Reiteration as a cohesive device in news in brief on iraq war in english press = phép lặp làm phương tiện liên kết trong tin vắn về chiến tranh i rắc trên báo chí tiếng anh

Department of foreign languages=====    ===== đặng hữu phớc Reiteration as a Cohesive Device in news-in-brief on Iraq war in English press phép lặp làm phơng tiện liên kết trong tin v

Department of foreign languages

=====    =====

đặng hữu phớc

Reiteration as a Cohesive Device in news-in-brief on Iraq war in English press

(phép lặp làm phơng tiện liên kết trong tin vắn

về chiến tranh I-rắc trên báo chí tiếng anh)

graduation thesis

Field: English linguistics

Vinh 2006

Department of foreign language

=====    =====

Graduation thesis

Reiteration as a Cohesive Device in

News-in-brief on Iraq war in English press

(phÐp lÆp lµm ph¬ng tiÖn liªn kÕt trong tin v¾n

vÒ chiÕn tranh I-r¾c trªn b¸o chÝ tiÕng anh)

Field: English linguistics

By: §Æng H÷u Phíc, 43A1 Supervisor: TrÇn B¸ TiÕn M.A.

Vinh 2006

First of all, I should like to express my greatest gratitude to M.A Tran Ba Tien, my supervisor, who has given me precious advice, valuable materials and enormously essential corrections for the accomplishment of the thesis.

I am also grateful to foreign experts and my teachers in the Department of Foreign Languages for their helpful suggestions and encouragement during the time my job has been being carried out

Finally, my profound thanks go to my loved family and my good friends whose love, care and help have given me essential energy and determination without which this thesis would have been impossibly completed.

etc : et cetra

ibid : in the same reference/in the same place

SBFK : synonyms based on factual knowledge

SBLK : synonyms based on linguistic knowledge

RWIR : reiterations with identical reference

RWNR : reiterations with non-identical reference

Table of content

Page

Acknowledgement i Abbreviations ii

1 Rationale of the study 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 2

4 Methods of the study 3

5 Design of the study 3

Part B: Development 4

Chapter 1: Theoretical background 4

1.1 Theory of Discourse 4

1.1.1 Concept of discourse 4

1.1.2 Text and discourse 4

1.1.3 Spoken discourse and written discourse 5

1.1.4 Discourse context 7

1.1.4.1 Context of situation 7

1.1.4.2 Context versus co-text 8

1.1.5 Discourse structure and information structure 8

1.1.5.1 Theme and Rheme 8

1.1.5.2 ‘Given – New’ information 9

1.1.6 Sense relation 10

1.2 Cohesion 10

1.2.1 Concept of cohesion 10

1.2.2 Cohesion and coherence 11

1.2.3 Types of cohesive device 12

1.3 Lexical cohesion 12

1.3.1 Concept of lexical cohesion 12

1.3.2 Types of lexical cohesion 13

1.4 Reiteration 13

1.4.1 Concept of reiteration 13

1.4.2 Types of reiteration 14

1.4.3 Reiteration and reference 14

1.4.3.1 Reference 15

1.4.3.2 Reiteration with and without identical reference 16

Chapter 2: Reiteration as a cohesive device in news-in-brief on Iraq war in English press 19

2.1 General structure of news stories in English press 19

2.2 General information of selected materials 20

2.3 Reiteration in separate parts of news-in-brief texts 20

2.3.1 Headline 20

2.3.3 Body 23

2.4 Reiteration as seen in types 25

2.4.1 Repetition 25

2.4.2 Synonyms and near synonyms 28

2.4.3 Superordinates and General words 31

2.4.3.1 Superordinates 32

2.4.3.2 General words 34

2.5 Reiteration with and without identical reference 37

Part C: Conclusion 40

1 Review of major findings 40

2 Application 41

3 Suggestions for further works 44

References

Appendix

Acknowledgement

First of all, I should like to express my greatest gratitude to M.A Tran Ba Tien, my supervisor, who has given me precious advice, valuable materials and enormously essential corrections for the accomplishment of the thesis.

