An analysis of grammatical cohesion used in the call of the wild by jack london m a thesis linguistics

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 3 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 4 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" 5 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 6 1.2.2 Cohesion vs Coherence The distinction between cohesion and coherence has not always been clarified partly because both terms come from the same verb cohere which means sticking together In fact, cohesion is the network of different kinds of formal relations that provide links between or among various parts of a text, and is expressed partly through the grammar and partly through the vocabulary Coherence, in contrast, can be understood as the quality of being meaningful and unified As for Nunan (1993), coherence is "the feeling that sequences of sentences or utterances seem to hang together" Coherence refers to the type of semantic and rhetorical relationships that underline texts If cohesion refers to the linguistic elements that make a discourse semantically coherent, then the coherence involves with what makes a text semantically meaningful Cohesion is only guide to coherence and coherence is something created by the reader in the act of reading the text The two categories represent the interrelated aspects that make a text or discourse coherent and different from random ones In short, coherence is embodied by a system of cohesive devices and cohesion is mainly used to ensure coherence 1.2.3 Types of Cohesion According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), the classification of cohesion is based on the linguistic form The type of cohesion depends either on semantic relation in the linguistic system or on lexico-grammatical relations In other words, the cohesive relation can be interpreted as being either lexico-grammatical in nature or semantic It can be made clearer in the following description: Nature of cohesive relation Type of cohesion Relatedness of form Substitution and ellipsis; lexical collocation Relatedness of reference Reference; lexical reiteration Semantic connection Conjunction Table 1.1: Type of cohesion (Source: Halliday and Hasan, 1976:304) Reference, substitution and ellipsis are clearly grammatical; lexical cohesion, as the name implies, lexical Conjunction is on the borderline of grammatical and the lexical; the set of conjunctive expressions involve lexical selection However, it is better to put it in the group of grammatical cohesion as it is mainly grammatical with a lexical component inside Consequently, we can refer to grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion as follows: Grammatical cohesion Reference Lexical cohesion Conjunction Reiteration  Exophoric  Additive  Same word/repetition  Endophoric  Adversative  Synonym/near synonyms - personal  Causal  Superordinates - demonstrative  Temporal  General words - comparative  Others Substitution Collocation  Noun + Noun  Nominal substitution  Adjective + Noun  Verbal substitution  Verb + Noun  Clausal substitution  Noun + Preposition  Adjective + Preposition Ellipsis  Nominal ellipsis  Adverb + Adjective  Verbal ellipsis  Verb + Preposition  Clausal ellipsis Table 1.2: Grammatical and Lexical cohesion 1.2.3.1 Grammatical Cohesion As mentioned above, grammatical cohesion consists of four sub-types, they are Reference, Substitution, Ellipsis and Conjunction Below, by analysing some typical examples, the author attempts to go into detail with each type with a view to giving an overall background of grammatical cohesion Reference To begin with, in the view of Halliday and Hasan (1976:32), reference is a semantic relation and "since the relationship is on the semantic level, the reference item is in no way constrained to match the grammatical class of the item it refers to" 8 The two authors also distinguish situational and textual reference very clearly by contrasting exophora (or exophoric reference) and endophora (i.e, endophoric reference) as follows: Reference [situational] exophora [textual] endophora [to preceding text] anaphora Figure 1.1: Reference [to following text] cataphora (Source: Halliday and Hasan, 1976:33) They then conclude that reference items may be exophoric or endophoric; and if endophoric, they may be anaphoric or cataphoric These two authors also indicate: "There are items in every language which have the property of reference" In English, those items belong to anaphoric and cataphoric reference The first consists of items which point the readers or listeners backwards to a previously mentioned entity, process or state of affairs The second, on the other hand, points the readers or listeners forward further into the text in order to identify elements to which the reference items refer To take an example, let us look at the opening lines of a famous English novel, Jude the Obscure The author, Thomas Hardy, shows different types of reference at work: The schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed sorry The miller at Cresscombe lent him the small white tilted cart and horse to carry his goods to the city of his destination, about twenty miles off, such a vehicle providing of quite sufficient size for the departing teacher's effects In this example, there are both anaphoric and exophoric reference The followings are detailed analysis of such types of reference  Anaphoric Reference: In the first sense, him in "lent him the small white tilted cart" is the schoolmaster introduced earlier, his destination is the schoolmaster's and such a links back to the cart in the previous sentence; therefore, all the expressions “him, his destination, such a” are referred to as anaphoric reference 9  Exophoric Reference: The novel opens with "the schoolmaster" leaving "the village" We have no information about which schoolmaster and which village that the writer is referring to In this