Vinh university Department of foreign languages ===    === Lexical cohesion in English brief news on oil price ( liên kết từ vựng tin vắn tiếng anh giá dầu) summary of Graduation thesis Field: Discourse analysis Supervisor: Student : Class : Phan Thi Van Huong, M.A Tran Thi Tuyet 46B2 - English Vinh, May- 2009 Acknowledgement The thesis could not be completed without the great support from my lecturers, family and friends Firstly, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, MA Phan Thi Van Huong for her readiness at all time to give me useful advice, critical feedback and useful materials, without which the thesis would not be completed Secondly, I should like to thank all my lecturers from Department of Foreign Languages, Vinh University for their valuable lectures on the area which help me orient the topic Finally, I wish to thank my family and my friends for their support and encouragement they gave me when I was doing this thesis i TABLE OF CONTENTS (chua co so trang) Acknowledgement Tables of contents Part A: Introduction Reasons for Choosing the Topic Aims of the Study Scope of the Study Methods of the Study Design of the Study Part B: Developments Chapter 1: Theoretical Background 1.1 Discourse 1.2 Discourse and Text 1.3 Spoken and Written Discourse 1.4 Discourse Context 1.4.1 Context of Situation 1.4.2 Context versus Co- text 1.5 The Concept of Cohesion 1.6 Cohesion and Coherence 1.7 Types of Cohesive Devices 1.8 Lexical Cohesion 1.8.1 Concept of Lexical Cohesion 1.8.2 Types of Lexical Cohesion 1.8.2.1 Collocation 1.8.2.2 Reiteration Chapter 2: Lexical Cohesion in English Brief News on Oil Price 2.1 A Brief Introduction to Data under Analysis 2.2 General Structure of Brief News in English Press 2.3 Lexical Cohesion in English Brief News on Oil Price 2.3.1 Collocation 2.3.2 Reiteration 2.3.2.1 Repetition 2.3.2.2 Synonyms/Near - synonyms 2.3.2.3 Superordinates and General Words Chapter 3: Discuss and Implication 3.1 Discussion 3.2 Some Implications for Teaching and Learning English Lexical Cohesion 3.3 Suggested Exercises Part C: Conclusion References Appendix TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgement Tables of contents Part A: Introduction Reasons for Choosing the Topic Aims of the Study Scope of the Study Methods of the Study 10 Design of the Study Part B: Developments Chapter 1: Theoretical Background 1.9 Discourse 1.10 Discourse and Text 1.11 Spoken and Written Discourse 1.12 Discourse Context 1.12.1 Context of Situation 1.12.2 Context versus Co- text 1.13 The Concept of Cohesion 1.14 Cohesion and Coherence 1.15 Types of Cohesive Devices 1.16 Lexical Cohesion 1.16.1 Concept of Lexical Cohesion 1.16.2 Types of Lexical Cohesion 1.16.2.1 Collocation 1.16.2.2 Reiteration Chapter 2: Lexical Cohesion in English Brief News on Oil Price 2.1 A Brief Introduction to Data under Analysis 2.2 General Structure of Brief News in English Press 2.3 Lexical Cohesion in English Brief News on Oil Price 2.3.1 Collocation ii 2.3.2 Reiteration 2.3.2.1 Repetition 2.3.2.2 Synonyms/Near - synonyms 2.3.2.3 Superordinates and General Words Chapter 3: Discuss and Implications 3.1 Discussion 3.2 Some Implications for Teaching and Learning English Lexical Cohesion 3.3 Suggested Exercises Part C: Conclusion References Appendix iii Pages i ii 1 2 4 7 9 11 11 11 12 12 12 14 14 15 15 17 17 20 21 25 26 26 33 35 Part A: Introduction Reasons for Choosing the Topic When reading a text, the first impression that helps readers understand its content is the feeling that it hangs together This way is implemented by various linguistic devices including grammatical and lexical ones According to David Nunan (1995:31), lexical cohesion is the single most important form of cohesion, accounting for something like 40% of cohesion ties in text Therefore, lexical cohesion can also make significant contribution to creating coherence of discourse The first reason originates from the author’s belief that obtaining a sufficient awareness of the vivid existence of lexical cohesion as a cohesive device, of its significant role in generating textual coherence as well as of proper ways in which it is used by native speakers (writers) can be helpful to her learning and writing English Authentic materials are no doubt a good source for language learning English brief news are said not only to contain updated information but also to be a useful and typical demonstration of lexical as well as grammatical cohesion usage Moreover, being interested in lexical cohesion, we find it very interesting and appropriate to apply related theories into news-in-brief daily updated on oil price-one of the hottest topics in the world now From the above-mentioned reasons, we decided to choose “Lexical Cohesion in Brief News on Oil Price” to be the theme of the thesis Aims of the Study The aims of the thesis are: - To emphasize the important role of lexical cohesion in creating textual coherence - To give some statistics and descriptions of lexical cohesion used in the selected English brief news - To make a first attempt to study the reasons leading to different degrees of fondness in using each type of lexical cohesion in English brief news - To suggest some practical applications in teaching and learning English lexical cohesion using English