I am also grateful to foreign experts and my teachers in the Department of Foreign Languages for their helpful suggestions and encouragement during the time my job has been being carried out

Finally, my profound thanks go to my loved family and my good friends whose love, care and help have given me essential energy and determination without which this thesis would have been impossibly completed.

ibid : in the same reference/in the same place

SBFK : synonyms based on factual knowledge

SBLK : synonyms based on linguistic knowledgeRWIR : reiterations with identical reference

RWNR : reiterations with non-identical reference

Table of content

Page

Acknowledgement i

Abbreviations ii

Part A: Introduction 1

6 Rationale of the study 1

7 Aims of the study 2

8 Scope of the study 2

9 Methods of the study 3

10 Design of the study 3

Part B: Development 4

Chapter 1: Theoretical background 4

1.5 Theory of Discourse 4

1.1.7 Concept of discourse 4

1.1.8 Text and discourse 4

1.1.9 Spoken discourse and written discourse 5

1.1.10 Discourse context 7

1.1.10.1.Context of situation 7

1.1.10.2.Context versus co-text 8

1.1.11 Discourse structure and information structure 8

1.1.11.1.Theme and Rheme 8

1.1.11.2.‘Given – New’ information 9

1.1.12 Sense relation 10

1.6 Cohesion 10

1.6.1 Concept of cohesion 10

1.6.2 Cohesion and coherence 11

1.6.3 Types of cohesive device 12

1.7 Lexical cohesion 12

1.7.1 Concept of lexical cohesion 12

1.7.2 Types of lexical cohesion 13

1.8 Reiteration 13

1.8.1 Concept of reiteration 13

1.8.2 Types of reiteration 14

1.8.3 Reiteration and reference 14

1.8.3.1 Reference 15

1.8.3.2 Reiteration with and without identical reference 16

Chapter 2: Reiteration as a cohesive device in news-in-brief on Iraq war in English press .19

2.1 General structure of news stories in English press 19

2.2 General information of selected materials 20

2.3 Reiteration in separate parts of news-in-brief texts 20

2.3.1 Headline 20

2.3.2 Lead 21

2.3.3 Body 23

2.6 Reiteration as seen in types 25

2.6.1 Repetition 25

2.6.2 Synonyms and near synonyms 28

2.6.3 Superordinates and General words 31

2.6.3.1 Superordinates 32

2.6.3.2 General words 34

2.7 Reiteration with and without identical reference 37

Part C: Conclusion 40

4 Review of major findings 40

5 Application 41

6 Suggestions for further works 44

References

Appendix

31) puts it: ‘lexical cohesion is the single most important form of cohesion, accounting for something like forty percent of cohesion ties in text’ Among

lexical cohesive devices, reiteration is considered the most common one and

to contribute the most to textual coherence

Obtaining a sufficient awareness of the vivid existence of reiteration as

a cohesive device, of its significant role in generating textual coherence aswell as of proper ways in which it is used by native speakers (or writers) canmake a helpful contribution to teaching and learning English

1.2 Press, in the civilized society, has become one of the most popular andpowerful means of communication and nowadays plays a displaceable part inman’s life It is not only where people get themselves expressed, knowledge-enriched, information-updated and entertained, but also one of places where alanguage can interestingly manifest its own existence with its certain features.Unexceptionally, we can amusingly trace many of characteristics of Englishlanguage in press published in English, possibly in any forms of writing there.Being interested in Reiteration in English, we find it very interesting, andappropriate also, to apply related theories into news-in-brief daily updated onthe Iraq War in English press, the source of material that has never been usedfor any discussions involving Reiteration in discourse so far

For all reasons above, we have decided to choose “Reiteration as acohesive device in news-in-brief on Iraq War in English press” to be thetheme of the thesis.

2 Aims of the Study

The aims of the thesis are:

- To emphasize the important role of Reiteration in creating textual coherence

- To give some statistics and descriptions of Reiteration used in a specificform of writing in English press: News-in-brief

- To study the reasons leading to the different degrees of fondness in usingeach types of reiteration there

- To suggest some practical applications of Reiteration in teaching andlearning English

3 Scope of the Study

Our research deals with types of Reiteration in discourse provided byHalliday and Hasan (1976) including Repetition, Synonymy, Subordinates andGeneral words Other types of lexical and grammatical cohesion are out of thescope of the thesis

The data analyzed in the thesis are news-in-brief texts available in

CNN online, which is, in our opinion, among the most well - known online

newspapers It has nowadays become an international newspaper on whichEnglish is the major language to be chosen for the information display Thenews-in-brief texts are about the Iraq War, an international security eventinitiated in March 2003 by the United States, and then followed by her allies,against Iraq The war is still believed to be unfinished up to the day thematerial collection for this study is completed (November 4th, 2005) Theevent has been drawing the attention of nations and people all over the world.And it comes as no surprise that online newspapers are where the hottest newsabout the war has been most frequently and fastest updated to the public