case, the author expects us to share a world with him, independent of the text, with typical villages and their populations (everybody), their schoolmaster and miller These ones are exophoric reference Now consider the following example of reference with the pronoun "she": Although she was still tired, my sister managed to go to school In this particular text, neither anaphoric nor exophoric reference supplies the identity of "she", we have to read on, and are given the identity in the following part of the sentence “She” here is cataphoric reference Also according to Halliday and Hasan, there are three types of reference: personal, demonstrative, and comparative The first is reference by means of function in the speech situation, through the category of PERSON, such as: I, me, you, we, us (noun/pronoun); mine, my, your, yours, one's (determiner); etc The second is reference by means of location, on a scale of PROXIMITY, such as: this, these, here, now (near proximity); that, those, there, then (far proximity); or the (neutral proximity) The last is indirect reference by means of IDENTITY or SIMILARITY, such as same, identical, equal, identically (identity-general comparison); similar, additional (general similarity - general comparison); other, different, else, differently, otherwise (difference); better, more, so, equally (particular comparison) These various devices enable the writer or speaker to make multiple references to people and things within a text Examples of these types are as follows: Peter didn't come to the party He is too busy typing his reports for the next meeting In this example, both “Peter” and “he” refers to the same person “He” in the second sentence is regarded as personal reference Tom is always the last person to enter the meeting hall This annoys his colleagues As can be seen, “This” replaces the meaning of the whole preceding sentence In this case, “this” is demonstrative reference I'm not so happy as he In the last example, “so” is used as comparative reference 10 Substitution The second type of grammatical cohesion analysed below is substitution Substitution is a relation in the wording rather than in the meaning and within the text It is the use of substitute word or phrase to avoid repetition Most of the substitutes are proforms within sentences, which can be used across sentences There are three types of substitution: nominal substitution, verbal substitution and clausal substitution Substitutes may be proforms for nouns (one/ ones); proforms for adverbials (there, like it, like that, ); proforms for predicates and predication (do so, it, that, so do/does); proforms for the direct object clause (that, so, ) According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), nominal substitution includes: one, ones, same; verbal substitution consists of do; and clausal substitution are so, not The following are some examples of substitution  Nominal substitution There are some new tennis balls in the bag These ones have lost their bounce In the second sentence, “ones” refers to the noun phrase “tennis balls” appearing before It is, therefore, called nominal substitution  Verbal substitution A: Did Mary take that letter? B: She might have done The verb “done” in B’s answer is a substitute of the verb phrase “take that letter” In this case, “done” is an example of verbal substitution  Clausal substitution A: Is it going to rain? B: I think so We can see clearly from this conversation that B agrees with A’s idea and the word “so” substitutes the clause “it is going to rain” “So” is clausal substitution Ellipsis Ellipsis is an omission of certain elements from a sentence or clause and can only be recovered by referring to an element in the proceeding text The former is non-cohesive, and the latter is cohesive Elliptical cohesion always appears anaphoric Ellipsis can be repetition This is similar to substitution in terms of three types: nominal ellipsis, verbal ellipsis and clausal ellipsis 11  Nominal ellipsis: My kids play an awful lot of sport Both [ ] are incredibly energetic In this instance, in order to be fully interpreted, the sentences must be filled with “my kids” in the gap However, these are omitted as it is not necessary for readers to work out the sentence’s meaning  Verbal ellipsis: A: Have you been working? B: Yes, I have [ ] Similarly, there is no need to repeat the verb in this sentence as it presupposes the word from the previous verbal group The full answer for A’s question is “Yes, I have been working” Hence, B’s response here is known as verbal ellipsis  Clausal ellipsis: A: Why'd you only set three places? Paul's staying for dinner, isn't he? B: Is he? He didn't tell me [ ] B’s answer in this case can be understood as “He didn’t tell me he is staying for dinner” As this clause is omitted, this sentence is considered as an example of clausal ellipsis Conjunction Conjunction is different from substitution, ellipsis and reference in the fact that it is not a device for reminding the readers of previously mentioned entities, actions and state of affairs It is not in the kind of anaphoric relation But it is a truly cohesive device because it signals relationships that can only be fully understood through reference to other parts of the text There are four types of conjunction: temporal, causal, additive and adversative Following are some examples of conjunctive relations: - Temporal: then, next, after that, just then, at the same time, finally, at last, at once, soon, after a time, next time, on another occasion, meanwhile, until then, etc We have been looking for that book for months Finally, we manage to get it - Causal: so, then, hence, therefore, consequently, for this reason, account for this, as a result, with this in mind, for, because, on this basis, to this end, arising out of this, in that case, that being so, under the circumstances, otherwise, in this respect, with reference to