A Study Of Discourse Structuring From The Persperctive Of Intentionality

In the study of text linguistics, the research of discourse structure is regarded as an extremely important topic, which is also not fully carried out. The traditional research on this topic is mainly conducted in the static way, which may not reflect the panorama of discourse structure very well. In fact, in the formation process, discourse is affected by many factors. From each point of view, we can conduct the research on the discourse structure. Nevertheless, by comparison with other influential factors, the intentionality of the discourse creator runs through the whole process of the generation of the text. As we see it, the structure of the discourse is the projection of the relationship among multiple intentional activities in the language level.Therefore, in this dissertation, we are inclined to take the discourse as the product of human cognitive psychological process, and regard the whole dynamic discourse generation as the process, in which the creator constantly externalize a series of intentional activities that are in his brain in the form of language. In consequence, the complicated relationship among the creator’s intentional activities brings about different semantic layers and a semantic hierarchy in the discourse. Thus, in this research, we cite the theory of Intentionality, which is in the realm of language philosophy, as the theoretical framework, and try to analyze discourse structuring by means of semantic layers, aiming to explore a new method of discourse analysis.Generally speaking, this study is based on the derived relationship between intentional activities and speech acts, and has made a formal expression of a whole intentional activity, i.e. intentional structure. By inspecting the relationship between the hierarchy of intentional structure and the semantic hierarchy of discourse, it analyzes the structuring of discourse in modern Chinese.It finally draws the conclusion that from the perspective of Intentionality, discourse structuring is manifested as multiple intentional structures are nested into the intentional structure, which is located in the highest rank of discourse and functions as the semantic control, in the two forms of recursion within one step and recursion within multiple steps by semantic layers, so that the whole discourse can be formed. However, with restrict of humans’short-time memory, and for the reason that intentional words and speech words can exist in the zero form in the language expression, these recursions usually do not take the complete language form. In consequence, when people are creating their discourses, they usually do not have the feeling of putting multiple complete intentional structures into language practice.Chapter one is the introduction part of this dissertation. In this part, it introduces the object of the study and the perspective of the research. It also gives a systematic overview of previous research on discourse structure and discourse hierarchy. Moreover, it points out the necessity of citing the theory of Intentionality as the theoretical framework and gives a lucid account of the research methods and a brief introduction of the chapter arrangement and the source of the corpus.Chapter two discusses intentional structure and its hierarchy. Firstly, it gives a systematic overview of the development of the theory of Intentionality. Then it expounds the significance of using the theory of Intentionality in the social science research, especially in the research of discourse structure. Based on these, it builds the theoretical starting point of this study, and defines the basic unit of this research, i.e. intentional structure. Besides, it inspects the hierarchy of intentional structure, and discovers that, the speech layer involves the intentional layer, while the intentional layer involves the external layer.Chapter three analyzes the projection of intentional structure in the language level. In the first part, it discusses the components of intentional structure one by one:intentional content, speech content, intentional manner and speech manner, and accordingly inspects their language performance:intentional scope, speech scope, intentional words (intentional nouns, intentional verbs and intentional adjectives) and speech words (speech nouns and speech verbs). Then it respectively analyzes the relationship between intentional scope and speech scope, intentional words and speech words. In the last part, it separately describes the projection of an intentional activity and a speech act in the language level. Thereby, it demonstrates the language performance of the whole intentional structure.Chapter four focuses on the projection of the hierarchy of intentional structure in the discourse level. It discovers that by the impact of the hierarchy of intentional structure, discourse has formed corresponding semantic layers within it, and this kind of relationship still exists:the speech layer involves the intentional layer, and the intentional layer involves the external layer. Then it separately describes the markers of the three layers and the principles of their boundary-indentification. Furthermore, it illustrates the distribution of the semantic layers in the discourse.Chapter five gives a specific analysis of discourse structuring by use of the theory of Intentionality. By demonstrating discourse structuring can be realized by the recursion of the semantic layers, the situation of discourse structuring can be divided into two types:the recursion within one intentional structure (recursion within one step) and the recursion among multiple intentional structures (recursion within multiple steps). It also raises three principles to distinguish these two types of recursions, and analyzes the specific performance of the recursion among multiple steps in the discourse. In the last part, it demonstrates the relationship between the creator of the discourse and intentional structure.Chapter six is the case study. In order to demonstrate how this analytical method of discourse structuring is operated in the language practice, it randomly selectes six complete discourses, different from the length and the types, as the cases to conduct discourse structuring analysis. In this chapter, these complete discourses are arranged according to their length, from the shortest to the longest.Chapter seven is the conclusion. It is the summary of this dissertation, and points out the shortcomings of this study and issues needed to be carried out in the further study.