As the title of the thesis implies, most of the examples employed in

Examples taken from other sources are clearly marked with specificreferences as well

4 Methods of the Study

- Review of published related theories

- Quantitative methods

- Analysis and synthesis of selected data

5 Design of the Study

There are three main parts in this research paper:

Part A: Introduction

In this part, the rationale, aims, scope, methods and design of the thesisare introduced

Part B: Development

This part consists of two chapters:

Chapter 1 Theoretical background

Chapter 2 Reiteration as a cohesive device in news-in-brief on Iraq

War in English press

Part C: Conclusion

In this part, principal findings are summarized and some practicalapplications as well as some suggestions for further researches are provided

Part B: Development

Chapter 1:

Theoretical background 1.1 Theory of Discourse

1.1.1 Concept of Discourse

Until the first half of the 20th century, traditional linguists had beenworking under the orientational point of view that sentences are the largestcomplete units to be studied It has, however, gradually been realized to be amistaken one Many problems concerning with both linguistic theories andpractices appeared to be unthoroughly solved with this viewpoint This facteventually led to the appearance of a new subject in the 1960s and early1970s, studying languages through units above sentence level DiscourseAnalysis (as the new subject was termed), as Michael McCarthy (1991: 5)puts it, ‘is concerned with the study of the relationship between language andthe contexts in which it is used’, under the assistance of traditionallinguistics, semiotics, psychology, anthropology and sociology

Since the time Discourse Analysis came into being as a branch of

linguistics, the term discourse‘ ’ has been defined in different ways A

discourse, according to David Nunan in the introduction of his Introducing

Discourse Analysis (1995), ‘is a stretch of language that may be longer than

one sentence.’ Barbara Johnstone (2002: 2) claims that: ‘discourse usuallymeans actual instances of communication in the medium of language’ In this

thesis, the notion by Guy Cook (1995: 198) seeing discourse as stretches of‘

language perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposive’ seems to be the

best to adopt

1.1.2 Text and Discourse

Viewpoints of the distinction between the two terms text and discourse

are rather controversial To some linguists, the two can be interchangeablyused, as they state:

(1) A text, or a discourse, is a stretch of language that may be longer than asentence

(Nunan, 1995: 1)

(2) A text may be spoken or written, prose or verse, dialogue ormonologue It may be anything from a single proverb to a whole play,from a momentary cry for help to all day discussion in a committee.

(Crystal, 1992: 72)

On the other hand, some linguists suppose that it is worth seeing thetwo terms in different ways Widdowson (1979), for instance, suggests that:

One way sees it [language beyond the limit of sentence] as a text, a

collection of formal objects held by the pattern of equivalences, or frequencies, or by cohesive devices The other way sees language as

discourse, a use of sentences to perform act of communication which cohere

into larger communicative units, ultimately establishing a rhetorical pattern which characterizes the pieces of language as a whole as a kind of communication

(quoted in Nguyen Thi Phuong Ngoc, 1999 – MA Thesis)

Widdowson’s differentiation is more or less similar with that of Brown

and Yule (1983: 6) who ‘use text as a technical term to refer to the verbal

record of a communicative act’; and that of Crystal (1992: 25) defining

discourse as ‘a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than

a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit, such as a sermon, argument,

joke or narrative’ and text as ‘a piece of naturally occurring spoken, written or

signed discourse identified for purposes of analysis It is often a language unitwith a definable function, such as a conversation, a poster.’

This thesis supports the short discrimination of Raphael Salkie (1993)

suggesting that the term text is best used to refer to any written record of a

communicative event and discourse, on the other hand, to the interpretation of

the communicative event in context That means any complete piece of news

taken for analyzing in this study is best seen as a text, or a discourse unit

1.1.3 Spoken Discourse and Written Discourse

Spoken and written discourse simply means speech and writing It hasbeen widely agreed by linguists that there are common features as well asdifferent ones between these two forms of language

According to Halliday (1985), writing emerged in society as a result ofcultural changes which created new communicative needs that could not bereadily met by the spoken language.

