An Interpretation Of Coherence In Cameron’s Political Speech From The Perspective Of Explicitness And Implicitness

This thesis aims to probe into how coherence has been accomplished in Cameron sthree political speeches from the perspective of explicit cohesion and implicit cohesion.The whole analysis process is performed under the theoretical foundation of Halliday scohesion theory and Zhang Delu s multi-dimensional cohesive devices and wonders tointerpret that textual coherence can be finished through both overt cohesive mechanismand covert cohesive mechanism.The textual semantic coherence lies in both verbal factors and non-verbal factors.The verbal factors include language forms, the coherence of which can be manifestedthrough formal cohesive devices which consist of structural and non-structural cohesivedevices and phonological cohesive devices, viz explicit cohesive devices. However, themeaning manifested by language forms is far less than the actual meaning depicted bythe text. Those omitted meaning need to be interpreted through the interlocutors sharedknowledge, cultural background knowledge and context of situation factors. So contextfactor has played a crucial role in the interpretation of text coherence. The decoding ofthe meaning finished by non-verbal factors need to be performed from two aspects: oneis the presupposed meaning of language forms need to be made up in the context ofsituation; another is the interpretation of meaning finished by non-verbal factors totallydepends on the context of situation. Therefore, coherence is the consequence mutuallyactivated by the combination of context of situation and language forms, viz it isdetermined by context of situation, and manifested by language forms.Under this framework, the internal condition of text coherence in this paper isaccomplished through explicit cohesion, this paper utilizes theme structure, modalityorientation as the main cohesive devices to explicate the semantic coherence inCameron s political speech; the external condition of text coherence in this paper ismanifested through implicit cohesion, this paper makes use of context of situation andculture as well as human mental process ability to analyze the semantic coherence inCameron s political speech.The corpus researched in this paper is downloaded from the website http://www.British Political Speech. It is comprised of three speeches, of which the titles are: DavidCameron s speech at Beida University, China2011with the words of3159; A LiberalConservative Consensus to Restore Trust in Politics, Bath2007with the words of2690; and Fixing Our Broken Society, Glasgow2008with the words of2333. Quantitativemethod will be used to depict the distribution of the language phenomena andqualitative method will be utilized to analyze how explicit and implicit cohesive devicestake on the role of contributing to the semantic coherence through the perspective of TPpattern, modality orientation and value as well as context of situation in Cameron spolitical speeches.The analysis result has shown that thematic progression pattern is apparently usefulfor the new and given information alternation and the establishment of informationstructure; the modality orientation and modality value as the main index to measure thetext coherence has some effect in coordinating the interlocutors involvement degreeand the responsibility for the proposition, so it plays an important role in accomplishingthe interpersonal function of text; the cohesive function of context of situation andculture as well as human mental processing ability is manifested in that these cohesivedevices combine formal features with context of situation and culture to make the textcoherence completed, providing some theoretical basis for the interlocutors to have abetter control of the text meaning and culture implicature.Taking explicit and implicit cohesive devices as the main analytical method is ableto give a more insightful illustration of how formal cohesive devices and context factorsmutually performed to make sure the coherence of the text meaning. Researching on thecoherence of Cameron s political speech is of pragmatic value in teaching Englishreading class for the reason that systematic coherence theory is beneficial for students tofind out the topic of the text, the arrangement of the text structure, the informationdevelopment and the personal relationship between the orator and the audience.