Modes of Discourse

ISBN-13: 9780521781695 / Angielski / Twarda / 2003 / 336 str.

Carlota Smith; S. R. Anderson; J. Bresnan

Opis

In studying discourse, the problem for the linguist is to find a fruitful level of analysis. Carlota Smith offers a new approach with this study of discourse passages, units of several sentences or more. She introduces the key idea of the "Discourse Mode," identifying five modes: Narrative, Description, Report, Information, Argument. Smith analyzes the properties that distinguish each mode, focusing on grammatical rather than lexical information. The book also examines presentational matters: topic and focus; variation in syntactic structure; and subjectivity, or point of view.

Spis treści

Preface; Introduction; Part I. Discourse Structure: 1. Introduction to the discourse modes; 2. Discourse modes; 3. Text representation and understanding; Part II. Linguistic Analysis of the Discourse Modes: 4. Aspectual information: the entities introduced in discourse; 5. Temporal and spatial progression; 6. Referring expressions in discourse; Part III. Surface Presentational Factors: Introduction to Part III; 7. Subjectivity in texts; 8. The contribution of surface presentation; 9. Non-canonical structures and presentation; Part IV. Discourse Modes and their Context: 10. Information in text passages; 11. Discourse structure and discourse modes; Appendix A. The texts; Appendix B. Glossary.