this, aside from this, etc As a student, he was very lazy Consequently, he failed his entrance examination to university 12 - Adversative: yet, though, however, only, nevertheless, despite this, in fact, actually, on the other hand, at the same time, instead of, on the contrary, at least, in any case, anyhow, at any rate, etc I have lived here for ten years; however, I've never heard of that pub - Additive: and, and so, nor, furthermore, in addition, besides, alternatively, incidentally, by the way, that is, I mean, in other words, for instance, thus, likewise, similarly, in the same way, by contrast, etc She is intelligent And she is also very reliable 1.2.3.2 Lexical Cohesion Lexical cohesion was first advanced by Firth (1957) and later developed by Halliday (1961, 1966) Lexical cohesion occurs when two words in a discourse are semantically related in some way Halliday and Hasan (1976) classify lexical cohesion into two main categories: reiteration and collocation Reiteration Reiteration, according to Halliday and Hasan (1976), is "the repetition of a lexical item, or the occurrence of a synonym of some kind, in the context of reference; that is, where the two occurrences have the same referent" Reiteration involves repetition, synonyms and near synonyms, superordinates, and general words The meeting commenced at six thirty But from the moment it began, it was clear that all was not well Collocation Collocation is known as the tendency to co-occur in the same lexical environment without depending on any semantic relationships E.g.: A: Would you mind filling the kettle and switching it on? (1) B: I need boiling water for vegetable (2) In (1) we have the word “kettle” and in terms of meaning, two words “fill” and “switch” which may be used to combine with “kettle” appear in our minds Likewise, in (2) we have “water” and “boil” in our mind These are known as collocation To sum up, the first chapter of this study just provides some background knowledge about Discourse and Cohesion in general All these will be discussed in more detail with examples from the novel “The Call of the Wild” at chapter three of the thesis 13 CHAPTER 2: AN OVERVIEW ON "THE CALL OF THE WILD" BY JACK LONDON Among those famous literary works of English literature, “The Call of the Wild” by Jack London is considered one of the greatest It is assumed that this novel is not just a story for children; its appeal also has influences on adult readers’ feelings and emotion Following, we attempt to give a brief description of the story’s plot, the main characters and all the events which takes place in the novel Hopefully, it will help readers have a more thorough understanding of the book as well as the moral lessons conventionally conveyed 2.1 A brief summary of "The Call of the Wild" The Call of the Wild is the story of a dog’s journey from living a cocooned life in sunny California, to the unforgiving frozen dunes of the arctic A man’s greed stole Buck’s comfortable life He was sold by his master’s trusted servant to men heading south in search of that precious yellow metal - gold Buck’s journey through the harsh landscapes as a sledge dog, passing from rough but skilled hands of his first owners, to the incompetence of a group of three, and then finally, into the care of the loving John Thornton, teaches him to survive in the ways of the wild In the process, his natural killer instincts, made dormant by his brush with civilisation, awaken Buck becomes the best sledge dog ever that walked the frozen trails to the land of gold In the end, as John Thornton – the last tie with human life - dies a tragic death, Buck finally resides where he was always meant to be: in the heart, and call of the wild 2.2 An overview on "The Call of the Wild" 2.2.1 Characters As a matter of fact, "The Call of the Wild" is the story of a dog's journey and all the events happened in the story are seen through the eyes of that dog Buck, the name of the dog, can be said to be the witness as well as the story-teller who helps readers have an overall perception of the whole story However, Jack London's viewpoint is not just to describe a journey He also wants, through his characters, to convey the social concerns of that period 14 Added to this, during his journey, Buck has a great deal of relationships with a number of different characters All these characters have built up the story events Nevertheless, the major characters of the story can be classified into three groups: Buck, John Thornton, and the last consisting of three members: Hal, Charles and Mercedes Each character represents the thoughts and behaviour of one group of people during the period in which the story takes place 2.2.2 Story events "The Call of the Wild" is a great novel with a long sequence of events happening through the story of Buck However, it is not merely a description of a journey seeking for gold, it is a true description of life during the time when the story was written The novel, therefore, teaches us the real life, not in a big comfortable flat, but life, which consists of fighting with nature Jack London has embedded in his story with a lot of social issues as well as hidden messages that cause readers to consider after reading the book On analysing the book thoroughly, we realize that the main themes that the author wants to show us includes: Survival of the fittest, Heredity and Environment and Man - Dog Relationship A detailed analysis of the story events in the next chapter will make it clearer to have an overview on the “hidden messages” in “The Call of the Wild” 15 CHAPTER 3: AN ANALYSIS OF GRAMMATICAL COHESION USED IN “THE CALL OF THE WILD” As mentioned above, “The Call of the Wild” is a fantastic book whose appeal remains until today There are a number of factors that makes this novel a great success Cohesion is considered as one of the key elements Thus, how is cohesion, specifically grammatical cohesion exploited