An analysis of grammatical cohesion used in the call of the wild by jack london

Vietnam national university, hanoi University of languages and international studies FACULTY of post- graduate studies - TRẦN THỊ HOA MAI AN ANALYSIS OF GRAMMATICAL COHESION USED IN “THE CALL OF THE WILD” BY JACK LONDON (Phân tích liên kết ngữ pháp sử dụng tác phẩm “Tiếng gọi nơi hoang dã” Jack London) M.A Minor programme thesis Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15 HANOI – 2010 Vietnam national university, hanoi University of languages and international studies FACULTY of post- graduate studies TRẦN THỊ HOA MAI AN ANALYSIS OF GRAMMATICAL COHESION USED IN “THE CALL OF THE WILD” BY JACK LONDON (Phân tích liên kết ngữ pháp sử dụng tác phẩm “Tiếng gọi nơi hoang dã” Jack London) M.A Minor programme thesis Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15 Supervisor: NGUYỄN HƢƠNG GIANG, M.A HANOI - 2010 iv TABLES OF CONTENTS CONTENTS Pages DECLARATION ……………………………………………………… i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ………………….………………………………………… ii ABSTRACT …………………………………………………………………………… iii TABLES OF CONTENTS iv LISTS OF TABLES AND FIGURES …………………………………………… … vi PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale of the study .1 Aims of the study Scope of the study Methods of the study .2 Design of the study PART B: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: Theoretical Background .4 1.1 Discourse and Discourse Analysis .4 1.1.1 Discourse Analysis 1.1.2 Discourse and text .5 1.2 Cohesion 1.2.1 The concept of cohesion 1.2.2 Cohesion vs Coherence 1.2.3 Types of Cohesion 1.2.3.1 Grammatical Cohesion 1.2.3.2 Lexical Cohesion 12 Chapter 2: An overview on "The Call of the Wild" by Jack London 13 2.1 A brief summary of "The Call of the Wild" .13 2.2 An overview on "The Call of the Wild" .13 2.2.1 Characters .13 2.2.2 Story events .14 v Chapter 3: An analysis of grammatical cohesion used in "The Call of the Wild" by Jack London 15 3.1 Reference 15 3.1.1 Exophoric and Endophoric Reference 15 3.1.1.1 Exophoric Reference 15 3.1.1.2 Exophoric Reference 17 3.1.2 Statistical Analysis of Reference Markers 18 3.2 Substitution 21 3.3 Ellipsis 23 3.3.1 Nominal Ellipsis 24 3.3.2 Verbal Ellipsis 28 3.3.2.1 Lexical Ellipsis 29 3.3.2.2 Operator Ellipsis 30 3.3.3 Clausal Ellipsis 31 3.3.3.1 Wh- Ellipsis 31 3.3.3.2 Yes/No Ellipsis 32 3.4 Conjunctions 34 Chapter 4: Major findings and Implications for the Teaching and Learning Writing Skill 37 4.1 Major Findings of Grammatical Cohesion 37 4.2 Implications for the Teaching and Learning Grammatical Cohesive Devices in Writing 39 4.2.1 Implications for Teachers 39 4.2.2 Implications for Students 40 PART C: CONCLUSION 41 Recapitulation 41 Conclusions 41 Limitations of the Study .42 Suggestions for Further Studies 42 REFERENCES 43 vi List of Tables and Figures Tables and Figures Pages Figures 1.1: Reference Table 1.1: Type of cohesion Table 1.2: Grammatical and Lexical cohesion Table 3.1: Exophoric Reference in “The Call of the Wild” 16 Table 3.2 Personal Reference in “The Call of the Wild” 18 Table 3.3 Demonstrative Reference in “The Call of the Wild” 19 Table 3.4 Comparative Reference in “The Call of the Wild” 19 Table 3.5: Substitution in “The Call of the Wild” 21 Table 3.6: Specific Deitics in “The Call of the Wild” 24 Table 3.7: Non-specific Deitics in “The Call of the Wild” 26 Table 3.8: Numerative in “The Call of the Wild” 27 Table 3.9: Verbal Ellipsis in “The Call of the Wild” 29 Table 3.10: Clausal Ellipsis in “The Call of the Wild” 31 Table 3.11: Conjunctive Relations in “The Call of the Wild” 34 PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale Discourse Analysis, or discourse studies, is a general term for a number of approaches to analyzing written, spoken, signed language use or any significant semiotic event From the beginning of its appearance, Discourse Analysis has taken up in a variety of social science disciplines It is now a rapidly expanding field, providing insights into various aspects of language in use and therefore of great importance to language teaching In the early days, language teaching has been concerned with pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary; however, it was not until Discourse Analysis turned up that our awareness of how to put this knowledge into action to gain successful communication was raised Literature, which plays a very important role in our spiritual life, has been greatly developing as a consequence of the high living standards As a matter of fact, there have been more and more people choosing to work in the literary field and their efforts have created so many famous works It is open to questions as to which factors have to be taken into consideration to make a successful work? How important are those factors to the completion of a coherent and cohesive text? Added to this, the knowledge of cohesion and coherence are actually regarded as the crucial aspects of language usage "The Call of the Wild", Jack London's most famous book, is