A comparative study of lexical cohesion in english and vietnamese newspaper articles

Vinh university Department of foreign languages =====  ===== A comparative study of lexical cohesion in english and vietnamese newspaper articles (so sánh liên kết từ vựng báo tiếng anh tiếng việt) Graduation thesis Field: Linguistics Supervisor: Tran Ba Tien, M.A Student: Tran Thi Thuy Quynh Class: 47B - English Vinh, May, 2010 Acknowledgement For the completion of this study, I have been fortune to receive invaluable contributions from many people First of all, I should like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, M.A Tran Ba Tien who has instructed me in going into the subject and has given me precious advice, valuable materials and enormously essential corrections with great enthusiasm for the accomplishment of the thesis i Secondly, I have a deep thank to teachers in our Foreign Language Department for their helpful suggestions and encouragement during the time my job has been being carried out Thirdly, I am also grateful to librarians in the library of Vinh University who lended me materials to this study Finally, my profound thanks go to my loved family and my good friends whose love, care and help have given me essential energy and determination If I had not had these helps, my work would not have been complete Vinh, May, 2010 Tran Thi Thuy Quynh Abbreviations etc: e.g i.e vs et cetra For example That is to say versus i Table of content Page Acknowledgement Abbreviations Table of content PART A i ii iii INTRODUCTION Rationale of the study Aims of the study Scope of the study Methods of the study Design of the study PART B 2 3 DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 Theory of discourse 1.1.1 Concept of discourse 1.1.2 Discourse and text 1.1.3 Spoken discourse and Written discourse 1.1.4 Discourse context 1.1.4.1 Context of situation 1.1.4.2 Context versus co-text i 4 7 1.1.5 Cohesion 1.1.5.1 Concept of cohesion 1.1.5.2 Cohesion and coherence 1.1.5.3 Types of cohesive devices 1.1.6 Lexical cohesion 1.1.6.1 Concept of lexical cohesion 1.1.6.2 Types of lexical cohesion 1.1.6.2.1 Collocation 9 10 12 12 12 13 13 1.1.6.2.2 13 Reiteration CHAPTER II LEXICAL COHESION IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE NEWSPAPER ARTICLES 2.1 General structure of English and Vietnamese Newspaper Articles 2.2 A brief Introduction to Data under analysis 2.3 Lexical cohesion in selected English Newspaper Articles 2.3.1 Collocation 2.3.2 Reiteration 2.3.2.1 Repetition 2.3.2.2 Synonyms and Near Synonyms 2.3.2.3 Superordinate and General word 2.3.2.3.1 Superordinate 2.3.2.3.2 General words 2.4 Lexical cohesion in selected Vietnamese Newspaper Articles 2.4.1 Collocation 2.4.2 Reiteration 2.4.2.1 Repetition 2.4.2.2 Synonyms and Near – synonyms 2.4.2.3 Superordinate and General word 2.4.2.3.1 Superordinate 2.4.2.3.2 General words 2.5 Comparison of lexical cohesion in analyzed English and Vietnamese Newspaper Articles 2.5.1 Similarities 2.5.2 Differences CHAPTER III DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS 3.1 Discussion i 15 16 16 16 18 18 21 22 25 26 29 29 30 30 33 35 35 36 38 38 40 42 3.2 3.3 Implications for teaching and learning lexical cohesion Suggested exercises PART C 43 43 CONCLUSION Recapitulation 50 Suggestions for further studies 51 Reference Appendix Part a: Introduction Rationale 1.1 Factors which attract readers to the text are coherence or logicality of the text, so authors, writers or learners always pay attention to using language in creating coherence of the text In other words, they recognize coherence of the text There are two types of linguistic devices to make textual coherence: grammatical and lexical However, it seems that almost learners pay much attention to grammatical devices (such as referent, ellipsis, substitution…) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact that the latter can contribute a significant part in creating coherence, as Nunan (1995: i 31) puts it : “lexical cohesion is the single most important form of cohesion, accounting for something like forty percent of cohesion ties in text” For cohesive devices, lexical cohesion is considered more common to contribute to textual coherence Different languages have different usage of language, thus the way of using lexical cohesion is surely different, English and Vietnamese are not except for We would like to provide readers with a specific comparison between the usage of lexical cohesion of languages: English and Vietnamese in order that readers can apply in their teaching and learning English 1.2 Newspapers, in the civilized society, have become one of the most popular and powerful means of communication and nowadays play a displaceable part in man’s life They are not only where people get themselves expressed, knowledgeenriched, information-updated and entertained, but also one of places where a language can interestingly manifest its own existence with its certain feature Besides, we can know many characteristics of English or Vietnamese language in newspaper articles published in English or Vietnamese, possibly in any forms of writing there We find lexical cohesion very interesting and appropriate also to apply related theories into daily updated, newspaper article, the source of material that has never been used for any discussions involving lexical cohesion in discourse so far For all reasons above, we have decided to choose “A comparative study of lexical cohesion