An analysis of grammatical cohesion used in the call of the wild by jack london m a thesis linguistics

Those reasons mentioned above are the most important ones that have encouraged the author to conduct "An analysis of grammatical cohesion used in "The Call of the Wild" by Jack London"

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TRẦN THỊ HOA MAI

AN ANALYSIS OF GRAMMATICAL COHESION USED IN

“THE CALL OF THE WILD” BY JACK LONDON

(Phân tích liên kết ngữ pháp sử dụng trong tác phẩm “Tiếng gọi

nơi hoang dã” của Jack London)

M.A Minor programme thesis

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15

HANOI – 2010

-

TRẦN THỊ HOA MAI

AN ANALYSIS OF GRAMMATICAL COHESION USED IN

“THE CALL OF THE WILD” BY JACK LONDON

(Phân tích liên kết ngữ pháp sử dụng trong tác phẩm “Tiếng gọi

nơi hoang dã” của Jack London)

M.A Minor programme thesis

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15

Supervisor: NGUYỄN HƯƠNG GIANG, M.A

HANOI - 2010

CONTENTS Pages

DECLARATION ……… i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ……….……… ii

ABSTRACT ……… iii

TABLES OF CONTENTS iv

LISTS OF TABLES AND FIGURES ……… … vi

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the study 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 2

4 Methods of the study 2

5 Design of the study 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4

Chapter 1: Theoretical Background 4

1.1 Discourse and Discourse Analysis 4

1.1.1 Discourse Analysis 4

1.1.2 Discourse and text 5

1.2 Cohesion 5

1.2.1 The concept of cohesion 5

1.2.2 Cohesion vs Coherence 6

1.2.3 Types of Cohesion 6

1.2.3.1 Grammatical Cohesion 7

1.2.3.2 Lexical Cohesion 12

Chapter 2: An overview on "The Call of the Wild" by Jack London 13

2.1 A brief summary of "The Call of the Wild" 13

2.2 An overview on "The Call of the Wild" 13

2.2.1 Characters 13

2.2.2 Story events 14

by Jack London 15

3.1 Reference 15

3.1.1 Exophoric and Endophoric Reference 15

3.1.1.1 Exophoric Reference 15

3.1.1.2 Exophoric Reference 17

3.1.2 Statistical Analysis of Reference Markers 18

3.2 Substitution 21

3.3 Ellipsis 23

3.3.1 Nominal Ellipsis 24

3.3.2 Verbal Ellipsis 28

3.3.2.1 Lexical Ellipsis 29

3.3.2.2 Operator Ellipsis 30

3.3.3 Clausal Ellipsis 31

3.3.3.1 Wh- Ellipsis 31

3.3.3.2 Yes/No Ellipsis 32

3.4 Conjunctions 34

Chapter 4: Major findings and Implications for the Teaching and Learning Writing Skill 37

4.1 Major Findings of Grammatical Cohesion 37

4.2 Implications for the Teaching and Learning Grammatical Cohesive Devices in Writing 39

4.2.1 Implications for Teachers 39

4.2.2 Implications for Students 40

PART C: CONCLUSION 41

1 Recapitulation 41

2 Conclusions 41

3 Limitations of the Study 42

4 Suggestions for Further Studies 42

REFERENCES 43

Tables and Figures Pages

Table 3.1: Exophoric Reference in “The Call of the Wild” 16

Table 3.3 Demonstrative Reference in “The Call of the Wild” 19

Table 3.4 Comparative Reference in “The Call of the Wild” 19

Table 3.7: Non-specific Deitics in “The Call of the Wild” 26

Table 3.11: Conjunctive Relations in “The Call of the Wild” 34

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Discourse Analysis, or discourse studies, is a general term for a number of approaches to analyzing written, spoken, signed language use or any significant semiotic event From the beginning of its appearance, Discourse Analysis has taken up in a variety

of social science disciplines It is now a rapidly expanding field, providing insights into various aspects of language in use and therefore of great importance to language teaching

In the early days, language teaching has been concerned with pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary; however, it was not until Discourse Analysis turned up that our awareness of how to put this knowledge into action to gain successful communication was raised