Approvingly, Raphael Salkie (1993) contributes that the contexts forusing written language are very different from those in which spokenlanguage is used For example, in the case of information, written language isused to communicate with others who are removed in time and space, or forthose occasions of which a permanent or semi-permanent is required

One, accordingly, cannot deny that spoken discourse is oftenconsidered to be less planned and orderly, more open to intervention by thereceivers while written discourse is much better structured and thepossibilities for subordinate participants are limited Brown and Yule (1983)claim that spoken and written discourse serve various functions, the former isused for the establishment and maintenance of human relationships(interactional use) and the latter for the working out of and transference ofinformation (transactional use) (cited in To Viet Thu 2001 – MA Thesis)

On the other hand, some linguists see common points between thesetwo forms of language David Nunan (1995) believes that they both perform

an equivalent range of broad functions, i.e they both are employed to getthings done, to provide information and to entertain

Michael McCarthy (1991: 150) additionally proposes, ‘both spoken andwritten discourses are dependent on their immediate contexts to a greater orlesser degree’, and ‘implicitness and explicitness [of the language being used]will depend on what is being communicated to whom, rather than merely onwhether the discourse is spoken or written.’

In short, despite the fact that written and spoken discourses are twodifferent forms of language, they both carry out many functions ofcommunication and the differences are not absolute, and the characteristicsthat we tend to associate with written language can sometimes occur in spokenlanguage and vice versa This means that some spoken texts will be more likewritten texts than others and vice versa

1.1.4 Discourse Context

1.1.4.1 Context of Situation

David Nunan (1995: 7) suggests a concept and a classification of

context of situation (or context in short) as follows:

Context refers to the situation giving rise to the discourse, and within which the discourse is embedded There are two different types of context The first of these is the linguistic context – the language that surrounds or accompanies the piece of discourse under analysis The second is non-linguistic or experiential context within which the discourse takes place Non-linguistic contexts include: the type of communicative event (for example, joke, story, lecture, greeting, conversation); the topic; the purpose of the event, the setting including location, time of day, season of year and physical aspects of the situation (for example, size of room, arrangement

of furniture); the participants and the relationships between them; and the background knowledge and assumptions underlying the communicative event.

This viewpoint of Nunan is much similar to that of Halliday and Hasan(1976) who claim that when responding to a spoken or a written passage(discourse or text), the receiver employs not only linguistic clues, but alsosituational ones Linguistically, he responds to specific features which bindthe passage together, the pattern of connection, independence of structure, that

we are referring to as cohesion; situationally, he takes into account all heknows of the environment: what is going on, what part of language is playing,and who are involved

And the importance of context toward discourse interpretation isapparently undeniable, as Cook (1989: 10) asserts: ‘There are good argumentsfor limiting the field of study to make it manageable, but it is also true to saythat the answer to the question of what gives discourse its unity may be

impossible to give without considering the world at large: the context.’

For all the facts above, both linguistic and non-linguistic contexts aretaken into account in this study It is because Reiteration, as a cohesive deviceand as an actual use of lexis, is obviously concerned with linguistic factors buthow that use is carried out also greatly depends on non-linguistic features ofdiscourse

1.1.4.2 Context versus Co-text

It is necessary to tell these two terms from one another David Nunan

(1995) holds that co-text is considered the linguistic element and context the

non-linguistic one More specifically, Brown and Yule (1983) claim that ‘anysentence other than the first in a fragment of discourse will have the whole ofits interpretation forcibly constrained by the proceeding text’ and ‘the wordsoccurring in discourse are constrained by their co-text.’ (quoted in NguyenThi Phuong Ngoc 1999 - M.A thesis)

In his Pragmatics (1996), Yule gives another concept that considers text as linguistic material, accompanying the referring expression The role of

co-co-text is illustrated with the example as follows:

Brazil wins World Cup.

The referring expression Brazil‘ ’ occurring initially in the utterancemay evoke a range of references (as the nation, the government, the army, thepeople of Brazil) Part of the co-text (‘wins World Cup’, here) clearly limits

the range of possible interpretations one might have for a word like Brazil‘ ’and, in this case, he might as well have quite little difficulty in perceiving it asBrazilian national football team

In short, both context and co-text are important in discourseinterpretation but they clearly differ from one another Context is concernedwith non-linguistic (external) elements whereas co-text with linguistic(internal) ones

1.1.5 Discourse Structure and Information Structure

1.1.5.1 Theme and Rheme

‘Theme and Rheme’ is a grammatical notion first introduced by V.Mathesius and Halliday Halliday (1985:38) defines ‘Theme and Rheme’ asfollows:

‘Theme is the element which serves as the point of departure of the

message, it is that with which the clause is concerned’