in English and Vietnamese newspaper articles” to be the theme of the thesis Aims and objectives of the Study - The aim of the thesis are to study similarities and differences between the usage of Lexical Cohesion in English and in Vietnamese To get this aim, these following objectives fulfill: - To give some statistics and descriptions of Lexical Cohesion used in a specific form of writing in English and Vietnamese press: Newspaper article - To compare the amount of lexical cohesive items in English newspaper articles and Vietnamese ones - To suggest some practical applications of Lexical Cohesion in teaching and in learning English Scope of the Study Our research deals with types of Lexical cohesion in discourse provided by Halliday and Hasan (1976) including Repetition, Synonym, Subordinates and General i words Other type of cohesive device: grammatical cohesion is out of the scope of this thesis The data analyzed in the thesis are newspaper article available in English and Vietnamese newspaper, for English newspapers: CNN, Nytimes, Washingtonpost, USAtoday, Losangelestimes and for Vietnamese ones: Nhandan, Tuoitre, Dantri, Vietnamnet These are, in our opinion, the most well – known online newspapers English newspapers have become international newspaper on which English is the major language to be chosen for the information display Nhandan, Tuoitre, Dantri, Vietnamnet are popular newspapers of Vietnam from which we just take foreign news Thus, Vietnamese people find it easy to know what are happening in the world, outside their country These are considered reliable sources Content of these newspaper articles is about every field of the life such as: science, disasters …) and very little to lexical ones despite the fact So, it is not surprising that online newspapers are where the hottest news has been most frequently and fastest updated to the public Methods of the Study To meet the aims and objectives of the study, quantitative and approach was employed Survey is the research tool The author investigates 10 English newspaper articles and 10 Vietnamese newspapers ones which have the same content Then the writer synthesizes the data and gives comparison of the amount of lexical cohesion used in English and in Vietnamese newspaper articles Once collected, the data were collectively analyzed to address the research question Tables were used for clearer presentation and comparison Design of the Study There are three main parts in this research paper: Part A: Introduction In this part, the rationale, aims and objectives, scope, methods and design of the thesis are introduced Part B: Development This part consists of three chapters: Chapter 1: Theoretical background In this chapter, the author provides the literature review of the study, including definition of key concepts, majorly concepts relating lexical cohesion and review of related studies Chapter 2: Lexical cohesion in English and Vietnamese newspaper articles This chapter presents step by step lexical cohesion used in 10 selected English newspaper articles and 10 selected Vietnamese ones Comparison of lexical cohesion in English and Vietnamese newspaper articles was described in this chapter i Chapter 3: Discussion and implications In this chapter, the author discuss what analyzed in chapter two and give some implications for learning and teaching English as well as some suggested exercises Part C: Conclusion In this part, principal findings are summarized and some suggestions for further researches are provided Part B: development Chapter 1: theoretical back ground 1.1 Theory of discourse 1.1.1 Concept of discourse Linguistic descriptions are organized within a framework of categories Halliday (1961: 247) suggests that there are such fundamental categories: “unit, structure, class, system.” These categories are universal: they are necessary and sufficient as a basic for the description of any language In terms of “unit” The units of grammar which enter into the description of English and any “related” language are: sentence – clause – phrase – word – morpheme Here they are arranged on a scale from the largest to smallest Therefore, traditional linguists until the first half of the 20th century, considered sentences are the largest complete units to be studied That point of view was a mistake because many problems concerning with both linguistic theories and practices appeared, they are unthoroughly solved with this viewpoint That is the reason why there is appearance of a new subject in 1960s and early 1970s, studying languages through units above sentence level: Discourse Analysis Discourse Analysis “is concerned with the study of the relationship between language and the contexts in which it is used” as Michael McCarthy (1991: 3) puts it It includes linguistics, semiotics, psychology, anthropology and sociology Discourse Analysts study language in use: written texts of all kinds and spoken data from conversation to highly institutional forms of talk Since the time Discourse Analysis was a branch of linguistics, many authors defined the term “Discourse” in different ways In Introducing Discourse Analysis (1995), David Nunan introduced the idea of Crystal (1992: 25) that “A discourse is a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language that maybe longer than one sentence.” Barbara Johnstone (2002: 2) claims that : “Discourse usually means actual instances of communication in the medium of language” According to Nunan (1993), a discourse is “a stretch of language consisting of several sentences perceived as being related in some ways, in terms of the ideas they share and in terms of the jobs they perform within discourse” i In this thesis, the notion that seems to be the most acceptable is the one purposed by Guy Cook (1995: 198) seeing discourse as “stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposive.” 