Literature, which plays a very important role in our spiritual life, has been greatly developing as a consequence of the high living standards As a matter of fact, there have been more and more people choosing to work in the literary field and their efforts have created so many famous works It is open to questions as to which factors have to be taken into consideration to make a successful work? How important are those factors to the completion of a coherent and cohesive text? Added to this, the knowledge of cohesion and coherence are actually regarded as the crucial aspects of language usage

"The Call of the Wild", Jack London's most famous book, is a beautiful tale of a

"house dog" torn from the comforts of hearth and home into the unforgiving wild The main character of the story is a dog named Buck Every aspect of life, including happiness, hardship, misery, love and so on, is seen through the eyes of this dog This is the significance of the book Buck's story is more than just a children's story or merely a dog's story, it is our story Jack London's book, therefore, makes great impression on the readers

Those reasons mentioned above are the most important ones that have encouraged

the author to conduct "An analysis of grammatical cohesion used in "The Call of the

Wild" by Jack London" as the topic of this study Hopefully, it may help teachers and

learners of foreign language have an overall viewpoint on grammatical cohesive devices as

well as the effectiveness of the application of such devices in Jack London's "The Call of

the Wild"

2 Aims of the study

As mentioned above, there are several reasons that lead the author to choose to carry out this study Thus, the aims of the study are as follows:

 To explore how the grammatical cohesive devices employed in "The Call of the

1 What grammatical cohesive devices are used in "The Call of the Wild"?

2 To what extent do grammatical cohesive devices contribute to the success of literary works?

3 Scope of the study

As Discourse Analysis has a very broad scope which has a very close relationship with many other aspects of language study, it is impossible for the author to refer to all of its characteristics Thus, within this study, the author just mentions some background knowledge about Discourse Analysis as well as coherence and cohesion

In addition, there are a number of factors that make "The Call of the Wild" a

successful work, hence, this study only focuses on the grammatical cohesive devices employed in Jack London's book Data analyzed is taken from the seven chapters of the book

4 Methods of the study

To attain the aims of the study, the author has employed the Quantitative Method That is to say, this thesis focused more on the collection and analysis of numerical data and statistics and less on interviews, observations, small numbers of questionnaires, focus groups, subjective reports and case studies but is much more Counting and measuring are common forms of quantitative methods The result of the research is a number, or a series of numbers These are often presented in tables, graphs or other forms of statistics which is the science and practice of developing human knowledge through the use of empirical data

5 Design of the study

Within the scope mentioned above, the study has three main parts

Part A is "INTRODUCTION" which consists of the rationale, aims, scope, methods and design of the study

Part B entitled "DEVELOPMENT" includes three chapters Chapter 1, "Theoretical

Background", gives an overview on Discourse and Discourse Analysis, including

Discourse Analysis, Discourse and Text, Discourse context and spoken and written discourse In this chapter, the author also introduces background knowledge about cohesion, the relationship between cohesion and coherence, cohesion and discourse structure and types of cohesion

Chapter 2 with the title "An overview on "The Call of the Wild" by Jack London''

provides the brief summary of the book, an overview on the story in terms of the characters, events and personal perceptions

Chapter 3 entitled "An analysis of grammatical cohesion used in "The Call of the

Wild" by Jack London" provides a collections of examples taken from the seven chapters

of the book with detailed analysis to clarify the application of such grammatical cohesive devices employed in that book

Part C is "CONCLUSION" in which the author summarizes the main points introduced in the study

The study ends with the "REFERENCES" which list all the materials and sources

of information used in this study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

As mentioned before, Discourse Analysis has a very broad scope which has close relationship with many other aspects of language study Nevertheless, due to the framework of a M.A minor programme thesis, in this chapter, the authors just attempts to discuss some theoretical background about Discourse Analysis in general and Cohesion in particular

1.1 Discourse and Discourse Analysis

1.1.1 Discourse Analysis

Discourse analysis is concerned with the relationship between language and the context in which it is used It grew out of the work of different disciplines in the 1960s and early 1970s, including linguistics, semiotics, psychology, anthropology and sociology Discourse analysts study language in use: written texts and spoken data of all kinds under the approach different from those old grammarians For the time being, there have been numerous interpretations to what is meant by Discourse Analysis

