Gramley, Stephan; P?tzold, Kurt-Michael. A Survey of Modern English

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For a non-traditional discussion of word classes see Fries 1952, Chapters 5–7; otherwise,

see Huddleston 1984, Chapter 3. On verb types see: Bolinger 1971; Cowie and Mackin

1993; Taylor 2000; Palmer 1987, Chapter 10. The criteria for prepositions are discussed

in Quirk and Mulholland 1964.

Phrasal units are treated in Huddleston 1984; also Quirk et al. 1985. For more on

sentence elements and sentence patterns see van Ek and Robat 1984 or Quirk et al.1985.

Dirven and Radden 1987 apply Fillmore’s concept of case to English.

Joos 1968, Palmer 1987 and Leech 1987 all offer comprehensive discussion of the

categories of the verb. For more on the future see: Wekker 1976; Close 1988. Tense

in the languages of the world is the subject of Comrie 1985; the same for aspect in Comrie

1976. For more extensive treatments of the perfect see: McCoard 1978; Fenn 1987. The

passive is treated in: Stein 1979; Svartvik 1966. For modality see Palmer 1990, 2001.

Theme-rheme and the communicative structure of sentences are treated in: Halliday

1967b; Dusˇkova 1971; Erdmann 1990. On the imperative, see: Davies 1986; Hamblin

1987.

142 ENGLISH AS A LINGUISTIC SYSTEM

Uses and users

of English

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Part 2

Written texts and English for

specific purposes (ESP)

The importance of texts is self-evident when we remember that all language occurs in

communicative units usually larger than single words or sentences. All the same, texts

have proven to be the hardest units to describe, perhaps because of the seemingly endless

variations texts present us with. Nevertheless, this chapter shows that a number of mean-

ingful things can be said about texts. The phenomenon text will be treated from two points

of view. The ﬁrst half of the chapter deﬁnes (in 6.1 and 6.2) what qualities linguists have

in mind when they speak of texts and then attempts a classiﬁcation of text types (6.3),

which is applied to the discussion of a concrete example (6.4). The second half of the

chapter (6.5–6.7) deals with ESP, which is the use of English in a restricted set of social

and thematic areas chieﬂy for the unambiguous transfer of technical information. Here

we give special attention to one particular genre of written texts, that of English for science

and technology (EST).

This chapter and Chapter 7, ‘Spoken discourse’, complement each other: the discus-

sion of cohesion and coherence in this chapter is also relevant for spoken language, while

the discussion of speech act theory (7.2.1) and global knowledge patterns (7.4.2

‘Schemas’) has a direct bearing on the production and reception of written language. The

chapter titles ‘Written texts’ and ‘Spoken discourse’ have been chosen for practical

reasons rather than terminological precision – many linguists use the two terms text and

discourse interchangeably, as is done on occasion in this book. However, a distinction is

often made between text, as a uniﬁed stretch of language without regard to situational

context, and discourse, in which situational factors are taken into account.

6.1 TEXTUALITY

What distinguishes written (or spoken) texts from a random collection of sentences (or

utterances) is the quality of textuality. Textual units are connected with one another by

means of what is called connectivity, connexity, or continuity. Textuality is the result

of the seven factors discussed below and depends on both the writer and the reader to

varying degrees.

(1) Cohesion and (2) coherence Textual unity manifests itself at different levels.

Writers link text sentences above all using grammatical and lexical means (sometimes

termed the co-text, Werlich 1983: 80) which prompt readers to interpret them as belonging

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Chapter 6

together. This is called grammatical and lexical cohesion. A deeper, semantic level is

involved in coherence, which refers to the continuity of subject matter (see 6.2).

(3) Intentionality and (4) acceptability These relate to the attitudes of writer and

reader. Writers intend to produce cohesive and coherent texts, and readers accept them

as such, showing a certain tolerance towards texts where writers’ intentions may be less

than perfectly realized. Both writer intention and reader acceptance are not based solely

on knowledge of the language system but also on the ability of the sides to bring their

knowledge of the world to bear on text production and reception (see 6.4.2. on schemas).

Of particular interest is the way addressees ﬁll in gaps or breaks in the surface continuity

of texts in order to make them cohesive and coherent (see 7.2.2. on inference).