‘Rheme is the remainder of the message which consists of what the

speaker states about that point of departure’

Hence, Theme can be understood as a formal category which refers to

the initial element in a clause It is the element around which the sentence isarranged, and the one to which the speaker wants to give the prominence

Everything that follows the theme is known as the Rheme Let us have a look

at the examples below:

(1) John broke the vessel

(2) The vessel was broken by John

The two sentences present the same information but one cannot deny

that there is something different here That is, in (1), the theme is John It is

John and what he does that are of primary interest In (2), on the other hand, it

is the theme vessel and what happens to it that receive the prominence given

by the speaker

A theme can be marked or unmarked If the subject coincides with

theme, it is called unmarked theme (for example, William in ‘William didn t’

come to the party’) If the theme is something other than the subject, it is

called marked theme, like Surprisingly in ‘Surprisingly, William didn t come’

to the party.’

When mentioning ‘Theme-Rheme’ structure, linguists usually relate it

to another notion known as ‘Given-New’

1.1.5.2 Given-New Information‘ ’

So far, this notion is widely believed to be much related to Rheme structure but not absolutely alike In an utterance, as Raphael Salkie(1993) simply distinguishes, the information that has already been introducedinto the discourse, or is assumed to be known to the addressee by the

Theme-addressor, is called given information, and by contrast, the information that

is introduced for the first time (not yet in the addressee’s mind at the moment

of uttering) is known as new information There is a noticeable point that in

discourse, it is the speaker or writer who decides what information to betreated as given and what is new Moreover, theme of a clause coming first is

more often given information than other parts In that sense - let us deal again

with the utterance John broke the vessel “ ” – the theme John‘ ’ is associated

with the given information and broke the vessel ‘ ’ with new information

1.1.6 Sense Relation

According to Michael McCarthy (1991), sense relation is the semantic

relation existing among words on the vertical axis Les us examine this:

A vertical axis is made up by the words in the box It provides theaddressor with a range of related choices and which one to be used dependsmuch on the addressor himself Among these words exist semantic relations:

synonym (break – fracture – crack ), antonym (break/fracture/crack - heal), and hyponym (damage - break/fracture/crack) These relations are called

sense relations

These three relations are of one type of sense relation only Manylinguists widely admit that sense relations fall into two types: substitutional

and combinatorial Substitutional relations are those existing among lexemes

of the same grammatical categories while combinatorial relations normally

hold among different grammatical categories (Nguyen Hoa, 2004: 121) In the

examples given above, break, fracture, damage, heal and crack hold

substitutional sense relations because they are grammatically interchangeable

while those among John/broke/the/vessel are combinatorial for their

grammatically possible co-operations However, only the first type is ofimportance in our study More specifically, among the three substitutionalrelations mentioned above (which can be instead called the relations of

sameness, oppositeness and inclusion), only two (sameness and inclusion),

will be discussed in terms of types of reiteration

1.2 Cohesion

brokefractureddamagedcrackedhealed

1.2.1 Concept of Cohesion

The concept of cohesion is tightly connected with discourse InHalliday and Hasan’s view, cohesion is a semantic concept that refers to therelations of meaning existing within the text, and that differs it from what isnot a text More specifically, they hold that: ‘cohesion occurs where theinterpretation of some element in the discourse is dependent on that ofanother The one presupposes the other, in the sense that it cannot beeffectively decoded except by recourse to it’ (1976: 4)

A text is often constituted by a group of sentences but it is not the casethat any set of sentences can compose a text To be a text, such a set mustconsist of related elements This condition is referred to as texture, which is

widely agreed to be created by cohesion Cohesion thereby can be called

formal links between elements (within or beyond sentence-boundaries) that make a text cohesive It is much involved, but not coincided, with another

notion known as coherence

1.2.2 Cohesion and Coherence

It is necessary to first confirm that cohesion is of great significance tocoherence, but not coherence itself Many linguists approve of Nunan’sseparation (1993: 116) between coherence and cohesion that claims

‘coherence is the extent to which discourse is perceived to hang together rather than a set of unrelated sentences or utterances’ and cohesion is ‘formal

links showing the relationships among clauses and among sentences indiscourse’ (quoted in Diep Quang Ban, 2004: 52)

