
прагматика и медиа дискурс / Teun A van Dijk - Text and Context
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[ ]. It will be assumed, then, that there is a contrast of the first proposition of [12] with the TOPICAL PROPOSITION `Fairview is declining'. This would also be the case if the first passage did not have topical sentences like `Fairview was defeated', etc, so that we cannot construct but as a connective of these particular sentences. This is one clear LINGUISTIC reason why the assumption about semantic macro-structures in discourse must be made. Below, we will give some more evidence of this kind.
Changes of topic are subject to certain constraints within the same discourse or conversation. Whereas in casual everyday conversations topics may follow each other without much of a systematic connection (often a common argument or predicate is sufficient as a condition of change: "By,
the way, talking about Harry:...", "Now you talk about unemploy-
ment:...", etc), topic sequencing in discourses following stricter conventional rules must satisfy a number of conditions similar to those determining the linear connection and coherente of sentences. In our example we see that although the predicate of the topic changes, there is at least a common argument (Fairview). Expressed in a simpler way: the story continues about the same town. More particularly, the argument introduced in the second topic, viz the local newspaper, is a regular element of a normal TO W N- frame. Finally, the two topics are connected by the contrastive relation `decline'/`spark of life' underlying the use of bui. In more formal semantic terms: `In most possible worlds where a town would be declining, its newspaper (among other things) would also be declining' is the presupposition of such a use of contrastive bui.
These relations between topical propositions are the familiar semantic (referential and conceptual) relations discussed in the previous chapters. They are the linguistic basis for another kind of structural relations determining the specific super-structural (or schematic) properties of various sorts of discourse, eg of narratives, arguments, etc, to which we will turn below.
2.9
Although it is not the aim of this book to present a theory of DIALOGUE and of CONVERSATION in general, it should be assumed that the remarks made aboye about topics and macro-structures are also valid for the identification of TOPICS OF CONVERSATION. Much in the same way as (monologue) discourse is to be globally coherent, a dialogue is coherent due to the assignment of the various utterance meanings to one macro-structural topic. Take for example the following conversation from James Joyce's 'Ivy Day in the Committee Room' (Dubliners) between Mr O'Connor and Old Jack, the caretaker. We quote a slightly edited version, where some descriptive phrases of the situation and the speech context (eg ...," said Mr O'Connor") have been deleted:
[14] OLD JACK
Ah yes, it's hard to know what way to bring up children. Now who'd think he'd turn out like that! I sent him to the Christian Brothers and I
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done what I could for him, and there he goes boozing about. I tried to make him somewhat decent. Only I'm an old man now I'd change his tune for him. I'd take the stick to his back and beat him while I could stand over him — as I done many a time before. The mother you know, she cocks him up with this and that.
MR O'CONNOR
That's what ruins children.
OLD JACK
To be sure it is. And little thanks you get for it, only impudence. He takes th'upper hand of me whenever he lees I've a sup taken. What's the world coming to when sons speaks that way to their fathers?
MR O'CONNOR
What age is he?
OLD JACK
Nineteen.
MR O'CONNOR
Why don't you put him to something?
OLD JACK
Sure, amn't I never done at the drunken bowsy ever since he left school? "I won't keep you," I says. "You must get a job for yourself." But sure it's worse whenever he gets a job; he drinks it all.
Although this conversation is from a literary short story, it comes close to casual everyday conversations, which ofcourse should constitute the empirical basis for a sound theory of conversation. 9
Intuitively, we would say that the possible topics of this dialogue are Old Jack's son, the difficulty of bringing up children, or a form of selfjustification. Evidence for the second topic is the initial topical sentence, announcing the content of the brief narrative of Old Jack. At the same time, this topic (`It is difficult to know how to bring up children') may be said to `follow from' the narrative, much in the sense of a MORAL or general implication. The narrative, within this perspective, is an instantiation of this general truth, but has as its own topic something like `Although I did my best (for him), my son turned out a drunk'. The first proposition is expressed in the discourse, and subsumes propositions like `I sent him to the Christian Brothers' and `I beat him'. The second proposition is also expressed (he goes boozing about) and subsumes the assumed reason for the son's behaviour: the actions of his mother. This explanation is confirmed by the general statement of Mr O'Connor, which is in turn accepted by Old Jack. The
frame also contains the information that in certain situations the unacceptable behaviour of children is punished, which requires the excuse of being too old to beat him now. Another possibility of correction, suggested by Mr O'Connor, is work, whereupon Old Jack supplies the information that this did not work out either. Note that the question of O'Connor about the age of Old Jack's son pertains to the information necessary for O'Connor to make
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his suggestive question. In the next chapters of this book it will be analysed how sequences of speech acts are thus related to the distribution and communication of information in conversations. The point here is that the statement and questions of O'Connor are topically related to the semantic structure of Old Jack's narrative in the way described in the informal paraphrase given aboye, and summarized in the following informal and partial representations of frames:
[151 EDUCATION
xbrings up y
xsends y to school
xtríes to make y decent
if y shows unacceptable behaviour then x punishes y if y is spoilt then y has unacceptable behaviour
y must respect x
if y is grown up, x sends y to work
DRUNKENNESS
— is often hereditary
if x is a drunk and if x has money, x drinks his money.