a beautiful tale of a "house dog" torn from the comforts of hearth and home into the unforgiving wild The main character of the story is a dog named Buck Every aspect of life, including happiness, hardship, misery, love and so on, is seen through the eyes of this dog This is the significance of the book Buck's story is more than just a children's story or merely a dog's story, it is our story Jack London's book, therefore, makes great impression on the readers Those reasons mentioned above are the most important ones that have encouraged the author to conduct "An analysis of grammatical cohesion used in "The Call of the Wild" by Jack London" as the topic of this study Hopefully, it may help teachers and learners of foreign language have an overall viewpoint on grammatical cohesive devices as well as the effectiveness of the application of such devices in Jack London's "The Call of the Wild" 2 Aims of the study As mentioned above, there are several reasons that lead the author to choose to carry out this study Thus, the aims of the study are as follows:  To explore how the grammatical cohesive devices employed in "The Call of the Wild"  To make a detailed analysis of grammatical cohesion in Jack London's "The Call of the Wild" In order to achieve the aims stated, the study is meant to find out the answers to the following research questions: What grammatical cohesive devices are used in "The Call of the Wild"? To what extent grammatical cohesive devices contribute to the success of literary works? Scope of the study As Discourse Analysis has a very broad scope which has a very close relationship with many other aspects of language study, it is impossible for the author to refer to all of its characteristics Thus, within this study, the author just mentions some background knowledge about Discourse Analysis as well as coherence and cohesion In addition, there are a number of factors that make "The Call of the Wild" a successful work, hence, this study only focuses on the grammatical cohesive devices employed in Jack London's book Data analyzed is taken from the seven chapters of the book Methods of the study To attain the aims of the study, the author has employed the Quantitative Method That is to say, this thesis numerical data and statistics focused more on the collection and analysis of and less on interviews, observations, small numbers of questionnaires, focus groups, subjective reports and case studies but is much more Counting and measuring are common forms of quantitative methods The result of the research is a number, or a series of numbers These are often presented in tables, graphs or other forms of statistics which is the science and practice of developing human knowledge through the use of empirical data Design of the study Within the scope mentioned above, the study has three main parts Part A is "INTRODUCTION" which consists of the rationale, aims, scope, methods and design of the study Part B entitled "DEVELOPMENT" includes three chapters Chapter 1, "Theoretical Background", gives an overview on Discourse and Discourse Analysis, including Discourse Analysis, Discourse and Text, Discourse context and spoken and written discourse In this chapter, the author also introduces background knowledge about cohesion, the relationship between cohesion and coherence, cohesion and discourse structure and types of cohesion Chapter with the title "An overview on "The Call of the Wild" by Jack London'' provides the brief summary of the book, an overview on the story in terms of the characters, events and personal perceptions Chapter entitled "An analysis of grammatical cohesion used in "The Call of the Wild" by Jack London" provides a collections of examples taken from the seven chapters of the book with detailed analysis to clarify the application of such grammatical cohesive devices employed in that book Part C is "CONCLUSION" in which the author summarizes the main points introduced in the study The study ends with the "REFERENCES" which list all the materials and sources of information used in this study PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND As mentioned before, Discourse Analysis has a very broad scope which has close relationship with many other aspects of language study Nevertheless, due to the framework of a M.A minor programme thesis, in this chapter, the authors just attempts to discuss some theoretical background about Discourse Analysis in general and Cohesion in particular 1.1 Discourse and Discourse Analysis 1.1.1 Discourse Analysis Discourse analysis is concerned with the relationship between language and the context in which it is used It grew out of the work of different disciplines in the 1960s and early 1970s, including linguistics, semiotics, psychology, anthropology and sociology Discourse analysts study language in use: written texts and spoken data of all kinds under the approach different from those old grammarians For the time being, there have been numerous interpretations to what is meant by Discourse