(5) Informativity This is reader centred and refers to the degree to which the text

produced is expected or unexpected, and whether it repeats what is known already or

provides new information. No text provides only old or only new information, but the

ratio of the two can vary considerably and depends on the writer’s intentions and assess-

ment of the reader. Texts about well known things are easy to produce and understand,

but can also easily bore the reader. Texts that give a lot of new information, on the other

hand, are more difﬁcult to understand, though they are likely to be of greater interest to

readers. There is, then, an inverse correlation between minimum writer and reader effort

(efﬁciency) and maximum impact of the message (effectiveness). In general, writers focus

on the problematic or variable aspects of a topic because only they provide new infor-

mation (de Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 189). For instance, the midday meal is a well

established institution in many countries: therefore, when writing about lunch in England

one will concentrate on what is different from lunch in other countries, namely the class

connotations that attach to it (see the text in 6.2).

(6) Situationality This concerns factors of appropriateness and relevance. This

includes such aspects as using informal vocabulary and short sentences in informal situ-

ations. It also has to do with discourse strategies, for example the selection and

sequencing of text units in such a way as to achieve the writer’s goal.

(7) Intertextuality This stresses the fact that the production and reception of texts and

text units often depend upon both the writer’s and the reader’s knowledge of other texts

or text forms and their patterns or ways of expression.

The presence or absence of these seven aspects depends on the individuals involved.

Different people will see different things in the same text and in different situations:

Textuality is not an inherent property of a collection of sentences or utterances, but is

attributed to it by a reader. Furthermore, it is not necessary to realize all seven for

textuality to be present. This seems to be a subjective matter. As regards informativity,

it has been shown that readers will try to make a text relevant and informative even if it

is far from clear what it is meant to communicate. So, one needs to question the degree

to which the sender and addressee might be aware of the connections of any one partic-

ular text with other texts. For example, in the cases of Vanity Fair (by Thackeray – an

allusion to an episode in John Bunyan’s novel The Pilgrim’s Progress) and Ulysses

(by Joyce – the Latin name of the hero in Homer’s Odyssey) the signiﬁcance of the titles

146 USES AND USERS OF ENGLISH

for the interpretation of the novels depends on the literary education of the reader. Yet a

text which is not dependent on other texts in an obvious way would not be without textual

status either. It is obvious that people vary in the extent to which they can decode the

information in a text successfully.

6.2 COHESION AND COHERENCE

We will illustrate cohesive devices from the following text (the numbers in brackets are

used in the subsequent discussion to refer to the headword and each of the sentences):

[1] Lunch [2] The word – and the thing itself – cause endless trouble still in England

at that join in the class pyramid where it is still called dinner. [3] Any Englishman

who does call lunch dinner indicates at once and for sure to any other Englishman

that he hails from somewhere below the middle of the middle class. [4] The difﬁ-

culty is relatively new in the long vista of English history, since the word till quite

recently meant a snack between proper meals. [5] There was a time when everyone

in England who could afford to do so dined in the afternoon and supped in the

evening. [6] Then, with ease and afﬂuence, lunch began its metamorphosis to a meal

in its own right: an agreeable pause in the rhythm of the working day for deals and

dalliance. [7] It is now a social divider of inﬁnite power. [8] It distances husbands

from their wives (he had roast beef in the cafeteria, she had cottage cheese salad in

the kitchen). [9] It distances bosses from their workers (grouse and claret in the board-

room, sandwiches and tea on the building site). [10] It separates the employed from

the unemployed (steak and kidney in the pub, baked beans by the telly). [11] The

proliferation of the expense account has allowed a whole clutch of restaurants to

spring up serving meals customers would never dream of eating at home. [12]

Whether much business is achieved at these festivals of cholesterol is a moot point:

in certain ﬂash callings like showbiz and publishing the point is not so much what

you eat but with whom you eat it. [13] It has become a handy way for royalty to

entertain foreign potentates who are not worth putting up and for government to

entertain middling visiting politicians; a convenient means for business to coddle

new clients and a continuing solace to underdogs for their meagre rewards. [14] There

may be no bonus at Christmas again but at least there’s lunch to look forward to

with old Ronnie at L’Escargot (see Soho). [15] Though a socialist government did

its best to discourage lunch by making meals no longer tax-deductible it has had little

effect. [16] In any event, the left seems as keen to go out to lunch as anyone else.