These tentatively formulated `facts of the world' (known to the particular speech participants) together with general semantic postulates, yield the summarizing global information I tried to bring up my son decently' and `My son became a drunk'. The semantic information would for example specify that beating is a forro of punishment, and punishment a corrective act after misbehaviour. Clearly, these sorts of postulates give general information which cannot always be distinguished from the factual, ie more incidental information about the world. In that case the meaning of punishing is the ESSENTIAL part of a possible PUNISHMENT frame, which may, for example, contain the information that punishment may be executed by beating someone, and that beating is often executed with a stick: ¡e nonessential information about punishment. Characteristic of this kind of (narrative) dialogue is that the addressee, with his general frame knowledge, has certain assumptions about the development of the narrated events, and thus may ask questions seeking confirmation for his anticipatory hypotheses, or give confirmation of events by invoking general truths from the respective frarnes.
It will be investigated below what other properties such dialogues and conversations have. We now have a first indication, however, that they also may have topical macro-structures, just like monologue discourses. One of the systematic differences in that case is that in (oral) conversation, discourse referents need not always be introduced explícitly. The presence of some object or property in the conversational situation may be sufficient to identify these for the hearer, and may also be sufficient reason to be included in the topic of a conversation, at least under some further pragmatic conditions.
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3 Macro - operations and semantic information reduction
3.1
It will be suggested below that one of the cognitive functions of macrostructures is the ORGANIZATION, in processing and memory, of COMPLEX SEMANTIC INFORMATION. In particular, it will turn out that language users can not, and need not, store all the propositional information of a given discourse in verbal processing. Hence, this information will, at least in part, be REDUCED to the macro-structures as they were discussed aboye. A certain number of examples of this sort of semantic information reduction have been given. The general property holding for this reduction is that the reduced information must be entailed by the `full' semantic information of the discourse. In this section, we shall attempt to specify the relationships between the propositional structure of sequences and macro-structures.
3.2
First of all it should be emphasized again that macro-structures are not merely postulated in order to account for cognitive information processing. The hypothesis is that they are an integral part of the meaning of a discourse, and that, therefore, they are to be accounted for in a semantic representation. The basic idea is that the meaning of a sequence is not merely the sum' of the propositions underlying the sequence, but that, at another level, we should speak of the meaning of the sequence as a whole, hierarchically ordering the respective meanings of its sentences.
It is a sound principie of explicit semantic theories, however, that the meaning of compound or complex units is to be defined in terms of the meanings of their component units. Both the 'sequential' meaning and the global meaning of a discourse have been represented by an ordered set of propositions. It will be assumed therefore that macro-structures are related to micro-structures — as we may briefly call the semantic structure of the sequence of sentences — by sets of SEMANTIC MAPPINGS. In other words: in order to obtain macro-structures of any sequence we must apply a number of operations. Since, as we saw, a certain amount of more detailed information gets 'lost' during these operations, we may speak of operations of SEMANTIC INFORMATION REDUCTION. On the other hand information is not just `deleted' in such operations, but also INTEGRATED. That is, a certain number of propositions may be replaced by one (macro-)proposition `subsuming' the
more detailed information ata MORE GLOBAL LEVEL OF REPRESENTATION. It
is this macro-proposition which then accounts for the fact that the original sequence of propositions forms a semantic unit the level of the macro-proposition.