Analysis British discourse analysis was mainly influenced by M.A.K Halliday's functional approach of language Halliday's framework emphasizes the social function of language and the thematic and informational structure of speech and writing De Beaugrande (1980) and Halliday and Hasan (1976) as well as Prague School of linguists have made their significant contribution to this branch of linguistics in pointing out the links between grammar and discourse Yule (1996:139) states: "In the study of language, some of the most interesting questions arise in connection with the way language is 'used', rather than what its components are ( ) We were, in effect, asking how it is that language-users interpret what other language users intend to convey When we carry this investigation further and ask how it is that we, as language-users, make sense of what we read in texts, understand what speakers mean despite what they say, recognize connected as opposed to jumbled or incoherent discours and successfully take part in that complex activity called conversation, we are undertaking what is known as discourse analysis" Discourse analysis is, therefore, is very important to understand or interpret a text Only by studying language in use can we recognize the message that the writers wish to convey One of the very key technical terms in discourse analysis is cohesion 1.1.2 Discourse context David Nunan (1993:7) defines: "Context refers to the situation giving use to the discourse, and within which the discourse is embedded According to him, context consists of two types: linguistic and non-linguistic Linguistic context is in fact referred to as cotext It surrounds or accompanies the piece of discourse under analysis Non-linguistic context was taken up by Firth (1957) who placed great emphasis on the "social context" He saw context of situation as crucial determinants of utterance meaning However, Firth did not give a theoretical account of the effect of context on utterance meaning Lately, Halliday and Hasan focus on context of situation And the three headings FIELD, MODE and TENOR which had been proposed for these are considered highly general concept for describing how the context of situation determines the kinds of meaning that are expressed Yet, according to Halliday and Hasan, the linguistic features, which are typically associated with a configuration of situational features - with particular values of the field, mode and tenor - constitute a register 1.2 Cohesion 1.2.1 The concept of cohesion The concept of cohesion is closely connected with text It is defined as the grammatical and lexical relationship between different elements of a text According to Yule (1996), a text is usually considered to have a certain structure which depends on factors quite different from those required in the structure of single sentence Some among those factors are described in terms of cohesion, or the ties and connection which exist within a text Halliday and Hasan (1976:4) also define cohesion in a similar way: "The concept of cohesion is a semantic one; it refers to relations of meaning that exist within a text, and that defines it as a text" They also point out that cohesion often occurs where the interpretation of some elements in the discourse is dependent on that of another 30 from this sentence intentionally Readers are enabled, basing on their perceptions, to put any verb in that position in a way that it is correspondent with those words already mentioned We can give here some other examples of lexical ellipsis in “The Call of the Wild”: But Francois, chucking at the incident while unswerving in the administration of justice, brought his lash down upon Buck with all his might [ ] (Chapter 3) And when, released, he sprang to his feet, his mouth laughing, his eys eloquent, his throat vibrant with unuttered sound, and in that fashion remained without movement, John Thornton would reverently exclaim, “God! You can [ ] all but speak!” (Chapter 6) It can be concluded that lexical ellipsis is not used very often because lexical verbs are important in conveying the author’s message 3.3.2.2 Operator Ellipsis Another type of verbal ellipsis is operator ellipsis, which is ellipsis “from the left” In most instances of operator ellipsis, everything is presupposed except for the lexical verb In operator ellipsis, Subject is often missing from the clause and must be presupposed, too Looking at the table we can see that most verbal ellipsis cases are operator ones – with a total of 96 times We can point out some examples as follows: A “miner’s meeting”, [ ] called on the spot, decided that the dog had sufficient provocation, and Buck was discharged (Chapter 6) The above sentence can be rewritten in full sentence as A “miner’s meeting”, which is/was called on the spot, to be fully understood Nevertheless, we still consider it as being meaningful without filling the “gap” with the missing items Buck, on the bank, [ ] worried and anxious, kept abreast of the boat, his eyes [ ] never