Coherence therefore can be considered as the feeling that the text hangstogether and that it makes sense It is something invisible and attributed to thecreation of the addressee’s mind, very often with the assistance of cohesion.Whereas, cohesion occurs visibly in discourse but only serves as signals,guides or clues to coherence Cohesion itself does not guarantee coherenceand coherence sometimes can be realized without any recourse to cohesion.Let us have a look at two simple instances:

(1) Although he knew that driving a car to work was very costly, he

used his bike

(2) The price of petrol in Viet Nam has been sharply increased More

and more people are thinking of bikes or public means of transport

In (1), despite the existence of although‘ ’ as a cohesive device, onecould hardy say that the two clauses are well unified, i.e to say they arecoherent Conversely, without having a formal link, the two sentences in (2)can still be perceived to hang and make sense together in the reader’s/hearer’smind with the assistance of his schemata (background knowledge) that using abike or public means of transport is less expensive for one than having an ownmotorized vehicle which needs petrol to work)

In short, cohesion and coherence are two major issues in theories of

discourse analysis Cohesion, manifested by cohesive devices, plays a greatly important part in creating coherence but does not guarantee coherence, which is

best seen as the feeling that the discourse hang together and that it makes sense

1.2.3 Types of Cohesive Devices

In this thesis, we adopt the division of cohesive devices by Halliday andHasan (1976), which can be illustrated by the graph as follows:

ReferenceGrammatical cohesion Substitution

EllipsisConjunctionCohesion

Collocation

Synonyms orReiteration Near-synonyms

Superordinates General words

1.3 Lexical Cohesion

1.3.1 Concept of Lexical Cohesion

Linguists have introduced similar definitions of lexical cohesion Forinstance, Halliday and Hasan (1976:318) hold that lexical cohesion isestablished through the structure of the lexis, or vocabulary Raphael Salkie(1993: 28) similarly states: ‘lexical cohesion occurs when two words in a textare semantically related in some way - in other words, they are related interms of their meaning’

Hence, lexical cohesion can most generally be seen as the textual

cohesion existing between linguistic elements in discourse thanks to the exploitation of semantic relations of lexis.

1.3.2 Types of Lexical Cohesion

As seen from the graph given above, lexical cohesion holds two maintypes: Reiteration and Collocation Although out of the scope of the study,collocation deserves some mention here for a clear-cut differentiation fromour concern – reiteration

Collocation is concerned with the tendency of linguistic items to occur in the same lexical environment without depending on any semanticrelationships like in the following example:

co-‘Put that gun down,’ said one of the lawyers at the table His name was Rafter He was a hard man in a courtroom, maybe the hardest

lawyer that Drake & Sweeney had

1.4 Reiteration

1.4.1 Concept of Reiteration

Reiteration, contrary to collocation, is characterized by the conditionthat there must be some explicit semantic relation between cohesive linguisticitems Halliday and Hasan (1976: 319) introduce a definition of reiterationwhich states: ‘Reiteration is the repetition of a lexical item, or the occurrence

of a synonym of some kind, in the context of reference; that is, where the twooccurrences have the same reference’ Later on, McCarthy (1991:65) likewiseholds that ‘Reiteration means either restating an item in a later part of thediscourse by direct repetition or else reasserting its meaning by exploitinglexical relations’

In brief, reiteration is a type of formal cohesive device in which the two

cohesive items refer to the same entity or event, and is considered a major

characteristic that makes discourse coherent

1.4.2 Types of Reiteration

So far, linguists have widely adopted the classification of Reiteration byHalliday and Hasan (1976) according to which Reiteration embraces fourmain types: Repetition, Synonyms or Near-synonyms, Superordinates andGeneral words

They illustrate these 4 types with the examples below:

There’s a boy climbing that tree

a The boy’s going to fall if he doesn’t take care.

b The lad’s going to fall if he doesn’t take care.

c The child’s going to fall if he doesn’t take care.

d The idiot’s going to fall if he doesn’t take care.

In (a), boy is directly restated in the second sentence and this is call repetition; the reiteration in (b) takes the form of a synonym lad; of a superordinate child in (c) and in (d), of a general word idiot.