3.3
The various operations and their specific conditions will be tentatively formulated with respect to the examples discussed earlier in this chapter.
A first general constraint, holding for all rules, is as follows:
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[16]For any sequence E= (p„ p Z , ... , p„> of propositions of a discourse and for any p; E E: if there is a proposition p; e E, such that p; is a presupposition of p ^ , then p. may not be deleted by macro-operations.
More particularly [16] may be given in terms of presupposítions holding between topics (macro-structures), such that the rule guarantees that the semantic macro-structure is semantically 'well-formed'. Thus, in our first example [11, we may not omit the information that a (Fairview) is a town, because this is presupposed by further information about the presence of factories, shops, streets, etc. Similarly, at the macro-structural level, thís topical proposition may not be deleted because it is a presupposition for the following topics in the story (about the local newspaper).
A first rule of information reduction is, very simply, DELETION: information is simply left out, along the following schema 1° (where--► denotes the semantic mapping):
[17] fx&gx—►fx
Example:
[ 18 ] town(a) & little(a) —.'town(a)
The disadvantage of this traditional logical representation is that we cannot read from the formula that `little' is an ATTRIBUTE of `town', so that we can not, more specifically, formulate the rule to hold for certain attributes. Note, incidentally, that a need not be little in general, but only relative to the normal size of towns. It is not our aim to provide a sound formal language and logic for attributes, so the traditional notation will have todo. Now, only those propositions may be deleted according to [ 17] which have an attributive predicate, and not those which have what may be called an 'ídentifying' or `conceptual' predicate. The latter predicates identify a thing, assign it to a category of things of a certain kind, defined by a number of essential properties. Attributive predicates will provisionally be characterized as those referring to accidental properties (not holding in all possible worlds/times). Rule [17] may apply to example [18] because the size of the town is an accidental property (it may grow, for example), and because the proposition `little(a)' is not a presupposition of any other proposition in the sequence, as is specified by constraint [16].
The same rule would apply in our passage to such information as:
[19] the factories are specializing in hand-tools Bentonville is a manufacturing town Bentonville is thirty miles away
This sort of ACCIDENTAL INFORMATION may be left out without changing the
meaning or influencing the interpretation of the subsequent sentences of the discourse.
Note that information deleted by [17] is
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its macro-structural result. That is, the mappings are unlike syntactic transformations such as those in generative-transformational grammar: after semantic deletions of this kínd we do not know which propositions have been deleted.
There is another deletion rule, but operating under different conditions. Here the information which is deleted is not `accidental' as described aboye, but is CONSTITUTIONAL of a certain concept or frame. That is, it specifies normal or expected causes and consequences of events, reasons and consequences of actions, preparatory and auxiliary actions, normal component events, actions or objects, and the `setting' (time, place, world) of the object, action or event. The schema for this rule would be something like:
[20] <fx &gx&h.x)—gx
Condition: gx U- <fx & gx & hx)
The brackets in the antecedent of operation [20] denote any ordering between the facts (cause, consequence, part of, etc). The condition makes it that in most situations the facts •fx" and *hx will co -occur with *gx. That means that the deleted information is at least INDUCTIVELY RECOVERABLE - which will have its consequences in cognitive processing.
Examples in passage [1] to which operation [20] may apply are:
[21 ] a has factories
the factories are the source of a's prosperity
the (other) factories are in the neighbouring districts b (Bentonville) has shops
b has trolley-cars
b's shops are brightly painted a has shabby houses
etc
These propositions need not be taken up into the macro-structure if there are propositions weakly implying the propositions in [21]. Thus, it is normal that towns have factories, and that if the town is prosperous the factories are one of the causes of prosperity. Similarly, in most normal worlds, towns have shops and streets, and bright paint is a normal sign of prosperity, whereas shabbiness is a normal sign (component) of decline.
A third operation is that of SIMPLE GENERALIZATION. Whereas in the previous operations the information deleted was accidental and constitutional (`normal'), respectively, the information deleted in generalizations is essential. Thus, if we generalize from a cat to an animal, we abstract from inherent properties of the cat species. The interesting macro-semantic role of this rule is that several objects or properties of the same superordinate class may be referred to, globally, with the narre of the superordinate class: there were toys lying around would express a macro-proposítion for a sequence like
There was a ball, a do!!, a toy-car, ... , lying around. The schema for this operation would be:
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[22] <fx &gx> — ► hx
Condition: (fxDhx) & (gx0 hx)
As for the first rule, the information in this case is irrecoverable.