[17] Lunch will cease to be a problem in England when it means the same to every

Englishman as déjeuner does to every Frenchman.

(G. Smith (1985) ‘Lunch’, The English Companion,

Harmondsworth: Penguin, p. 153)

6.2.1 Lexical links

For many text types, lexical or semantic ways of creating cohesion and coherence are

more important than syntactic means, especially in non-narrative texts. Lexical links will

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WRITTEN TEXTS AND ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES 147

therefore be discussed ﬁrst. There are many ways vocabulary items contribute to cohe-

sion and coherence. Most importantly: they constitute lexical ﬁelds; they establish

semantic relationships; and they can activate larger text patterns, thus imposing structure

on a whole text.

Lexical fields The text under consideration deals with lunch in England. This is

reﬂected in lexical sets which refer to the food consumed at lunch, to meal names and to

typical places of eating:

food and drink: roast beef, cottage cheese salad, grouse, claret, sandwich,

tea, steak and kidney [pie], baked beans

meal names and verbs: lunch, dinner, snack, meal; sup, dine; have, serve (a meal);

go out to lunch

places: cafeteria, kitchen, boardroom, pub, restaurants.

These sets of lexical items activate in readers stored knowledge of things, places, people

and their roles (see 7.4.2), with which they ﬂesh out what is said in the text, and thus

make the text coherent in their minds.

Semantic relationships The most obvious means of continuity is perhaps the exact

repetition of a word. Still is thus repeated in [2], as is Englishman [3, 17] and meal

[4, 6]. Simple repetition is found in called [2] and call [2], as well as meals [4] and

meal [6]. This all seems straightforward to the point of triviality. But it is far from clear

what can count as repetition and what kinds of repetition should be distinguished. In our

text, it is necessary to differentiate at least between the examples just mentioned, in which

both word form and meaning seem to be identical, and the various occurrences of lunch

[3, 6, 14–17], where this is not the case: lunch has the modern meaning of ‘meal’ in

[3, 14–17] but refers to a snack in [6], where it cannot count as a repetition of lunch

in [3] because the information contained in the two identical word forms is different.

Close in meaning, if not identical, are difﬁculty [4] and problem [17], both of which

link with trouble in [2]. While difﬁculty and problem are loose synonyms independent

of context, distance [8, 9] and separate [10] are made synonymous only for this passage.

The same contextual synonymy is found in handy and convenient, and way and means in

[13]. Also to be noted is the contextual synonymy of meals in [11] with the unmentioned

compound business lunch, which is implied by the mention of expense account in [11],

and business in [12].

Repetition in the sense of identical information content is also present in words which

stand in the semantic relationship of hyponymy, provided that the more general (super-

ordinate) term follows the more speciﬁc. Thus, meal in [4] follows lunch and dinner in

[3], as well as snack in [4]; furthermore, it does not add any information that was not

contained in the three earlier words. The same goes for the left [16] and its hyponymous

expression socialist (government) [15]. Word and thing [2] can also be seen to repeat

lunch [1], though much more general than meal.

A further instance is the example of words which, though they do not contain the same

information, are related in meaning. Here there is hyponymy with an increase of informa-

tion, as in calling (superordinate) and showbiz and publishing [all 12]; see also rewards

[13] and bonus [14].

148 USES AND USERS OF ENGLISH

The ﬁnal group of examples all illustrate the relation of opposition as with the notions

‘continue’ and ‘cease’ contained in the words still and cease (cause endless trouble still

[2] and will cease to be a problem [17]), or in the complementary (or binary) pair

‘male’ and ‘female’ contained in husbands and wives in [8] and the employed–the

unemployed [10]. Examples of less exclusive forms of opposition are lunch–dinner [3],

lunch [3, 14–17] and lunch [6], dine–sup [5], bosses–workers [9]. Of the pairs of places

which are contrasted in [8–10], perhaps only boardroom and building site could be seen

as opposite in meaning (in terms of social class) outside of a speciﬁc context, while the

others (cafeteria–kitchen, in the pub–by the telly, restaurants–home) do not really exhibit

either striking similarity or opposition in meaning in isolation. Finally, a contrast seems

also to be involved in discourage lunch ‘stop people from wanting to go out to lunch’

and seem keen to go out to lunch [15–16].

