Line Identification For Coherence Analysis

Coherence analysis has undergone in linguistics an academic history of more than 30 years, during which coherence remains not fully understood and a matter of continuing debate, arresting the globe-wide attention of analysts,who remain committed to striving for a generally accepted answer to two questions essential to the study of coherence:What is coherence? How is coherence possible? Centering upon the two questions,our commitment to coherence analysis is geared to the central objective of diagnosing the cause of problems which are haunting coherence analysts,defining anew the concept of coherence which is plausibly categorized and unfortunately limited into textual linguistics,discovering the mechanism of coherence-achieving that is realized in verbal interaction,and developing a new approach to coherence analysis that is supposed to identify the expression lines in verbal interaction.Thus, the new approach proposed in this research is termed Line Identification for Coherence Analysis-LICA,in initials.Before the new approach is proposed in this research,most approaches primarily treats coherence as a text-inherent property.Ever since the publication of Halliday and Hasan's book Cohesion in English in 1976,coherence analysis has witnessed a trend in the field of text study which tends to reduce coherence to a product of formally-represented cohesion and/or semantically-established connectivity.Coherence is regarded as a formalized scientific concept, the essence of which presumably can be revealed through investigating the formal cohesive means of expression.However,as Enkvist puts it,there is a problem awaiting solution that a text with ample cohesive means may well be quite incoherent.This problem is called "Enkvist's problem".The present research is intended for providing insights into Enkvist's problem and is fixated on responding to Zhang Deln's quest for a systematically-adequate theory of coherence. Based upon our observations and reflections on the coherence achieved in ordinary verbal interaction,this research is conducted in concern with the question-How is coherence possible? This research has found that three views can be found defective in the past study of coherence.Firstly,the concept of coherence in its complexity is not fully understood.In practice, more or less,coherence is interpreted in an identical way that cohesion is measured.Secondly, there's a tendency to confine coherence within a text.When coherence is presumed as an intrinsic defining property of a text,efforts have been made in vain to search for a universal coherence model or mechanism.Thirdly,when coherence finds its right way into semantic consideration,analysts have still to agree on a certain measure of meanings in flux. Consequently,the quest for a universal theory of coherence is still fruitlessly ideal.On the basis of the above findings,this research claims as follows:For the part of concept,coherence is a philosophical concept more than a formalized scientific concept.Coherence mirrors the thinking activity of discourse participants.The matter of coherence tells little less than the matter of sanity,and the matter of being-in-the-world.For the matter of being-in-the-world,coherence is concerned with creation and concealment. Coherence is not a state but a process of verbal interaction.It is a cooperative achievement made by both of the discourse producer and receiver in actual verbal interaction.In light of the mechanism for coherence creation,it takes the producer and the receiver to cohere.The fundamental points of cohering between the two are assumed to be coherence points.For coherence to be coherence,it takes two to cohere.Both the producer and the receiver of a discourse have their own pool of coherence points respectively.The capacity of a person's pool of coherence points is the indicator of his/her accumulation of verbal expressions.During an actual interaction,the verbal contribution made by the producer and the receiver may well fall into four lines of communication:choosing diction,conveying meanings,expressing emotions and giving reasons.Correspondingly,there are four types of coherence lines:dictional line, intentional line,emotional line,and rational line.Understanding coherence requires for an understanding of the participants' understanding in a verbal interaction.When the producer and the receiver endeavor to have a mutual understanding in an actual verbal interaction,they aim at the maximal common intelligibility on the salient line of verbal exchange.In the process of achieving the maximal common intelligibility,the relation of coherence to the producer's and/or the receiver's reason,knowledge, sense of other mind,pure experience,intentional stance,and communicative rationality plays a decisive role.In terms of the structure of coherence lines,the cooperative principle of understanding (CPU)is established to account for different coherence achievement on different coherence lines. As a descriptive principle,CPU can be exploited for measuring the coherence achievement in both cases of conforming to and breaching any