The Textual Organizing Functions Of Answer-providing Structure In English Political Speeches

This dissertation attempts to study the textual organizing functions of Answer-providing Structure in English political speeches under the guidance of Thematic Structure Theory,Information Structure Theory and Clause Relation Theory.English Answer-providing Structure has been studied by quite a number of scholars,home and abroad,from the rhetoric perspective,pragmatic perspective,functional perspective,etc.and fruitful results have been achieved.Yet,insufficiencies still remain in those studies.Few scholars have done the researches by relying on the data-base analysis,or by choosing a certain text type to study its organizing functions,not to mention the studies of the means of how the functions are realized.As far as the studies of English political speeches are concerned,although the perspectives of the research are abundant,the explorations of the organizing functions of a certain structure in this text type are rare.Therefore,there still remains a large research space for the study of the textual functions of English Answer-providing Structure,and the exploration can be limited to that in English political speeches.The study object of this dissertation is Answer-providing Structure in English political speeches.Answer-providing Structure is a kind of structure with the question and the answer offered by the same speaker.As a common language phenomenon and rhetorical device,its characteristics are without-doubt asking and self-answering.According to the way the speaker offers the answer,this kind of structure can be subdivided into two types: the explicit-answer-providing structure(EAP structure)and the implicit-answer-providing structure(IAP structure).Both types often appear in English political speeches.By asking and then explicitly or implicitly answering questions,the speaker can effectively organize texts and hopefully reach his purposes.This study is qualitative,but is data-based as well.The data is mainly collected from the authoritative americanrhetoric website and a book edited by Washington(2009).Through the observation of the data,it shows that the two parts of the question-answer structure in this text type are provided by the speaker himself.That is,the questions are self-answering,which is different from the question-answer adjacency pair in daily conversations and is similar to the question-answer model in written texts.Compared with the question-answer model in written texts,the answer-providing model in English political speeches has some peculiar characteristics of its own: 1)in most cases,there are some tone markers or direct markers before questions;2)the frequency of yes-no Answer-providing Structure is higher;3)there are both EAP structure and IAP structure with almost the same frequency of occurences.Besides,according to the number and the appearing sequence of questions and answers,Answer-providing Structure in this text type can be divided into the following six models: Q-A1 Model,Q-Q1,Q2,…Qn Model,Q1,Q2,…Qn-A Model,Q1,Q2,…Qn Model,Q1-A1?Q2-A2?…?Qn-An Model and Q1,Q2,…Qn-A1,A2…An Model.There must exist a kind of relation holding together a clause with its adjacent clauses or even higher hierarchies.The same is true of Answer-providing Structure in English political speeches.As an unconventional usage,it can have some specific organizing functions.The research questions are:1)What are the organizing functions of Answer-providing Structure in English political speeches?2)How does Answer-providing Structure organize texts?By reviewing Thematic Structure Theory,Information Structure Theory and Clause Relation Theory,it can be seen that through a certain way a clause may have backward-referring relation and forward-guiding relation with its co-text.Based on this,considering the characteristics of Answer-providing Structure types and those of English political speeches,and other factors,this dissertation puts forward two strategies that the speaker mainly adopts when selecting Answer-providing Structure to organize and make coherent English political speeches: backward-referring strategy and forward-guiding strategy.Backward-referring strategy is,the appearance of Answer-providing Structure is explicitly or implicitly based on the preceding text,with the inheritance ways mainly manifested as direct inheritance ways like supplementary instruction relation,time sequence relation,elaboration relation,induction relation,comparison relation,etc.,and the hierarchical inheritance ways like explanation relation,supplementary instruction relation,adversative relation,etc.Forward-guiding strategy is,the question part of Answer-providing Structure can orient the development of the following text,with the answer part organizing the text by means of general-particular,denial-correction,listing,IAP question(s)-deduction,contrast,time sequence,etc.These two strategies apply not only to the interclausal or segmental level,but also to the whole textual level.The degree of the backward-referring force and the forward-guiding force of Answer-providing Structure is decided by its location in the text.Through the observation and analysis of the data,this dissertation answers the two research questions.The main findings are as follows:1)Answer-providing Structure in English political speeches mainly has the introducing-explaining,summarizing-thought provoking,and framing functions.The introducing-explaining function and the summarizing-thought provoking function are played by EAP structure and IAP structure respectively at the interclausal or segmental level,while framing function is by EAP structure at the highest textual level.The forward-guiding force of the question in EAP structure is stronger than its backward-referring force.This structure can not only introduce a new topic via the question part,but also explain the topic via the answer part;The backward-referring force of the IAP structure is stronger than its forward-guiding force.It can induce the audience to think,and summarize the previous text via the implicit answer;Different EAP structures may be related and form a certain type of development,and together build the framework of a text.2)In English political speeches,EAP structure can introduce a new topic either by direct inheritance ways like supplementary instruction relation,time sequence relation,etc.,or by the hierarchical inheritance ways like explanation relation,supplementary instruction relation,adversative relation,etc.Then,the answer part explains or elaborates the new topic introduced by the EAP question,by means of general-particular,denial-correction,listing,IAP question(s)-deduction,contrast,time sequence,etc;IAP structure mainly induces the audience to think and summarizes the text through the inheritance ways like elaboration relation,induction relation,comparison relation,etc.For the text-final IAP structure,it often plays the summarizing-thought provoking function by means of summarizing-continuing and summarizing-focusing;At the whole textual level,Answer-providing Structure can frame the text by way of logical inference,achievement-instrument,preview-detail and problem-solution.In a word,based on authentic data,this dissertation has done a thorough description and exploration of the main backward-referring and forward-guiding functions of Answerproviding structure in English political speeches and of the realization means of these functions.This study not only further verifies the validity and applicability of the proposed working framework,but also deepens the investigation of Answer-providing Structure as well as of English political speeches,and provides a new angle for the two research fields.