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Discourse Structures of English Exposition Donghong Liu English department Huazhong Normal University Wuhan, China
[email protected] Abstract—Van Kuppevelt’s approach to discourse structure emphasizes that topicality is the general organizing principle. His discourse structure consisting of MAIN STRUCTURE and SIDE STRUCTURE has been applied to conversations and discourse segmentations rather than expository essays. In this paper two discourse structures of expository essays are proposed in Van Kuppevelt’s framework. The proposed structure can test the soundness of the ways of developing expository essays. Key words—exposition discourse structure topicality
I. INTRODUCTION Discourse structures have been studied from many perspectives and various models and theories have been proposed, such as “Linguistic Discourse Model” [1], “Rhetorical Structure Theory” [2] [3] [4], “Segmented Discourse Representation Theory” [5] and “QuestionAnswer Structure” [6]. LDM provides significant mechanisms for systematic investigation of discourse-level linguistic phenomena, which conduce to the interpretation of simple and complex units. But discourse segmentation does not appeal to full stops. As a result, the basic constituent units may be very small and the segmentation work becomes trivial [7]. RST has become one of the most popular theories in the last decade. However, despite its palpability and plainness, the diagrams produced by RST lack full hierarchical display, especially the diagram of a simple text. Static structures are emphasized without reflecting the dynamic aspect of discourse production and comprehension. SDRT assumes that a discourse has a hierarchical structure and information in a discourse is richly structured contrasted with the static, traditional conception of information in a discourse as a conjunction of propositions. Discourse relation plays a critical role in the construction of discourse representation. Yet, there is no uniform classification of discourse relations. Generally speaking, those theories mentioned above put weight on the local coherence between sentences, or clauses, even phrases, failing to produce a macrostructure of a certain genre. In view of that, this paper attempts to propose discourse structures of exposition1 based on Van Kuppevelt’s Question-Answer structure.
1
Exposition is defined by Purdue University Online Writing Lab as a genre of essay that requires the student to investigate an idea, evaluate evidence, expound on the idea, and set forth an argument concerning that idea in a clear and concise manner.
Meizhen Liao English department Huazhong Normal University Wuhan, China
[email protected] II. VAN KUPPEVELT’S QUESTION-ANSWER STRUCTURE Van Kuppevelt [6] (also see [8]) hypothesizes that a discourse derives its coherence from an internal, hierarchical topic-comment structure. The opening sentence(s) of a discourse may function as a Feeder (F) to initiate a higher-order WH-question (Q) which can constitute a discourse topic. The following sentence is the answer (A). But if the answer is unsatisfactory it will give rise to a sub-question which, if also answered unsatisfactorily, gives rise to a further sub-question. The unsatisfactoriness may be of a QUANTITATIVE nature or a QUALITATIVE nature. So subquestions may function as QUANTITATIVE elaborations or QUALITATIVE elaborations. The former ones add a new partial comment value to the previous one provided by the unsatisfactory answer, and they together compose the goal-satisfying part of the extended answer. The latter only contribute to a given value without adding a new one. All of these may form the MAIN STRUCTURE of a discourse, an answer to a set of leading topic-forming questions. Van Kuppevelt [6] emphasizes that topicality is the general organizing principle. In addition to the questionbased MAIN STRUCTURE, he has also defined and explained SIDE STRUCTURE generated as a result of “topic digression” which “occurs when a new topic is introduced as the result of a part of the preceding discourse for which the topic has not yet been dealt with satisfactorily”(pp.820). There’re three criteria in topic digression: first, the question introducing a topic digression is asked as a result of the preceding answer; second, it is not subordinate to the topic-constituting question, contributing to the topic; third, at the moment when it is asked, the old topic hasn’t lost its actuality. In sum, SIDE STRUCTURE is intervening because the process related to the preceding topic-constituting question is interrupted. That’s to say, the new topic is introduced into the discourse but the old topic has not yet been closed off. An example from Van Kuppevelt [6] may serve as an illustration. F1 A: Today the Ministers of Agriculture of the European Community were not present at the installation of their new member. Q1 B: Why not? A1/F2 A: They had a meeting about the large European butter surplus. Q2 B: (By the way,) what solution did they propose for this problem? A2 A: They proposed to undersell this butter on the European market.
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Q3 A3
B: Why did they have to meet today? A: Any postponement would be irresponsible in view of the recent worsening of the problem.