off his master (Chapter 6) Likewise, it is not vital to put the verb “to be” into the two clauses of this sentence in order to work out its meaning Thornton shook his head and stepped to Buck’s side “You must stand off from him”, Matthewson protested [ ] Free play and plenty of room (Chapter 6) Similarly, we can see from this example that the Subject and operator are omitted The gap can be filled with “There must be ” to create a full sentence with good grammar Yet, it is true that such items need not appear 31 The illustrations above can show that in many cases, operators like modals, auxiliaries or participles, even the subject of the clause, can be omitted to shorten the sentences 3.3 Clausal Ellipsis Ellipsis in the clause is considered to relate to mood Specifically, it is related to the question- answer process in dialogue, which is divided into two types: Yes/ No ellipsis and WH-ellipsis Studying “The Call of the Wild”, we can see that almost all cases in which clausal ellipsis is used takes place within conversations The answers are both direct and indirect responses Most indirect responses include comments on the questions “COMMENYARY”, or denying their relevance (DISCLAIMER) or giving supplementary information implying the answers (SUPPLEMENTARY RESPONSE) within the scope of this paper, we just mention the clausal ellipsis in terms of direct and indirect respone to WH-questions and Yes/ No questions, as in the following table: No of occurences Clausal Ellipsis Direct Wh- response Ellipsis Indirect response Direct Yes/No response Ellipsis Indirect response Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Table 3.10: Clausal Ellipsis in “The Call of the Wild” In fact, there are not many cases in which conversations take place in this novel Further, the number of questions raised in those conversations is not much Throughout the book, there is a total of question- answer responses, both wh-ellipsis and yes/ no ellipsis 3.3.3.1 Wh-Ellipsis The statistics point out that there are direct responses and indirect ones to Whquestions in “The Call of the Wild” We come to the direct responses first in the following examples: “ How much did the other mug get?” the saloon-keeper demanded “A hundred “, was the reply (Chapter ) 32 The answer to this question is very clear and it comes to the main content of the question “How much” “Sacredam!” he cried, when his eyes lit upon Buck “Dat one dam bully dog! Eh? How much?” “There hundred, and a present at that” was the prompt reply of the man in the red sweater (Chapter 1) This example is similar to the above one, in that the question is “How much” and the answer directly points to this question There is a slight difference, that is the response is comment on the question “and a present at that” means “the price I give you is too cheap” Considering the case of indirect response, it can found once in: “Undreamed of!” cried Mercedes, throwing up her hands in dainty dismay “However in the world could I manage without a tent?” “It’s spring time, and you won’t get any more cold weather”, the man replied (Chapter ) This response in this case best suits the question, though it is indirect “It’s springtime, and you won’t get any more cold weather” simply indicates that “you not need to bring the tent along with you” It is a good explanation to the question “However could I manage ?” There is one more case in which elliptical indirect response is used, however, as it takes place in a conversation consisting of both wh-ellipsis and yes/no ellipsis, we will analyze it in combination with the latter in the next part 3.3.3.2 Yes/ No Ellipsis From the table above, we can realize that there are occurences of yes/no ellipsis, of these are direct responses and the other is indirect one Let us have a look at the direct responses first: - “ You ain’t going to take him out now?” the driver asked “Sure”, the man replied, driving the hatchet into the crate for a pry ( Chapter 1) - “ Can you lend me a thousand?”, he asked, almost in a whisper “Sure”, answered O’Brien, thumping down a plethoric sack by the side of Matthewson’s ( Chapter ) The answers in these two questions are quite similar to each other In the first case, it is a negative question and the answer must be understood as “Yes, I’m going to take him out 33 now” The second response is so clear that we not need any more information to interpret it like that “ Yes, I can lend you ” “ Pooh! Pooh!” said John Thornton; “Buck can start a thousand pounds “And break it out? And walk off with it for a hundred yards?” demanded Matthewson, a Bonanza King, he of the seven hundred vaunt “And break it out, and walk off with it for a hundred yards”, John Thornton said coolly ( Chapter ) It seems in this example that John Thornton repeats exactly what is given in the question It is a way of confirming or asserting his ideas Its full sentence should be “Yes, and Buck can break ” Example of indirect response to yes/ no question can be found in the following conversation: “Think