Hierarchy Of POV And Its Influences On Discourse Coherence

All the current coherence theories did not give enough attention to the order andhierarchy of discourse which are the critical aspects in the production of coherentdiscourse. The concept of POV proposed by Van Dijk (1977,1983), Brown and Yule(1983), and Fowler (1985) is found most illuminating. However, though up until now,many western and Chinese scholars have made some researches about theapplications of POV, there are seldom any scholars who explore hierarchy of POV,let alone study its influences on discourse coherence. In view of this, by analyzingdifferent kinds of POV in discourse, the author of this thesis explores hierarchy ofPOV and its influences on discourse coherence, and proves that the hierarchy of POVis of great importance to discourse coherence.This thesis first probes the discourse markers of four kinds of POV. As we allknow, a coherent discourse must have coherent POV, while discourse markers is oneof the important markers to realize coherence in POV. The coherence in spatial andtemporal POV is realized through a sense of orderly dimension of time and space byusing spatial and temporal discourse markers. In ideological POV, coherence isachieved through the representation of a consistent ideology, that is, a consistent setof value system of the narrator or the characters. In narrative POV, coherence isachieved through keeping the consistency of narrative viewpoint. Some modaldiscourse markers indicate the consistency of narrative-view perspective throughreflecting a certain character or narrator’s viewpoint. In perceptual POV, coherencemainly concerns about the selection and combination of the text information.POV and POV framework has four levels: sentence POV and sentence POVframework, sentence-cluster POV and sentence-cluster POV framework, paragraphPOV and paragraph POV framework, text POV and text POV framework.This thesis, then, provides a systematic analysis of the discourse collected forthis study focusing on hierarchy of POV and its influences on discourse coherence from two aspects: local and global. And all the analysis leads to the conclusion thatfor a discourse (some descriptive discourses are mainly employed here), if it wants tobe coherent, its POV must be hierarchical.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one is a brief introduction to somebasic issues concerning the motivation, the purpose and methodology of the presentstudy as well as a general outline of the thesis. Chapter two is an overview ofprevious studies on discourse coherence and POV in discourse. Chapter three willintroduce the theoretical bases of the thesis. The author has dealt with four kinds ofPOV, made explicit the linguistic markers or clues of identifying POV, and then hasdiscussed the hierarchy of POV. Chapter Four provides a systematic analysis of thediscourse collected for this study focusing on hierarchy of POV and its influences ondiscourse coherence from two aspects: local and global. Chapter Five is theconclusion. It presents the contribution and implication of the thesis, as well as thelimitations of the study and some suggestions for future study.