maxim of CPU.This research has crystalized into a dissertation which consists of seven chapters.Chapter One,Introduction,offers a general account of what motivates and triggers our research and what objective we are going to reach.It is clearly stated that this dissertation makes an attempt to tackle the question-How is coherence possible? It is also claimed that coherence is the backbone of successful verbal interaction.The study of coherence should be geared to the purpose of identifying different coherence lines.Coherence can be reduced into the connection of one point to another point.Thus,a cross-section analysis is suggested in this chapter.Chapter Two,Coherence in Linguistics,serves as a general literature review of oppinions, approaches,and theories that we have found in coherence studies.One of the main tasks in this chapter is to diagnose the cause of problems encountered by analysts.Another task is to summarize the three perspectives in coherence analysis.It has been found that the linguistic-formal perspective,the pragmatic perspective and the cognitive perspective enjoy a same premise that coherence is given either in a text,or in a context,or in the mind of one person or another.This premise is based on one stereotyped idea that coherence is an intrinsic defining property of a text or text users.After a survey of coherence in linguistics,it is held that coherence is a philosophical concept and should be approached from the perspective of conceptual investigation in terms of the philosophy of language.Chapter Three,Coherence in Philosophy,is designed to discuss the general theoretical underpinnings of this research.This chapter firstly deals with the concept of coherence in ordinary use,coherence in literary works,coherence in philosophy and coherence in psychology. The purpose of the study here is to define anew the concept of coherence.It is pointed out that coherence can be basically interpreted as a two-to-cohere relation.It is believed that it is not text itself but rather people to cohere.When the producer and the receiver are engaged in coherence creation,the relation of coherence to a person's reason,knowledge,pure experience,sense of other mind,intentional stance,and communicative rationality is involved. Chapter Four,The Normativity of Coherence,is concerned with a detailed analysis of the central problem of this research.This chapter provides an idea that coherence is a normative concept rather than a regulative concept.In other words,coherence is a concept of norms rather than a concept of rules.In line with norms,coherence enjoys diversity in creation.In specifying the norms of coherence,discourse segments may well function as coherence points.Therefore,a pertinent discussion is made of the relation between each two of the three terms,namely, coherence point,discourse segment,and concept.It is stated that the diversity of coherence can be ascribed to the participant's different accumulation of coherence points,or his/her different mastery of discourse segments,or his/her different acquisition of concepts.The participant's system of concepts is composed of primary concepts and secondary concepts.The producer's primary concept may be interpreted as a secondary concept by the receiver,and vice versa.This chapter also offers a general sketch of various views on words and meaning.Such philosophers as Plato,Aristotle,Locke,Berkeley,Leibniz,Mill,Frege,Russell,and Strawson have been incorporated into the discussion of meaning and words.Chapter Five,Coherence and Understanding,presents a new approach to coherence analysis.On the basis of an investigation into the aspects of understanding,this chapter proposes that coherence lines be classified into four types:dictional line,emotional line,semantic line, and rational line.The diversity of coherence is realized through dietional coherence,emotional coherence,semantic coherence,and rational coherence.In verbal interaction,the creation of coherence is grounded in the producer's and the receiver's mutual understanding.Their understanding may be reached on a salient line by which they have arrived at the maximal common intelligibility.For the sake of describing different coherence,this chapter expounds J. Chen's CPU in accordance with Wittgenstein's view of natural understanding.Chapter Six,The Cooperative Principle of Understanding and the Structure of Coherence Lines,demonstrates the four maxims of CPU and their application to the analysis of verbal interaction.While checking the accountability of CPU,Grice's problem and G.Qian's views and examples have been reviewed in their full potentials.It is claimed that the structure of coherence lines may be realized either through a salient pure line or a salient mixed line,under which there are for the most part more than two lines in operation in a particular verbal interaction.Chapter Seven,Conclusion,is a summary of the new ideas on coherence analysis.It is emphasized in this chapter that LICA may help to dissolve the questions that remain unanswered in the past studies of coherence.LICA may also have some significance to foreign language teaching and translation.