Larger text patterns Certain vocabulary items have the function of linking larger

segments of text. Examples are problem, issue, approach, solution, difﬁculty, drawback

and question. The function of these procedural lexical items is to organize and structure

a text, to indicate the ‘larger text-patterns the author has chosen, and build up expecta-

tions concerning the shape of the whole discourse’ (McCarthy 1991: 76). The word trouble

in [2] has great cohesive power because it activates in the reader what has been called

the problem–solution pattern. The full pattern consists of the steps situation, problem,

response, result, evaluation. The word trouble makes the reader expect to be told at least

what the problem is and, possibly, how to resolve it. Sentence [2] is a brief statement

of the situation, and [3] and [7] through [12] give detailed descriptions of the problem.

An actual response to the situation, and its result, is mentioned in [15]. The ﬁnal text

sentence [17] can be seen as a sort of evaluation. The problem–solution pattern, signalled

by trouble [2], difﬁculty [4] and problem [17], is thus a device which helps to establish

the unity of the text.

Among the conceptual, and more broadly semantic, relations that are often found in

argumentative texts, three are evident in the lunch test: opposition, value and reason (see

de Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 184). The most important semantic relationship is that

of contrast or opposition. The most comprehensive contrast in our text is between the

harmful effects of lunch [7–11] and the useful functions it fulﬁls [13–16]. The pros and

cons also differ in degree. The lexemes indicating a positive evaluation (and thus real-

izing the conceptual relation of value), handy, convenient and continuing solace [13]

express a low or middling degree, while the negative evaluations are located near the

middle or the top of the scale: endless trouble [2], difﬁculty [4], social divider of inﬁnite

power [7], a whole clutch of restaurants . . . meals customers would never dream of eating

[11], festival of cholesterol [12], problem [17].

Englishmen in general are set in opposition to one another in [3] and in [8] to [10].

In [17] the English are contrasted with the French. A further series of contrasts clusters

around the concept of lunch. Elaborating on the contrast between word and thing in [2],

the author ﬁrst mentions the changes in the meaning of the word in [4] and [6] before he

proceeds to detail the differences in the thing itself, using places and foods to point

up the contrast in [8] to [10]. The ﬁnal contrast is between the action (discourage [15])

and the state (be keen [16]). The frequency of semantic contrasts on the levels of concepts,

lexical items and text sentences reﬂects a view of lunch as something which creates

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WRITTEN TEXTS AND ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES 149

divisions and sets people against one another. Oppositions are therefore particularly

appropriate for the theme chosen.

Only slightly less important is the relationship of reason or causality. Thus, [3]

provides the justiﬁcation for the statement in [2], just as the second half of [4] and [5–6]

give the grounds for the statement in the main clause of [4]. The same goes for the exam-

ples in [8–10] in relation to [7] and for the clause after the colon in [12] with respect to

the statement before the colon. The frequency of the reason relation demonstrates once

again that the author wants to win over his readers to his view of lunch in England.

6.2.2 Syntactic links

Other, syntactic, means also create links between text items: co-reference is established

by using pro-forms and articles, ellipsis, connectives, tense and time adverbials.

Co-reference Pronouns, articles and other pro-forms cannot be interpreted in their

own right, but rather direct the reader to look elsewhere (either in the text or outside it)

for their interpretation. The relation between pro-forms and articles, on the one hand, and

the text items referred to, on the other, is called co-reference and is distinct from refer-

ence, which is the function of lexical items which writers and speakers use to indicate

what they are writing or talking about outside the text (Brown and Yule 1983: 205). Pro-

forms and articles have two different uses, anaphoric and cataphoric: when they follow

the items which explain them, they have anaphoric force; when they precede them, they

are cataphoric.