Figure1 discourse structure with topic digression (Van Kuppevelt, 1995:820)
The first sentence is the feeder of the discourse and initiates the WH-question Q1. A1 has a double function in discourse development. It can function both as the answer to Q1 and the feeder to Q2 which introduces the topic digression, sometimes by a cue such as “by the way”. F2, Q2 and A2 constitute a discourse unit, a SIDE STRUCTURE which is indicated by a box. UDT2 means discourse unit with the discourse topic 2.
III.
PROPOSED DISCOURSE STRUCTURES OF EXPOSITION
Van Kuppevelt [6] only discusses dialogues, expository paragraphs and narrative paragraphs, without touching upon the global structure of expository essays. In view of that, we attempt to propose the discourse structure of exposition based on his theory. An exposition consists of three parts: Introduction, Body and Conclusion. And the body may comprise one or several paragraphs. In this paper Introduction and Body may be the focus. Generally speaking, there’re two global structures: “Cause-Effect” structure and “Generalization” structure. The former is characterized by its “QUALITATIVE elaborations” (see Figure 2).
raises the next implicit question Q2 “Why does the author think so?” A2, the claim of argument 1, answers the question and also serves as a feeder to elicit a new topic, thus raises the question Q3 “Why” and begins the topic digression. The developing sentence A3 answers Q3 and causes Q4 and so on until A5 provides a satisfactory answer and closes off Q5. These items constitute a SIDE STRUCTURE. Q6 resumes the old topic. Henceforth argument 2 and its developing sentences A7, A8 and A9 are introduced into the discourse and form another SIDE STRUCTURE. The sufficient answer of A9 closes off Q9 and accordingly closes off Q8, Q7 and Q6 in turn. Finally, the closure of both Q2 and Q6 makes the topic elicited by Q1 closed off. F1, Q1 and A2 (sometimes up to Q2 and Q6) usually constitute Introduction in an expository essay, while the others may fall into Body. The same analysis from F1 to A2 can be applied to the “Generalization” structure (see Figure 3). However, the Body is different from the “Cause-Effect” structure, that is, the questions in the SIDE STRUCTURES are QUANTITATIVE elaborations. A2 serving as the answer to Q2, can also function as a feeder to digress the topic from the MAIN STRUCTURE and elicit several questions focusing on the new topic. A3, A4 and A5 answer those questions. Q6 resumes the old topic and goes back to the MAIN STRUCTURE. It is the same case with Argument 2 and its developing sentences. In the end A1 becomes an adequate answer to Q1 and the whole discourse topic is closed off. In sum, the global discourse structures of “Cause-Effect” and “Generalization” consist of a MAIN STRUCTURE and two or more SIDE STRUCTURES.
Figure 3 discourse structure of exposition—“Generalization” structure
IV.
TS = Thesis Statement Ar = Argument DS = Development Sentence Figure 2 discourse structure of exposition——“Cause-Effect” structure
At the very beginning of the essay the general statements related to the topic serve as the feeder (F1), which elicits the explicit or implicit question Q1 “What’s the author’s standpoint?”. A1 answers the question and
APPLICATION
A. Data collection and result The proposed discourse structures of exposition can be used to analyze the compositions of Chinese learners of English. 100 compositions written by the sophomores in English department have been collected so that the ways of developing the claim can be analyzed. The results show that not all of the learners have used the two structures proposed above, and that five ways of developing the claim have been found, among which “Elaboration” and “Cause-Effect” are still the two major ways. The former includes illustration with examples and statistics, and developing the claim in detail. The latter refers to the fact that the developing sentences provide the reasons for the claim. The two ways conform to the discourse structure proposed above. Apart from “Elaboration” and “Cause-effect”, three other ways --“Continuation”, “Effect” and “Listing” have also been found. Continuation and Effect relations are preferred
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since the two relations are typical and popular in traditional Chinese writing. “Continuation” refers to the relationship among the sentences in a paragraph which has no sentence serving as the claim. There’re two cases. One is “implicit continuation” that lacks explicit claim which, however, can be induced by the readers. For example, In addition, those volunteers working for some particular communicating occasion or some celebration, they do good to culture spread and promoting the connection of different areas. As for themselves, their horizon is largrly broaded(E)2 and the precious experience are(E) good treasures that prepare themselves for their futures. The paragraph does not provide support to the first sentence to explain “why those volunteers do good to culture spread and promoting the connection of different areas”, so the first sentence cannot be considered as the topic sentence or claim. All of the sentences are related to “benefits of volunteering”, and the readers can induce from the paragraph the topic sentence “volunteering work can not only benefit other people but also the volunteers themselves”. The other