it’ll ride ?” one of the men asked “Why shouldn’t it?” Charles demanded rather shortly “Oh, that’s all right, that’s all right”, the man hastened meekly to say “I was just a-wondering, that’s all It seemed a mite top- heavy” (Chapter 5) As mentioned earlier, and as can be seen in this case, this conversation consists of responses to both wh-question and yes/ no question First of all, we realize that “Think it’ll ride?” is a Yes/ No question; and instead of saying “Yes” or “No”, Charles uses another question to answer this Here, “ Why shouldn’t it” implies that “Yes, of course it will ride” Charles’s response is not simply an answer, he wants to show his “ability”, to prove to all the men there that all what they doubt is non-evident Charles’s answer, in reverse, is another Wh-question This question requires reasons for the fact that the sled cannot ride To the man who raised the question before, as he doesn’t want to waste his time giving advice to an incompetent person, he gives an indirect response like this His answer can be analyzed as “Because I think the top was heavy but that’s all right” In summary, from the data analysed about ellipsis, we can come to the conclusion that ellipsis as a device of grammatical cohesion plays a very important part in a way that makes the novel more interesting to readers 34 3.4 Conjunction Telemans (2001-2002) considers: “A conjunction does not set off a search backward or forward for its referent, but it does presuppose a textual sequence and signals a relationship between segments of the discourse There are several kinds of conjunction: single-word conjunctions, phrasal and clausal ones.” ( P9 ) In the following part we continue our study on different types of conjunctions, classified by Halliday and Hasan (1976), such as: Additive, Adversative, Causal, Temporal and others Additive External/internal Internal (unless otherwise specified) (Frequency) (Frequency) Additive, simple: Complex,emphatic: Apposition: Comparison : And: 1346 In addition: For instance: Likewise: And also: 12 Further: 19 Similarly: Or: 96 Besides: On Nor: 17 Adversative the other hand: Adversative “proper” Contrastive: Correction: But: 1289 At the same time: Instead: However: Dismissal At least: Yet: 35 Nevertheless: Causal Causal, general Reversed clausal: Conditional (also So: 17 For: external) Therefore: Because: Respective Thus: Temporal Internal Temporal: “Here and now” only) Then: 19 Here: At this time: Finally: Temporal, simple Complex First: 12 Next: 17 (external Table 3.11: Conjunctive Relations in “The Call of the Wild” This table shows that in terms of additive relationship the conjunction “and” occupies the biggest number of all the others With a total number of 1346 times of occurrences in this novel, it proves that this conjunction plays a remarkable part in the cohesion of the discourse It can be explained simply basing on its function, which links not only words together but also bigger units of language like phrases, clauses, sentences or even paragraph The following example will show this in more details 35 But Buck was neither house-dog nor kennel dog The whole realm was his He plunged into the swimming tank or went hunting with the Judge’s sons; he escorted Mollie and Alice, the Judge’s daughters, on long twilight or early morning rambles; on wintry nights he lay at the judge’s feet before the roaring library fire; he carried the Judge’s grandsons on his back, or rolled them in grass, and guarded their footsteps through wild adventures down to the fountain in the stable yard; and even beyond, where the paddocks were, and the berry patches Among the terriers he stalked imperiously, and Toot and Ysabel he utterly ignored, for he was king, - king over all creeping, crawling, flying things of Judge Miller’s places, humans included ( Chapter ) In this short paragraph, “and” appears times in a variety of function “And” in “Mollie and Alice” “Toots and Ysabel” helps link words together The next three words “and” serve the same function in such a way that link phrases (rolled them in the grass guarded their footsteps, in the stable yard - even beyond, the paddocks - the berry patches) The fifth “and” helps link clause with clause “Or” - which appears 96 times - comes second The occurrences of “and also” and “nor” as simple additive conjunctions is not very often, with 12 times and 17 times correspondently As for complex, emphatic additive conjunctions, “further” is used 19 times, “in addition” once and “besides” twice Considering apposition in additive, “for instance” is used only once, in: He was friendly, in a treacherous sort of way, smiling into one’s face while he meditated some underhand trick, as, for instance, when he stole from Buck’s food at the first meal (Chapter ) “Likewise” (7 times), “similarly” (once), “on the other hand” (3 times) - as additive comparison, appear but not very frequently As regards adversative relations, adversative proper “but” - like “and”- is used very often with 1289 times of occurrences “But” has similar function as “and”- it links not only word but also phrases, clauses, sentences and paragraphs “Yet” which has the same meaning with “but” appears 35 times, “however” and “nevertheless” are also used but not often Adversative analyzed in terms of contrastive and correction consists of some cases only: at the same time (twice), instead (once) and at least (once) The general causal with “so” appearing 17 times in this novel proves that this conjunction is rather preferred by the author There are only cases of “thus” and the other cases of “therefore” Besides, “for” and “because” in turn are used times and times to mark the reversal causal in the discourse 36 Simple temporal conjunctions “first” and “next” appear 12 and 17 of all temporal conjunctions, (internal temporal) “then” appears most frequently with 19 times, “next” times and “finally” times “At this time” as complex temporal conjunction appears times and there is only one case of “here” concerning “here and now” temporal One thing should be noted here is the absolute omission of Dismissal in Adversative and Conditional and Respective in Causal From these figures and data analysis, it can be concluded that the occurrences of conjunctions in discourse, specifically in “The Call of the Wild” is so often that without them, a text would just be a collection of jumbled sentences which are not related to each other To conclude, in this chapter, we have dealt with analysing the grammatical cohesive devices employed in “The Call of the Wild” by Jack London The data analysed in accordance with illustrations which are taken from the story have shown that the author of this novel has taken advantage of the strengths of such cohesive items in making his story more interesting, emotional and even familiar to readers all over the world Cohesion, specifically grammatical cohesion, together with many other factors, has contributed to helping Jack London’s book a truly great success 37 CHAPTER 4: MAJOR FINDINGS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE TEACHING AND LEARNING WRITING SKILL This chapter aims at summarizing the major findings of grammatical cohesion used in “The Call of the Wild” as well as providing some inplications for both teachers and learners of English in teaching and learning writing skill 4.1 Major findings of grammatical cohesion As a matter of fact, we have spent such a long time studying the novel “The Call of the Wild” The most important thing is that we could realize cohesion in general and grammatical cohesion in particular plays a very important role and is one of the key factors which makes the book a great success Within the scope of this thesis, we have just focused on the areas of grammatical cohesion – through which we can withdraw some findings as follows “The Call of the Wild” exploits nearly all the items of grammatical cohesion mentioned by Halliday and Hasan (1976) And of course, some items are more preferred to the others, for example under the terms of ellipsis, the writer prefers using operator ellipsis while lexical one is less used Below are the detailed findings of such grammatical cohesive devices Reference: - Personal reference: “He, she, it, they” appear in almost every chapter of the book Of these, singular masculine “he, him, his” are most frequently used with a total of 1606 times On the contrary, singular feminine “she” and its possessive and deitic forms (her, hers) have the lowest frequency Even in some chapters (chapter 1, chapter 4, chapter 7), all these items are absent The last group of “it, its, they, them” and “their” are also exploited quite often (351 times for “it, its” and 579 times for plural “they, them, their”) Throughout the book, there is no appearance of the first and the second personal pronouns (I, we, you, etc) It is interpretable as the whole story is told by a third-person narrator - Demonstrative Reference: This kind of reference frequently occur in the book, among which the number of non-specific (it, the) is the biggest with 2407 occurences; next comes 38 to near demonstrative (this, these, here) with 108 cases The last group of “that, those” and “there” occurs 83 times - Comparative Reference: In comparison with the other two types of Reference, comparative referential items are not as frequently used There is a total of 143 occurences for general comparatives and 137 occurrences for specific ones Substitution: Substitution does not appear very often in “The Call of the Wild”, through the seven chapters of the book, there are only 17 cases in which nominal substitution is exploited, the other 13 cases for verbal ones and times for clausal substitution Although they are not employed much, substitution proves to be a very effective means of grammatical cohesion Ellipsis: - Nominal Ellipsis: The ellipsis within the nominal group is more preferably exploited in terms of specific deitics than non-specific ones Considering specific deitics, demonstrative-determinative can be counted for 174 occurences Possessive