The seven standards of textuality

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The seven standards of textuality
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• What distinguish texts  is the quality of
  textuality
• Textuality is the result of seven factors and
  depends to both the writer and the reader to
  varying degrees
• Coherence and cohesion
• Cohesion and coherence are text-centred notions,
  designating operations directed at the text
  materials. Cohesion concerns the ways in which
  the components of the surface text (the actual
  words we hear or see) are mutually connected
  within a sequence (de Beaugrande Dressler
  19813). Coherence on the other hand concerns the
  ways in which the components of the textual
  world, i.e. the concepts and relations which
  underlie the surface text are mutually accessible
  and relevant. 
• The remaining standards of textuality are
  user-centred, concerning the activity of textual
  communication by the producers and receivers of
  texts
• Intentionality concerns the text producers
  attitude that the set of occurrences should
  constitute a cohesive and coherent text
  instrumental in fulfilling the producers
  intentions.
• Acceptability concerns the receivers attitude
  that the set of occurrences should constitute a
  cohesive and coherent text having some use or
  relevance for the receiver.
• Informativity concerns the extent to which the
  occurrences of the text are expected vs.
  unexpected or known vs. unknown/uncertain.
• Situationality concerns the factors which make a
  text relevant to a situation of occurrence. 
• Intertextuality concerns the factors which make
  the utilisation of one text dependent upon
  knowledge of one or more previously encountered
  texts.

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• The above seven standards of textuality are
  called constitutive principles (cf. Searle 1965),
  in that they define and create textual
  communication as well as set the rules for
  communicating. There are also at least three
  regulative principles that control textual
  communication
• the efficiency of a text is contingent upon its
  being useful to the participants with a minimum
  of effort
• its effectiveness depends upon whether it makes
  a strong impression and has a good potential for
  fulfilling an aim
• its appropriateness depends upon whether its own
  setting is in agreement with the seven standards
  of textuality.

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COHESION

• The ties that bind a text together.
• Halliday and Hasan define two general categories
  of cohesion
• grammatical cohesion (substitution, ellipsis,
  conjunction, reference)
• lexical cohesion (reitreration and collocation. 

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Grammatical cohesionREFERENCE

• The semantic relation that ensures the
  continuity of meaning in a text.
• It includes items that cannot be interpreted in
  their own right, but which make reference to
  something else for their interpretation.
• Ex Doctor Foster went to Gloucester in a shower
  of rain. He stepped in a puddle right up to his
  middle and never went there again
• Exophoric reference Refernce to items outside the
  text
• Endophoric reference Refernce to items within
  the text
• Cataphoric Forward pointing (this is how he said
  it)
• Anaphoric Backward pointing

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Grammatical cohesionSUBSTITUTION

• A grammatical relation, where one linguistic item
  substitutes for a longer one. The substitute item
  is therefore interpretable only by reference to
  the original longer item.
• Nominal s. (one, ones, the same
• Verbal s. (do)
• Clausal s. (they say so)

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Grammatical cohesionELLIPSIS

• It is similar to substitution, except that in the
  case of the ellipsis the substitution is by
  nothing.
• Nominal s. (omission of the head of a noun
  phrase)
• Verbal s. (omission of the lexical verb)
• Clausal s. (ellipsis of large part of clauses)

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Grammatical cohesionCONJUNCTIONS

• Specific devices for linking one sentence to
  another
• Additive
• Adversative
• Causal
• Temporal

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Lexical cohesion

• Lexical cohesion does not deal with grammatical
  or semantic connections but with connections
  based on the words used. It is achieved by
  selection of vocabulary, using semantically close
  items. Because lexical cohesion in itself carries
  no indication whether it is functioning
  cohesively or not, it always requires reference
  to the text, to some other lexical item to be
  interpreted correctly. There are two types of
  lexical cohesion
• reiteration
• collocation.

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Lexical cohesionREITERATION

• Reiteration includes
• repetition (often involving reference) A
  conference will be held on national environmental
  policy. At this conference the issue of
  salination will play an important role. 
• synonymy (often involving reference) A conference
  will be held on national environmental policy.
  This environmental symposium will be primarily a
  conference dealing with water.
• hyponymy (superordinate vs. subordinate concepts)
  We were in town today shopping for furniture. We
  saw a lovely table.
• metonymy (part vs. whole) At its six-month
  check-up, the brakes had to be repaired. In
  general, however, the car was in good condition.
• antonymy The old movies just dont do it anymore.
  The new ones are more appealing. Lahdenmäki
  (1989) calls these relations "(direct)
  synonym-type relations, since they all refer to
  another word which has the same referent (e.g. I
  met a man yesterday. The bastard stole all my
  money)".

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Lexical cohesionCOLLOCATION

• Collocation is any pair of lexical items that
  stand to each other in some recognisable
  lexico-semantic relation, e.g. "sheep" and
  "wool", "congress" and "politician", and
  "college" and "study".
• Red Cross helicopters were in the air
  continuously. The blood bank will soon be
  desperately in need of donors. The hedgehog
  scurried across the road. Its speed surprised me.
• Like in the case of synonymous reference,
  collocational relation exists without any
  explicit reference to another item, but now the
  nature of relation is different it is indirect,
  more difficult to define and based on
  associations in the readers mind (e.g. I looked
  into the room. The ceiling was very high).
  Interpretation of such relations is completely
  based on the knowledge of subject fields
  (Lahdenmäki 1989).

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Paragraphs are often highly cohesive entities.
The cohesive ties can stand out very clearly if
he sentences are shuffled into a random order.It
may even be possible to reconstitute the original
sequence solely by considering the nature of
these ties, as in the following case

• However, nobody had seen one for months.
• He thought he saw a shape in the bushes.
• Mary had told him about the foxes.
• John looked out of the window.
• Could it be a fox?

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Solution

• John looked out of the window
• He thought he saw a shape in the bushes
• Could it be a fox?
• Mary had told hm about the foxes.
• However, nobody had seen one for months

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• This is the closing paragraph of Joyces short
  story A Painful Case. The sequence of pronouns,
  the anaphoric definite articles and the repeated
  phrases are the main ohesive features between the
  clauses and sentences. Several refer back to
  previous parts of the story, thus making this
  paragraph, out of context, impossible to
  understand.

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• He turned back the way he had come, the rhythm of
  the engine pounding in his ears. He began to
  doubt the reality of what memory told him. He
  halted under a tree and allowed the rhythm to die
  away. He could not feel her near him in the
  DARKNESS nor her voice touch his ear. He waited
  for some minutes listening. He could hear
  nothing the NIGHT was perfectly silent. He
  listened again perfectly silent. He felt that he
  was alone.

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• Ambiguity in texts can derive from the workings
  of cohesion or the
• lack of cohesion

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COHERENCE

• The concepts and relationships expressed should
  be relevant to each other, thus enabling us to
  make plausible inferences about the underlying
  meaning.