1.1.2 Text and Discourse Two terms “Text” and “Discourse” seem to be difficult to distinguish, even sometimes they are considered synonyms To some linguists, the two can be interchangeably used, as Nunan (1995: 1) indicates “a text or a discourse is a stretch of language that may be longer than a sentence” Or according to Crystal (1992: 72) “A text may be spoken or written, prose or verse, dialogue or monologue It may be anything from a single proverb to a whole play, from a momentary cry for help to all day discussion in a committee.” However, other authors have a clear distinction between them Widdowson is probably one of the first who makes a very explicit distinction According to Widdowson (1984): “text typically has cohesion whereas discourse has coherence.” For example: A: Could you open the door? B: It is so cold We don’t see any links between A and B but the listener can understand B don’t want to open the door That is coherence in discourse Some linguists are also similar to Widdowson’s viewpoint that is: “Discourse is language in action (or interaction) while a text is the written record of that interaction.” As Brown and Yule (1983: 6) indicates “text as a technical term to refer to the verbal record of a communicative act” and Crystal (1992: 25) defines “discourse as a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument, joke or narrative” and text as “a piece of naturally occurring spoken, written or signed discourse identified for purpose of analysis It is often a language unit with a definable function, such as a conversation, poster” This thesis supports the distinction indicated by Salkie (1993): “The term “text” is best used to refer to any written record of a communicative event whereas the term “discourse” refers to interpretation of the communicative event in context ” Any complete piece of newspaper article taken for analyzing in this study is best seen as a text or a discourse unit 1.1.3 Spoken discourse and written discourse i Spoken and written discourses simply mean speech and writing It has been widely agreed by linguists that there are common features as well as different ones between these two forms of language According to Halliday (1985), writing emerged in society as a result of cultural changes which created new communicative needs that could not be readily met by the spoken language Approvingly, Raphael Salkie (1993) contributes that the contexts for using written language are very different from those in which spoken language used For example, in the case of information, written language is used to communicate with others who are removed in time and space, or for those occasions of which a permanent or semi-permanent required One, accordingly, can not deny that spoken discourse is often considered to be less planned and orderly, more open to intervention by the receivers while written discourse is much better structured and the possibilities for subordinate participants limited Brown and Yule (1983) claim that “spoken and written discourse serve various functions, the former is used for establishment and maintenance of human relationships (interactional use) and the later for working out of transference of information (transactional use)” (cited in To Viet Thu 2001 – MA thesis) On the other hand, some linguists see common points between these two forms of language David Nunan (1995) believes that they both perform an equivalent range of broad functions, i.e They both are employed to get things the done, to provide information and to entertain Michael McCarthy (1991: 150) additionally proposes, “both spoken and written discourses are dependent on their immediate contexts to a greater or lesser degree”, and “implicitness and explicitness (of the language being used) will depend on what is being communicated to whom, rather than merely on whether the discourse is spoken or written.” In short, despite the fact that written and spoken discourses are two different forms of language, they both carry out many functions of communication and the differences are not absolute, and the characteristics that we tend to associate with written language can sometimes occur in spoken language and vice versa This means that some spoken texts will be more like written texts than others and vice versa 1.1.4 Discourse context 1.1.4.1 Context of situation David Nunan (1995:7) suggests a concept and a classification of context of situation (or context in short) as follows: i ... English and Vietnamese newspaper i We read newspaper articles to get information about what is happening in our community and in the rest of the world A newspaper article is arranged in main parts:... step lexical cohesion used in 10 selected English newspaper articles and 10 selected Vietnamese ones Comparison of lexical cohesion in English and Vietnamese newspaper articles was described in. .. applications of Lexical Cohesion in teaching and in learning English Scope of the Study Our research deals with types of Lexical cohesion in discourse provided by Halliday and Hasan (1976) including Repetition,