thursday, a group of Senate Democrats and Republicans announced

agreement on a compromise It would let the companies temporarily use the

fuel-efficiency loans to pay for daily operations G.M and Chrysler both

say they could be out of money by early next year.

(VOA Special English Economics Report- 20 November 2009)

Besides, additive conjunction is also expressed by other words like “or”,

“in fact” After these conjunctions new information will be given

For example: But that does not include dealers or suppliers or the auto

parts industry.

(VOA Special English Economics Report- 20 November 2009)

Considering the above example, we find that the linking word “or” shows the additive information given not only dealers but also suppliers and the auto parts industry are added

Adversative conjunction shows the information in the second sentence ofeach text to moderate or qualify the information in the first one.

For example:

Some papers fell more than ten percent The two largest newspapers,

however, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal, reported little change

(VOA Special English Economics Report- 11 December 2009)

Causal conjunction is used in these economics reports expressed by thewords “because” and “so” they relate new information to what has been given

in term of reason, result and purpose

For example: Congress created them so more American could by houses.

(VOA Special English Economics Report- 11 September 2008)

Another type of conjunction we should mention here is temporalconjunction Halliday and Hasan (1976) claimed that the temporal relationmay be more specific by the presence of an additional component in themeaning, as well as that of succession in time: the one is subsequent to theother This relation is expressed by “then”, “after”, “finally”, “before” “now”etc

For example: Congressional leaders denounced them two weeks ago after

they came in private jets with no clear plans for saving their industry.

(VOA Special English Economics Report- 4 December 2008)

The expression “after” is not only used to link the following sentence to

the previous one but also make the text coherent in the readers’ mind as thewriter tries to communicate directly through the message The communicativeprocess creates this sense

2.4 Lexical cohesive devices

Together with grammatical cohesive devices, lexical cohesive devicesmake a great contribution to the interpreting and understanding a text It isoften seen that some elements in a text and discourse are closely linkedtogether by means of lexical items In this part, we shall find out how these

links function in the creation of English Economics Report text from VOA Inthis part, we focus on four typical types of lexical cohesive devices: repetition,synonymy, antonymy and hyponymy The average proportion of lexicalcohesive devices through our survey will be presented by the table below:Total

The chief purpose of English Economics Report from VOA is to shortlyinform the daily facts and events, not to express reporters’ opinions orcomments therefore the supreme requirement to this kind of article isexactness and truthfulness It may explain why exact repetition, especially ofnouns is overwhelmingly preferred

For example:

Credit rating agencies downgraded A.I.G because of concerns it could not

honor its contracts Unable to get new loans, A.I.G asked for government help The Federal Reserve agreed to loan A.I.G eighty-five billion dollars

in return for eighty percent of the company But it was not enough By November, the government had extended a total of about one hundred fifty billion dollars in aid to A.I.G — the most to any single company during the

crisis

(VOA Special English Economics Report- 1 January 2009)

The repetition of “A.I.G”, “government”, and “company” help createcohesion in the text and therefore coherence is achieved In addition,repetitions also play an important role in making discourse clear, airtight,unambiguous and precise

However, the overuse of repetition in English Economics Report can makethe text monotonous and the readers can feel unpleasant Therefor it isnecessary to be flexible and useful in combining repetition with other cohesivedevices

2.4.2 Synonymy

In term of “synonymy”, our survey shows the occurrences of synonymyappeared quite few (9.8% in whole), but it is obvious that it shares so manybenefits In English economics reports the using of synonymy aims to avoidrepeating a word or phrase so many times And especially it makes thediscourse coherent by creating the group of lexical that have near meaning.Now, we can consider the following example to illustrate this point:

But over the next year, the nonprofit network predicts a big deficit because

of less giving by companies in the downturn So this week it cut seven

percent of its jobs and canceled two programs.

(VOA Special English Economics Report- 11 December 2008)

In the above example, in order not to repeat the word “cut”, the writer usesanother word “canceled” which has the same meaning In this way, whenreading, we will feel fresh and understandable and we will not find a change inmeaning

2.4.3 Antonymy

A contrast with synonymy is antonymy, which sometimes exist in EnglishEconomics Reports It makes readers easy to understand the text by theoppositeness between two poles It does not show the relation in the