and interrogative ellipses appear, but just occasionally (7 times for determinative-possessive and 20 times for interrogative items) As for non-specific deitics, we can find no occurrence for total singular and total dual In case of non-singular and unmarked, we take out 17 and 13 ellipses respectively Numerative can be counted for 28 times of occurrence for quantitative definite and indefinite, and 18 times for ordinative - Verbal Ellipsis: Verbal Ellipsis can be found in every chapter of the book, but operator ellipsis occurs more than lexical one (96 occurrences for operator ellipsis versus times for lexical ones) - Clausal ellipsis: Clausal ellipsis is not very common in “The Call of the Wild” because we can find only of them in all chapters, which locate in both direct and indirect responses to Wh-ellipsis and Yes/No ellipsis Conjunction: This kind of grammatical cohesion is used in “The Call of the Wild” in great numbers Of all, the additive conjunction “and” appears the most with 1346 times Adversative proper “but” ranks second with 1289 times The other items of additive and adversative are also exploited quite often while causal and temporal conjunctions count for a small number of around 35 – 57 for each 39 4.2 Implications for the teaching and learning grammatical cohesive devices in writing This study is very much hoped to be useful to teachers and students in the course of teaching and learning writing skill Writing, as a matter of fact, is a very difficult skill to master Writing an effective text in English is even more difficult for Vietnamese students because of the difference not only in language but also in perceptions due to different cultures Therefore, teaching and learning writing skill has become a challenging task for both teachers and students Cohesive devices in general and grammatical cohesive devices in particular are really an important part in teaching writing skill at every grade of education In fact, there are a number of students who are really excellent at English vocabulary, grammar and structures but find it hard to write a coherent and cohesive composition Thus, in order to get the best results in study, they should facilitate themselves with necessary writing techniques and write with the ultimate goal – to make their writing products meaningful, interpretable, coherent and cohesive 4.2.1 Implications for teachers First of all, the knowledge of coherence and cohesion is of great importance in discourse construction, so it is necessary for language teachers to provide their students with the textual cohesive devices that are considered the effective means in the creation of a coherent and cohesive writing In other words, the teacher should raise the students’ awareness of the importance of cohesive devices in writing Of course, in English literature, almost all cohesive devices are exploited to the maximum; however, the teacher should also introduce to the students some of the commonly-used cohesive devices as well as a number of synonyms and antonyms to enrich students’ vocabulary and help them avoid boredom or tiredness when too much repetition is used Added to this, owning to the fact that the knowledge of grammatical cohesion is so vast and detailed that it is hard to give the best way to teach Teachers, therefore, need to make sure that the knowledge of such grammatical cohesive items which students are exposed to is of most benefit to them When presenting vocabulary, teachers should include the information and the form of grammatical cohesive devices Besides, whenever possible, it is essential that the teacher relate the writing assignment to the speaking topics This will help to integrate the skill areas and give the 40 students additional practice with the same functions, vocabulary and structures Furthermore, as students have more time to communicate clearly when writing than when speaking, the standard of correctness should be higher This includes the appropriate use of words and correct use of grammar The students should be more careful in writing Probably, the major question of teaching grammatical cohesive devices in writing is how we should teach them When the teachers introduce a new form of grammatical cohesive devices in a certain text, they should give some examples on it Moreover, vocabulary in general and grammatical cohesive devices in particular need to be taught in combination with teaching other language skills such as reading and speaking Obviously, teachers’ appropriate teaching methods will result in students’ learning effectiveness 4.2.2 Implications for students Apart from following the teacher’s instruction and advice during the process of learning writing, students should also bear in mind some other minor tips to achieve effective writings To begin with, before writing, students should identify the purpose of their writing task because different types of text require different methods when writing Concerning the knowledge of cohesive devices in general and grammatical