kind of “Continuation” is on the contrary since the readers cannot induce the topic sentence or claim from the incoherent sentences. Take the following paragraph as an example. The paragraph includes several aspects but these aspects are loosely connected. Secondly, everyone has his own ups and downs through his life time. If we help others when they are in trouble, we can turn to them when we are confronted with dificulties(E). As we all hnown(E), the terrible earthquake led to great damage to Sichuan province. At that crucial moment, many colleage(E) students, soildiers(E) and some government officiers(E) participated the rescued activity. If there had been no volunteers, what a catastrophic disaster our country would have experienced. So the volunteering even can make an nation more hamonier(E). “Effect” in this study means that sentence A is the cause of sentence B, that is “A B”. Many aspects are involved and constitute a causal chain which goes far away from the original cause. The following paragraph may serve as an illustration. The author seems to try to convey such a causal chain: “young people’s addiction to internet” causes “turning to the net friends for help” which causes “the decline of the ability to solve problems” which in turn causes “the occurrence of psychological problems”. But no controlling idea is mentioned explicitly. Moreover, the causal chain is not warranted. First, young people are easier to become addicted (E) the Internet, as we all know, the Internet World is not true. In fact, young people often turn to their ‘‘friends’’ online for help when they are depressed, lonely or frustrated. 2
The word is incorrectly spelt in the original composition by the student. The spelling or grammar errors in the examples are labeled as (E).
Consequently, these addicts rely on and count on their online friends and they can hardly resolve or deal with their problems in the real world. As a result, they develop a mental and phydological (E) problems. Contrary to “Continuation”, in the case of “Listing” there’s no developing sentence. The following example may be a case in point. First of all, keeping a good mood can make us feel less anxious and more confident when getting into trouble, thus helping us get over the hardships we encounter. In addition, it contributes a lot to committing ourselves to our study and work, for only in a good mood can we concentrate ourselves. B. Analyses Although in the above three ways of development the developing sentences have something to do with the discourse topic and convey new information, yet we still feel the paragraphs unacceptable. The proposed discourse structures of exposition can be applied to the soundness of the ways of development. “Continuation” is illustrated in Figure 4. Both kinds of “Continuation” lack the direct answer to the thesis question “Why do you think so?”, that is, A2 in Figure 4. Although Van Kuppevelt [6] maintains that the questions are frequently implicit (i.e. the writers or the readers can ask themselves in their mind), yet he never contends the answer can also be implicit. It is the writer’s responsibility to make the ideas clear for the readers [9]. For want of A2, no feeder can initiate questions and the SIDE STRUCTURE is absent accordingly. Thus, the discourse sounds extremely obscure and incoherent.
Figure 4 discourse structure of “Continuation”
As for “Listing”, the questions to arguments A2 and A4 can be elicited but no answers are offered. In Figure 5 the questions are Q3 and Q5. Consequently both A2 and A4 are unsatisfactory answers and the topics of Q2 and Q4 cannot be closed off, which results in the failure of terminating the discourse topic elicited in Q1. The SIDE STRUCTURES are not complete.
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“Elaboration”, “Cause-effect”, “Continuation”, “Effect”, “Listing”. In this framework the last three ways are proved invalid and are rejected, which is consistent with our intuition. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Figure 5 discourse structure of “Listing”
As for the discourse structure of “Effect”, suppose the first sentence in “Effect” as the claim A2, then Q3 may be elicited to ask “Why do you make such a claim?”, the usual question in expository writing. But the answer A3 is not a correct one since it answers “What is the effect of the claim?” It is not the supposed question elicited by the claim in expository genre. The SIDE STRUCTURE is not complete. In this case, the sub-topic in Q3 cannot be closed off, neither can that in Q2. Consequently, A1 is not a satisfactory answer to Q1.
This paper is one of the research results of the project “Generalizing Ability of Chinese L2 Learners” (project number 10BYY095). We’d like to express our thanks to National Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science in China, which has funded this research. We are also thankful to the anonymous peer referees who have given us constructive suggestions.
REFERENCES [1]
[2]
[3] [4] [5] [6] Figure 6 discourse structure of “Effect”
V.
CONCLUSION
Van Kuppevelt’s Question-Answer structure is highly efficient in analyzing conversations and discourse segmentations. Based on it, two discourse structures of expository essays have been proposed to analyze and test the soundness of the varied ways of development---
[7] [8] [9]
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