McCarthy (1991: 66) uses slightly different terms for the third and forth

types He calls them immediate superordinate and general superordinate which are sub-kinds of superordinate simply In spite of the difference of the

terms, the criteria to distinguish them are the same This will be discussedmore precisely in the next sections

1.4.3 Reiteration and Reference

Grammatical cohesion is not intended to be of the concern in this study.However, for the admission so far by many linguists to the fact that in manycases, there is a combination of lexical cohesion and reference - a type ofgrammatical cohesion - the concept of reference deserves some brief mention

1.4.3.1 Reference

Reference, according to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 308), is the‘

relation between an element of the text and something else by reference to which it is interpreted in the given instance’ The item something else ‘ ’ in thisdefinition is general enough to hold both cases that, what the referring item

refers to may be in or out of the text Reference-in-text may be anaphoric (looking backwards) or cataphoric (looking forwards) and out-of-text reference is called exophoric (looking outwards) These 3 dimensions of

reference can be successively illustrated in the following examples:

(1) Policemen came running from all the offices ‘Are you hurt?’ one of

them asked me

great difference in comparison with the two former: it refers to a real entity (apress in the USA) in the world but not any item elsewhere in the text To be

correctly interpreted, this third dimension (out-of-text or exophoric reference)

requires shared knowledge between the addressor and addressee or/and theassistance of the situational context

Halliday and Hasan (1976) also introduce a common classification of

reference including personal (e.g he, she, it, they, them, our, etc.), demonstrative (e.g that, this, those, there etc.) and comparative (e.g another,

such a, the same, etc.) that can be consecutively exemplified in the following

instances:

(4) Mister’s real name was DeVon Hardy He was 45 He had found in

Vietnam

(ibid.: 9) (5) ‘Soup with bread,’ said the man, ‘Get it from the shelter at L Streetand 17th They put a lot of vegetables in the soup there’

(ibid.: 4)(6) There were two wrens upon a tree

Another came, and there were three

(Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 31)

1.4.3.2 Reiteration with and without Identical Reference

Halliday and Hasan (1976) are probably among the ones who make thedeepest discussions in this point They claim that in many cases, when the twonouns (the reiterated and the reiterating) have the same reference, it is not themeaning of the former to convey the cohesive effect but the latter does,

accompanied by an anaphoric reference item (the, that, this …) For example:

a John took Mary to dance John was left alone.

b Just then a Fawn came wandering by: it look at Alice with itslarge gentle eyes, but didn’t seem at all frightened ‘What

do you call yourself?’ The Fawn said at last.

(ibid.: 281)

In (a), the second John is a repetition However, one cannot say for sure

if it is the same John in terms of reference In this case, a reference item (he) would work better in clarifying that it is the same John In (b) it would seem that not the repetition of the item Fawn to have the cohesive force, but only its repetition accompanied by an anaphoric reference item ‘the’ This might suggest that what is called ‘lexical cohesion’ is merely the repetition of a

lexical item in a context of grammatical cohesion, and is simply a matter ofreference

With that point of view, Halliday and Hasan would imply that in orderfor two lexical items to be cohesive, it is not obligated for them to have theidentical referent A lexical item, in that sense, coheres with a precedingoccurrence of the same item even if the two have the same referent or not, orindeed whether or not they hold any referential relationship As a result, as far

as reference is concerned, the second occurrence may be either (a) identical or non-identical; the possibilities of ‘non-identical’ vary to: (b) inclusive, (c)

exclusive or (d) simply unrelated For examples:

There’s a boy climbing that tree

a The boy’s going to fall if he doesn’t take care

b Those boys are always getting into mischief

c And there’s another boy standing underneath

d Most boys love climbing tree

(ibid.: 283)

In (a) the boy has the same referent but the other three don’t: in (b) those boys includes a boy; in (c) another boy certainly excludes a boy and

most boys in (d) is not at all related to a boy

It seems necessary to restate Halliday and Hasan’s definition ofreiteration more fully to prove that they keep consistent in this view:

Reiteration is the repetition of a lexical item, or the occurrence of a synonym of some kind, in the context of reference; that is, where the two occurrences have the same referent Typically, therefore, a reiterated lexical

item is accompanied by a reference item, usually the‘ ’ or a demonstrative.