cohesive devices in particular, students should know for certain which ones are the most suitable for their current task It is the goal of the writing assignment that determines students’ choices of more appropriate words In addition, in writing, it is better to use a variety of synonymous or antonymous words to restrict unnecessary repetition and to shorten the sentences, make it clearer to understand For instances, applying substitution and ellipsis appropriately is of great effective in making the text more interesting to readers Last but not least, using as much as possible different conjunctions when writing is another tip that students should take notice of These, when suitably exploited, will help to make the text link together, and therefore, make it more cohesive All the points mentioned here could entail an appeal to the readers’ emotion or understanding We hope that these, to a certain extent, would be helpful to those who are teaching and learning writing or who are paying attention to it as well 41 PART C: CONCLUSION In this chapter, the author would like to make a brief summary of the findings, discuss the limitations of the study and provide some suggestions for further researches Recapitulation As a matter of fact, there has been a great deal of linguistic learners carrying out studies on different subjects related to coherence and cohesion However, this thesis is just attempted to make a detailed analysis of grammatical cohesion used in “The Call of the Wild” by Jack London and provide some implications for the teaching and learning writing skill With all our enthusiasm for the study, we hope this small research to be of help to them After a certain time getting ourselves involved in this topic, we now understand that so as to produce a good literary work, there must be a combination of different writing techniques, and cohesion in discourse is one of the decisive factors that contribute to making such literary works extremely successful Conclusions Within the scope of our study, the answers to some research questions at the very beginning of the thesis have finally found out as follows: Reference, Substitution, Ellipsis and Conjunction are all exploited in "The Call of the Wild" as means of textual links which help the novel very coherent and cohesive Though there is difference between the frequency of occurences among these cohesive devices, they altogether contributes to the success of the book Discourse analysis is really a new attempt to invest how language works, and how texts are structured beyond the sentence level Cohesion in general and grammatical cohesion in particular, when appropriately employed, will help create meaningful, interpretable and logical texts Therefore, it can not be denied that cohesion plays a very important part in the success of any literary works 42 Limitations of the study Although the study has offered some insightful findings, it has certain limitations First of all, as “The Call of the Wild” is a very long book and such cohesive devices as conjunctions and reference are employed in great numbers, the results gained may not be really exact Furthermore, this novel uses quite a lot of slangs and dialects, it is difficult for the author to catch the hidden messages that Jack London wants to convey Lastly, examples of such cohesive devices employed in this book are numerous, it is impossible to analyze them all in the study We hope that in further researches, all these things will be dealt with to have better results Suggestions for further studies For the scope of the study, this paper is attempted to bring out the grammatical cohesion of a discourse in a particular literary context and detailed analysis of grammatical cohesive devices in “The Call of the Wild” in terms of Reference, Substitution, Ellipsis and Conjunction Further studies conducted could focus on the followings: - A study on other discourse features of “The Call of the Wild” such as lexical cohesive devices, logical cohesive devices, etc - A contrastive analysis of grammatical cohesive devices in English and Vietnamese verse of “The Call of the Wild” - A study on grammatical cohesive devices in other English literary works Due to the constraint in time, the framework of a M.A minor thesis as well as limited knowledge of the author, mistakes are inevitable Constructive comments 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Reference in ? ?The Call of the Wild? ?? 19 Table 3.4 Comparative Reference in ? ?The Call of the Wild? ?? 19 Table 3.5: Substitution in ? ?The Call of the Wild? ?? 21 Table 3.6: Specific Deitics in ? ?The Call of the. .. detailed analysis of grammatical cohesion used in ? ?The Call of the Wild? ?? by Jack London and provide some implications for the teaching and learning writing skill With all our enthusiasm for the study,... hanoi University of languages and international studies FACULTY of post- graduate studies TRẦN THỊ HOA MAI AN ANALYSIS OF GRAMMATICAL COHESION USED IN ? ?THE CALL OF THE WILD? ?? BY JACK