brief news as authentic material Scope of the Study Our study deals with types of lexical cohesion in discourse provided by Halliday & Hasan (1976) including collocation and reiteration Types of grammatical cohesion are out of the thesis The data analyzed in the thesis are brief news in http://news.yahoo.com/topics/oil-and-gas and http://www.oilmarketer.co.uk/.t The brief news are about world current oil price The oil price in the world has viotiled so much and has become a hot topic in the press Examples employed in chapter are taken from the brief news Methods of the Study - Collecting brief news related to the topic: world oil price - Finding out the examples containing different types of lexical cohesion - Analyzing some typical examples of each type - Reaching some conclusions on the subject-matter under investigation and accordingly giving necessary comments Design of the Study There are main parts in this research paper: Part A: Introduction This part introduces the reasons, aims, scope, methods and design of the study Part B: Development This part consists of three chapters: Part C: Chapter 1: Theoretical background Chapter 2: Lexical cohesion in brief news on oil price Chapter 3: Discussion and Implication Conclusion This part reviews what has been discussed in the content of the thesis and points out some suggestions for further study Part B: Development Chapter 1: Theoretical Background 1.1 Discourse 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 Crystal (1992:25) is “a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument, joke or narrative” Barbara Johnstone (2002:2) claims that “discourse usually means actual instances of communication in the medium of language” According to Nunan (1993), a discourse is “a stretch of language consisting of several sentences perceived as being related in some ways, in terms of the ideas they share and in terms of the jobs they perform within discourse.” In this thesis, the notion that seems to be the most acceptable is the one proposed by Guy Cook (1995:198) seeing discourse as “stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposive” 1.2 Discourse and Text There is still disagreement about the meaning of these two terms “discourse” and “text” For some linguists, the terms seem to be used almost interchangeably as Nunan (1995:1) indicates “A text, or a discourse, is a stretch of language that may be larger than a sentence.” However, some other writers draw a clear distinction between them Widdowson (1984) is probably one of the first who make a very explicit distinction According to him, text typically has cohesion whereas discourse has coherence, which can be illustrated by the following example: A: Did you buy meat for lunch, Lan? B: I have not gone to market yet Although there is no formal link between A and B, the listener can infer that Lan did not buy meat because she had not gone to market As in Widdowson (1984:100) the difference and the interrelationships between the two can be summarized: Discourse is a communicative process by means of interaction Its situational outcome is a change in a state of affairs: information is conveyed, intensions made clear, its linguistic product is text Other acclamations of some linguists are also similar to Widdowson’s viewpoint, i.e., discourse is language in action (or interaction) while a text is the written record of that interaction It is obvious that this view sees discourse as bringing together language, the individuals producing the language and the context within which the language is used On the other hand, other linguists tend to avoid using the term “discourse” altogether, and accept the term “text” for all recorded instances of language in use This study supports the distinction indicated by Salkie (1993): “the term text is used to refer to any written record of a communicative event whereas the term discourse refers to the interpretation of the communicative event in context” The event itself can be oral language (a sermon, a casual conversation, a shopping transaction) or written language (a poem, a newspaper advertisement, a wall poster, etc.) 1.3 Spoken and Written Discourse Spoken and written discourse simply mean speech and writing It has been widely agreed by linguists that there are common features as well as different ones between these two forms of language According to Halliday (1985), writing emerged in society as a result of cultural changes which created new communicative needs that could not be readily met by the spoken language Approvingly, Raphael Salkie (1993) contributes that the contexts for using written language are very different from those in which spoken 10 ... Concept of Lexical Cohesion 1.16.2 Types of Lexical Cohesion 1.16.2.1 Collocation 1.16.2.2 Reiteration Chapter 2: Lexical Cohesion in English Brief News on Oil Price 2.1 A Brief Introduction to Data... Ellipsis Conjunction Cohesion Collocation Lexical cohesion Repetition Reiteration Synonyms/near- synonyms Superordinates General words 1.8 Lexical Cohesion 1.8.1 Concept of Lexical Cohesion Linguists... Concept of Lexical Cohesion 1.8.2 Types of Lexical Cohesion 1.8.2.1 Collocation 1.8.2.2 Reiteration Chapter 2: Lexical Cohesion in English Brief News on Oil Price 2.1 A Brief Introduction to Data under