British discourse analysis was mainly influenced by M.A.K Halliday's functional approach of language Halliday's framework emphasizes the social function of language and the thematic and informational structure of speech and writing De Beaugrande (1980) and Halliday and Hasan (1976) as well as Prague School of linguists have made their significant contribution to this branch of linguistics in pointing out the links between grammar and discourse

Yule (1996:139) states: "In the study of language, some of the most interesting questions arise in connection with the way language is 'used', rather than what its components are ( ) We were, in effect, asking how it is that language-users interpret what other language users intend to convey When we carry this investigation further and ask how it is that we, as language-users, make sense of what we read in texts, understand what speakers mean despite what they say, recognize connected as opposed to jumbled or incoherent discours and successfully take part in that complex activity called conversation,

we are undertaking what is known as discourse analysis"

Discourse analysis is, therefore, is very important to understand or interpret a text

Only by studying language in use can we recognize the message that the writers wish to

convey One of the very key technical terms in discourse analysis is cohesion

co-He saw context of situation as crucial determinants of utterance meaning However, Firth did not give a theoretical account of the effect of context on utterance meaning

Lately, Halliday and Hasan focus on context of situation And the three headings FIELD, MODE and TENOR which had been proposed for these are considered highly general concept for describing how the context of situation determines the kinds of meaning that are expressed Yet, according to Halliday and Hasan, the linguistic features, which are typically associated with a configuration of situational features - with particular values of the field, mode and tenor - constitute a register

1.2 Cohesion

1.2.1 The concept of cohesion

The concept of cohesion is closely connected with text It is defined as the

grammatical and lexical relationship between different elements of a text According to Yule (1996), a text is usually considered to have a certain structure which depends on factors quite different from those required in the structure of single sentence Some among those factors are described in terms of cohesion, or the ties and connection which exist

within a text

Halliday and Hasan (1976:4) also define cohesion in a similar way: "The concept of cohesion is a semantic one; it refers to relations of meaning that exist within a text, and that defines it as a text" They also point out that cohesion often occurs where the interpretation

of some elements in the discourse is dependent on that of another

1.2.2 Cohesion vs Coherence

The distinction between cohesion and coherence has not always been clarified

partly because both terms come from the same verb cohere which means sticking together

In fact, cohesion is the network of different kinds of formal relations that provide links between or among various parts of a text, and is expressed partly through the grammar and partly through the vocabulary Coherence, in contrast, can be understood as the quality of being meaningful and unified As for Nunan (1993), coherence is "the feeling that sequences of sentences or utterances seem to hang together"

Coherence refers to the type of semantic and rhetorical relationships that underline

texts If cohesion refers to the linguistic elements that make a discourse semantically

coherent, then the coherence involves with what makes a text semantically meaningful

Cohesion is only guide to coherence and coherence is something created by the reader in the act of reading the text The two categories represent the interrelated aspects that make a text or discourse coherent and different from random ones

In short, coherence is embodied by a system of cohesive devices and cohesion is mainly used to ensure coherence

1.2.3 Types of Cohesion

According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), the classification of cohesion is based on the linguistic form The type of cohesion depends either on semantic relation in the linguistic system or on lexico-grammatical relations In other words, the cohesive relation can be interpreted as being either lexico-grammatical in nature or semantic It can be made clearer in the following description:

Nature of cohesive relation Type of cohesion

Table 1.1: Type of cohesion

(Source: Halliday and Hasan, 1976:304)

Reference, substitution and ellipsis are clearly grammatical; lexical cohesion, as the name implies, lexical Conjunction is on the borderline of grammatical and the lexical; the set of conjunctive expressions involve lexical selection However, it is better to put it in the group of grammatical cohesion as it is mainly grammatical with a lexical component inside Consequently, we can refer to grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion as follows:

Grammatical cohesion Lexical cohesion Reference

Reference

To begin with, in the view of Halliday and Hasan (1976:32), reference is a semantic relation and "since the relationship is on the semantic level, the reference item is in no way constrained to match the grammatical class of the item it refers to"