The last operation is also a form of generalization and also involves essential information, but, as in the second operation, this deleted information denotes essential properties, causes, components, consequents, etc of a higher level fact. That is, the information is not as such deleted but
COMBINED or INTEGRATED. Thus, the sequence (1 bought wood, stones and concrete; 1 laid foundations; 1 erected walls, 1 made a roof....> may for example be subsumed under a proposition like `I built (a house)'. The essential information of the sequence is in that case recoverable, because it is part of the more general concept or frame. The tentative schema for this operation of integration is:
[23] Ux&gx >—.hx
Condition: hx0-• Ux&gx>
Note that all operations satisfy the ENTAILMENT relation. That is, after the application of any operation the resulting macro-propositions are entailed by the micro-structure (ie the sequence of sentence-proposítions). We now see that the macro-operations are indeed reducing information by several kinds of ABSTRACTION: irrelevant detail, normal properties or constituents, subset specifications, or necessary properties and constituents are not referred to by the macro-proposítions. In other words: the operations define what is RELATIVELY IMPORTANT in a passage. On the one hand this importance is relative to information occurring in the same sequence, and on the other hand this importance is a property of a (macro-)proposition relative to the propositions of the original sequence, ie of the WHOLE with respect to the PARTS. Note also that the first and the second rule are SELECTIVE, whereas the third and the fourth rule are CONSTRUCTIVE. The selective operations are of the deleting type, whereas the constructive operations are of the substituting type.
The macro-rules formulated aboye are RECURSIVE: whenever there is a sequence of propositions satisfying the conditions a new macro-structure at a more general level will be formed. This means that a text may have several
LEVELS OF MACRO-STRUCTURE m l , M 2 , ... , m, where m„ is the `general'
macro-structure of the text as a whole (in a macro-structurally nonambiguous text). It has already been emphasized that m„ must be the LEAST GENERAL macro-proposition, in order to guarantee enough specific `content' in a macro-structure. That is, the component macro-propositions in m, are not themselves, individually, further generalized. For example, from the proposition `a town is declining' we do not generalize to `something is declining' or `something has some property'. Constraint [16] in this case will guarantee that no macro-propositions are deleted or generalized which are presuppositions of other macro-propositions at the same level. Furthermore,
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the operations will apply only if the input is at least two proposítions (see note 5 below).
3.4
A certain number of restrictive remarks should be added to the principies of information reduction formulated aboye.
First of all, at this moment it cannot be proved that the various operations are SUFFICIENT for an adequate account of semantic information reduction in grammar (and/or cognition). At the same time it may turn out that the rules are too POWERFUL, and that further constraints must be supplied.
Secondly, it should be emphasized that the formation of macro-structures, although theoretically based on a relation of entailment and thus having a 'deductive' nature, may in fact often have an INDUCTIVE nature. It may be the case, for example, that a macro-proposition 4, is entailed by the sequence but that, eg, only a sequence <q, q) > is expressed in the discourse, which, as such, does not entail +/i. Now, in case proposition cp 2 is a
normal consequence of cp„or anormal condition or presupposition of 4) 3 , we may inductively <cpl , 4'>, and hence also <4,, such that the macro-proposition 41 can be constructed. This inductive procedure is normal in all sorts of information processing: we make hypothetical conclusions with partial evidence. At the level of perception and (inter-)action we may observe somebody building walls, etc and conclude he is building a house even if we do not yet see him making a roof for example. The same holds in the actual interpretation of discourse: we do not need all essential components of a concept or frame in order to infer the general concept.
A third restriction pertains to the generality of the proposed principies. Although it may be maíntaíned that they are general principies of semantic information reduction, information reduction and hence macro-structure formation may be different for various In more concrete terms: what is 'important' information in one discourse or conversation may be less important for other types of discourse. It may be assumed that in narrative discourse, for example, event and action descriptions are more important (with respect to macro-structures) than state descriptions. This means that the macro-structure of a narrative should also contain several action/event descriptions and not merely a description of the initial and/or final state of an episode. As we shall see below, narratíves also have narrative 'macro-structures'. It will therefore be necessary to provide for the possibility that the various discourse types each have their own constraints in the application of the principies, even if the principies themselves are type-independent.
