The coding of discourse relations in English and German argumentative discourse

Abstract

This paper examines the overt and non-overt coding of discourse relations in the argumentative discourse genre of editorial based on a contrastive study of British English and German editorials. Particular attention is given to the linguistic coding of discourse relations positioned adjacently and non-adjacently, and to the question of granularity. The analysis of the German editorials is based on the syntactic unit of sentence, while their British counterpart is based on the syntactic unit of clause. In the data at hand, the two languages code the discourse relation of Contrast overtly in adjacent and non-adjacent positioning but employ different strategies as regards the overt coding of the coordinating discourse relation of Continuation and the subordinating discourse relations of Elaboration, Explanation and Comment. The rate of overt marking for adjacently positioned coordinating relations is higher in the German data. In the British data, there is hardly any difference between the overt marking of adjacently positioned discourse relations holding between clauses and sentences. The overt marking of subordinating discourse relations is lower in the German data, and in the British data, there is a clear preference for coding adjacently positioned subordinating discourse relations in an overt manner on the level of clause. In the experimental discourse-comprehension tasks the German subjects show a slight tendency to code discourse relations overtly if they are non-adjacent, while the British subjects prefer to code discourse relations overtly on the level of clause in both adjacent and non-adjacent positioning.

Discourse relations: Genre-specific degrees of overtness in argumentative and narrative discourse

“…Studies on the linguistic realization of DRs in English and German editorials and narratives [32,33], for instance, show that the DR Contrast is always realized overtly, indicating that overt realization is the default for this DR; other DRs such as Explanation are realized overtly in narratives more frequently than in editorials, showing systematic patterns of variation that also correlate with the sequential realization of DRs through adjacently or non-adjacently positioned DUs, with narratives realizing DRs connecting non-adjacently positioned DUs overtly more frequently than editorials. Similar tendencies are observed by [17,21] and [11] in texts elicited in editing-based tasks where participants were asked to "flesh out" bare texts of the respective genres, suggesting that discourse genre constrains the linguistic realization of DRs.…”

“…Table 2 summarizes the structure of our dataset. For single-authored data, we draw on English datasets employed by [32,33], comprising a set of 9 editorials from British newspaper The Guardian, and a set of 10 short personal narratives from British university students. Co-constructed data, also collected for previous studies [11,21] contain 9 argumentative and 9 narrative texts jointly produced by 18 participant dyads (9 per genre) of native speakers of English.…”

role of discursive structure in the genre specification of online discourses

“…a thesis, accessible, and then elaborates and supports this thesis with further statements and arguments deemed adequate in the given context (cf. Speyer-Fetzer 2014). At the same time, however, the way individual theses and the arguments supporting them were classified into types, how these types were organised into patterns in combination with other discursive units, played a crucial role in the separation and specification of the genres of amateur book reviewing and professional literary criticism, based on the results of the corpus-based analysis.…”

“…These typical co-occurrences, in turn, establish typical patterns of construal (cf. Speyer-Fetzer 2014). Therefore, genres are emergent discursive schemas and usage-based discursive categories that function as a basis for the realisation of discourse events (i.e.…”