The complex consisting of the‘ ’ plus reiterated item is therefore cohesive by reference But ( ) reiteration is itself cohesive in its own right, as shown by the fact that cohesion takes place even where there is no referential relation

In brief, the conclusions that can be drawn out are: 1 in lexicalcohesion, when two lexical items have the same referent and the reiterated one

is preceded by a reference item, it can be treated as the co-operation ofreiteration of some kind and grammatical cohesion In this thesis, however,such an instance is only discussed in the aspect of reiteration; 2 Reiterationmay be carried out by two lexical items of either identical or non-identicalreference Both cases are intended to be compared with one another in theprogression of the study

Chapter 2:

Reiteration as a cohesive device in news-in-brief

on Iraq war in English press

2.1 General Structure of News Stories in English Press.

News stories, of which news-in-brief is one sub-type, is a concept

widely used by most pressmen and press researchers to refer to a type of news

in which the reporters usually inform the readers only about the facts withoutovertly expressing their own opinions (Tiersky & Chernoff, 1993: 48)

Typically, a news story is arranged in three parts: the headline, in which the main idea is given, the lead (opening paragraph) which repeats the main idea

in more detail, and the body (the rest of the story) where full details and

quotes from the people involved are added This organization is often applied

in news-in-brief texts Let us have a look at a specific piece of new as anillustration:

U.S soldiers killed in bombing, attack

BAGHDAD (CNN) Three U.S soldiers died Wednesday in Iraq, two

in a roadside bomb and the third in an improvised explosive device (IED) and small arms fire attack, the military said Thursday.

The first two died when their convoy struck an IED in east Baghdad, the military said They were assigned to Task Force Baghdad

The third soldier, assigned to the 1st Corps Support Command (COSCOM), died and four soldiers were wounded in the attack that occurred about 11:15 a.m Thursday near Ashraf, Iraq The soldiers were conducting a combat logistics patrol at the time, the military said Both incidents were under investigation, the military said The soldiers' names were withheld pending notification of relatives The soldiers' deaths bring the number of U.S troops to die in Iraqi to 2,004 (Posted 5:06 a.m.)

One of our attempts in this thesis is to survey the degree of reiterationoccurring in each part of the selected news

2.2 General Information about the materials selected

As once mentioned in scope section, all the pieces of news to be analyzedand synthesized in this thesis are taken from the online English newspaper CNN

All of them belong to a sub-type of news stories in English press –

news-in-brief A news-in-brief text, as the term ‘in brief’ implies, is rather short and in

many cases, an individual sentence is also a paragraph on its own Somegeneral statistics of the selected materials are given in the table below:

Total of

pieces

Total In average Total In average Total In average

Table 1 – General statistics of material selected

2.3 Reiteration in separate parts of News-in-brief texts

2.3.1 Headline

In a news-in-brief text, the headline briefly introduces the main content

of the whole news Another aim of this part is to attract readers’ attention andoffer them a choice whether to continue reading Just by having a glance at theheadline, readers can get the main idea of the news and if it is of their interest,they may decide to read the rest of the text It may explain why a headline isoften very briefly written (6,6 words in average), usually a narrative sentencewith articles, auxiliaries and some prepositions omitted, containing mostcontent words, maybe in full form like in (1), (2) and (3) or shortened like in(4), (5) and (6):

(1) Bomb attacks kill 13 Iraqis

(CNN, Oct 7, 2005)

(2) Soldier dies from non-battle related causes

(CNN, Nov 4, 2005)

(3) Kerry calls for goal of withdrawing most U.S troops from

Iraq before 2007.

(CNN, Nov 4, 2005)

(4) Nine bodies identified as U.S soldiers.

(CNN, Apr 6, 2003)(5) 6 police killed, 12 wounded in checkpoint clash with gunmen.

(CNN, Nov 4, 2005) (6) 2 dead, 2 kidnapped in Iraqi violence

(CNN, Nov 4, 2005)Our surveys show that it is extremely uncommon for reiteration tooccur in headline Actually, all pieces of news analyzed observe only oneoccurrence of reiteration (the general superordinate – hyponym relation of

‘bodies’ and ‘soldiers’ in (4) above) in headline It is explainable for the fact

that a headline conveys the information that is for the first time introducedwithin the news, so the readers do not need to link it to any previous co-textsection If there is any occurrence of reiteration in headline, it must be to refer

to a previous item occurring within the headline itself Therefore, except forextremely necessary (but rare) cases, a headline with a lexical item reiteratedcan hardly be considered an attractive one and reporters try their most to avoid

it

2.3.2 Lead

In the lead (opening paragraph), the theme of a news story is more fullyrestated According to researchers, the lead is usually intended to provide

information of the 5 W s and H’ of an event: who, what, where, when and how

(Nguyen Hoa: 2003) This supplementary restatement is carried out mainlyvia reiteration

For these characteristics, the lead of a news-in-brief text is probably thepart that possesses the highest density of reiteration The surveys give anextremely great amount (91,3%) of content words in the headlines reiterated

in the leads