Finally, the principies are not only general, but also 'ideal' and theoretical. They do not indicate how individual language users will in fact construct macro-structures from a given discourse. Due to various cognitive factors, the actually constructed cognitive macro-structures may be different for different language users, or different for the same language user in different pragmatic contexts or social situations. Again the actual APPLICATION of the
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rules may be variable (within certain bounds) but the rules themselves are general (grammatical) and thus may only provide theoretical predictions of actual behaviour or processing. We here again touch upon more general methodological problems of psycho-linguistics, the empirical nature of grammatical theories and their relation to cognitive models.
4 Macro-structures and the conditions of connection and coherence
4.1
In previous chapters we have discussed a set of conditions determining the linear connection and coherence of pairs and sequences of propositions. One of the elements in the formal semantics of connectives in natural languages, however, remained undefined, viz the notion TOPIC OF CONVERSATION. It was argued that for two propositions to be connectible with a connective the facts denoted by these propositions must be related. This relation should hold in the same possible world or situation, or in otherwise related or accessible worlds. At the same time it was pointed out that this relation between facts is nota sufficient condition of natural connection: propositions are connected only with respect to a topic of conversation. In this chapter this notion has been treated in more detail, and we now must see in what ways topics of conversation/discourse, ie macro-structures, really determine linear connection, and the coherence of sequences.
4.2
In order to illustrate our hypothesis we may construct the following example of a compound sentence:
[24]The houses in the town were shabby, and a lot of unemployed people were hanging around at street corners.
Now, the two main clauses can be said to be connected first of all because of the identity of worlds or situations or of certain individuals (`town'), but it is further required that the facts referred to be related. Such a relation between the shabbiness of houses and unemployment and its consequences does not exist, at least not in a direct way. Still, sentence [24] is perfectly acceptable. We therefore will have to assume that the clauses are connected by the topic of conversation of the particular passage, viz `The town was declining'. In that case, both propositions are probable consequences of the macrostructure proposition. To use other terms: they both belong to the same frame, viz that of economic (urban) decline.
On the other hand, the sentence
[25]John was born in Manchester, and we are going to the beach.
will be disconnected if there is no macro-proposition defining a topic of conversation with respect to which both are relevant, whereas
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[26] John was borra in Manchester, and he went to primary school in Birmingham.
[271 John was borra in Manchester, but his parents were from Scotland.
are acceptably connected by a superordinate topic like `the major events of John's life'.
4.3
Similar remarks may be made about the coherence of a sequence of sentences in general. We have seen that referential identity, both of individual objects or of properties, or identity or other relations between worlds, are not sufficient to establish coherence. Thus, the following sequence appears unacceptable in most contexts, although there are semantic relations between its underlying propositions:
[281 1 bought this typewriter in New York. New York is a large city in the USA. Large cities often have serious financial problems ..
Sequences of this type may perhaps be said to be linearly coherent, but at another level of comprehension they do not make sense owing to the lack of a specific topic of conversation. In [28] the topic of conversation must at least contain the concept of a typewriter, or of buying typewriters, but such a topic does not contain information about large cities in the world or specific financial issues.
On the other hand, a passage such as that about Fairview at the beginning of this chapter is linearly coherent also because it has a macro-structure. In fact, such a macro-structure even allows subsequent sentences to be semantically unrelated if both are related to the same macro-structure.
5 Linguistic evidence for macro-structures
5.1
Some brief remarks are necessary about the status of the t,INGUJsTJC evidence for our hypothesis that, at the semantic level, the coherence of discourse is determined also by macro-structures.
Often the question of evidence for certain rules, categories or levels of description is formulated in terms of certain linguistic 'forms', such as properties of morpho-phonological or syntactic structures of sentences. That is, for example, semantic or pragmatic differentiations should only be made in a theoretical framework if such differentiations can be or are regularly and conventionally expressed'. Conversely, in a FUNCTIONAL view of language, it is assumed that systematic morpho-phonological and syntactic differences correspond to semantic and pragmatic differences.
Within the perspective of this chapter it might therefore be asked whether macro-structures have direct linguistic manifestations. If not, such structures might be of interest only in a cognitive account of information processing, for example.