Pronouns and pro-forms It has only anaphoric uses in the text about lunch, but its

scope varies considerably. The ﬁrst instance of its in [6] refers to lunch, and the second

instance to meal. In other cases the pronoun does not follow immediately on its referent,

see it in [2] where one has to go back to the word – and the thing itself. Close contiguity

is no help either in deciding on the referent for it in [7]: in making the connection with

lunch in [6] one has to cross the sentence boundary. It refers of course to lunch, the central

topic, and picks up the pattern of initial it, which is used in [7] through [10], but we need

our knowledge of the text topic and the text as a whole to be sure of this. The almost

exclusive co-referential function of it with lunch (exceptions are [12] and [15]) provide

the text with strong cohesive force. In all the sentences except [5] lunch is present either

in the form of lexical reference or co-reference with it.

All the other pronouns used in the text co-refer with something in the same sentence.

Most of them are also anaphoric (e.g. he [3], their [8], its [15]). Note that he and she in

[8] pick up husbands and wives respectively. An indeﬁnite meaning (‘one, people in

general’) attaches to you in [12].

There are only two cataphoric uses of pro-forms in the text. One is that [2], which points

forward to where it is still called dinner. In the other example, do so [5] refers to dined in

the afternoon and supped in the evening, the new information in the sentence. A change

in word order would have destroyed the thematic structure by putting the semantically

empty pro-forms in the informationally most prominent position at the sentence end.

No ﬁnal answers can be given to the question why one form of reiteration is chosen

rather than another – why, for example, a pronoun is preferred to a lexical item. One

150 USES AND USERS OF ENGLISH

criterion is distance: there is a limit, though this may vary from case to case, to the distance

across which a pronoun can still successfully co-refer to its antecedent. Furthermore, there

are stylistic grounds which may prevent the repetition of (lexical) items and require

synonyms etc. to be used. For both these reasons one might have expected lunch rather

than it in [13]: the nearest instance of lunch in [6] is quite a distance away, and sentence

[12] ends with it, which does not link with lunch. The explanation lies perhaps in a

different syntactic direction: when it co-refers with lunch in this text, it is identiﬁed

with sentence-initial position and the subject function. This makes it easier to understand

it in [13] and also accounts for the fact that the objects in [11], [12], [14] and [15] are

realized not by it, but by lexical items. In cases where an item is stressed, only a lexical

item, not a pronoun, is normally possible. This seems to be the more general reason behind

the use of lunch in [14]. The same thing applies particularly to [17], which closes the

topic in this text: it has been suggested that pronouns keep a text sequence open, while

lexical items indicate the end of a text sequence.

The definite article In [2], the deﬁnite articles in the word and the thing also have

anaphoric force, making it clear that the word and thing meant is lunch in [1]. In [4], the

difﬁculty co-refers, presumably, to the whole of [3], and the word points back to lunch.

In other examples co-reference is to things that are not mentioned in the text itself.

Here the article signals ‘you know which one I mean’, implying that there is only one –

or only one that is appropriate in the context. The author relies on the reader’s know-

ledge to make the text cohesive. Types of knowledge can range from worldwide (the

afternoon, the evening [5]) to very local. The author does not expect his readers to know

the restaurant L’Escargot in London’s Soho district, so he makes a cross-reference to his

entry for Soho. This creates a minimal link (of repetition) between two articles in The

English Companion. In contrast, there is no cross-reference to class for the class pyramid

[2] or to pubs for the pub [10], for a full understanding of which readers need to activate

their knowledge of English society and institutions. Other concepts like the cafeteria, the

kitchen [both 8], the boardroom, the building site [9], the telly [10] and the left [16] are

not restricted to England in the same way and therefore can be expected to be meaningful

to a wider readership.

Ellipsis The reader is also called upon to become active in several places and provide

missing sentence parts. Subject and predicator are deleted in the brackets in [9] and [10],

but can easily be supplied in analogy with [8]. In [13], it has become a handy way is not

repeated before for government, and subject and verb must be supplied to complete the

subject complements in the second half of [13].

Conjunctions and connectives What is striking in the ‘Lunch’ text is the lack of

explicit markers of relationships between sentences and parts of sentences. There is only

one connective (in any event [16]) and two conjunctions (since [4] and though [15]). The

author uses formal markers sparingly and relies instead largely on the readers’ ability to

provide the missing links themselves.

Tense and time adverbials The author is careful to mark temporal relationships

clearly. He starts out in the present, but still [2] establishes a link between present and

past, which is taken up again in relatively new and till quite recently [4]. A kind of natural

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