and by what way can Jack London employ all the items related in his work? The following chapter attempts to answer all these questions as well as points out some major findings of grammatical cohesion in “The Call of the Wild” 3.1 References 3.1.1 Exophoric and Endophoric Reference 3.1.1.1 Exophoric Reference Reference is a relationship in meaning The fact shows that reference to the situation is the prior form of reference, and that reference to another item within the text is a secondary or derived form of this relation This is more clearly illustrated in Halliday (1985:312): “It seems quite unlikely that reference first evolved as an “exophoric” relation: that is, as a means of linking “outwards” to some person or object in the environment” In another word, reference to assumed, shared worlds outside of the text are exophoric Exophoric reference contributes to the creation of the text, in that it links the language with the context of situation, but it does not contribute to the integration of one passage with another so that the two together form the parts of the same text It is not text-internal, not of contribution to the cohesion of a text, however, it helps to make sense in the context While analysing “The Call of the Wild” in detail, we realize that such type of references is widely used It can be seen in the following examples: ( ) And this was the manner of dog Buck in the fall of 1897, when the Klondike strike dragged men from all the world into the frozen North (Chapter 1) On reading the book, this sentence draws our attention to “the Klondike” and “the frozen North” In order to understand these linguistic items, it is essential that readers have some background knowledge of the social event taking place during the time the novel was written (The Klondike Gold Rush was a frenzy of gold rush immigration to and for gold prospecting, at the Klondike river near Dawson city, Yuko, Canada, after gold was discovered there in the late 19th century Many men of that time were lured to that area to explore this precious metal) 16 Buck’s first day on the Dyea beach was like a nightmare (Chapter 2) Jack London ends chapter with the scene of the dog Buck and his friends leaving on a ship to a colder place – as Buck can perceive And to begin chapter 2, the author introduces to readers “Buck’s first day on the Dyea” Which “Dyea”? Is it in the Arctic darkness as mentioned at the beginning of the novel? We are using more than just the text here to establish referents In this case, the author expects us to share a world with him, independent of the text, in which both men and dogs and other living creatures have to endure hard conditions of a primordial life (The Dyea river is in Alaska, America) As mentioned before, Jack London’s work is closely associated with real life and through his writing, he wants to characterize the social concern at that time Therefore, during the study of “The Call of the Wild”, we see that almost all exophoric markers exploited in the novel direct us to a world familiar to both writer and reader The number of occurences of the article “the” in combination with a concrete place and with other definite (or conventionally definite) nouns is surprisingly great Besides, there are some other ways of expressing exophoric reference in “The Call of the Wild” The following table is detailed analysis of exophoric references by Jack London in “The Call of the Wild” Exophoric Reference Number of occurences Frequency (%) Chapter 45 11.5 Chapter 34 8.7 Chapter 56 14.4 Chapter 37 9.5 Chapter 72 18.5 Chapter 65 16.7 Chapter 81 20.7 Total 390 100 Table 3.1: Exophoric Reference in “The Call of the Wild” As can be seen from the table, Jack London has exploited a great deal of exophoric reference in his novel Through the seven chapters of the book, there are 390 cases in which exophoric referent markers are employed (100 %) Of these, the figures gained in each chapter after analysing are not the same in terms of frequency Chapter seven - with 81 times of occurences of exophoric reference - ranks first, accounting for 20.7 % On the contrary, in chapter 2, there are only 34 examples of exophoric referent items, with the 17 proportion of 8.7 % Chapter five ranks second with 72 cases (18.5 %) Next comes chapter six with 65 times, which accounts for 16.7 % In the three chapters left, exophoric reference appears rather often, counting for a small number of around 37 – 65 times This is understandable as a result of the differences in length between chapters Furthermore, in each chapter, it is the context of the story event that determines the number of occurences of such referent markers There are reasons for the author’s choices of exploiting such a large number of exophoric reference First of all, these are employed in the novel in accordance with Jack London’s writing style when he attempts to show great concern about the current social issues More important, by means of exophoric reference, the book presents us a panorama of a society that is real, and that is familiar not only to the writer himself but all the readers as well 3.1.1.2 Endophoric Reference As what discussed in previous chapter on “Reference”, endophora may be anaphora, which belongs to preceding texts, or cataphora, to following text According to Guido Telemans (2001-2002), cataphoric reference “is a classic device for engaging the reader’s attention” which often appears in the opening sentences of the text Anaphoric reference, on the contrary, requires readers to come back to the opening sentences of the text to get full comprehension Below are some examples of anaphoric and cataphoric reference: Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, ( ) (Chapter 1) It can be seen from the above sentence, “he” and “himself” are anaphoric references which tie up with “Buck” in the preceding text Readers will find it hard to understand the whole text without looking backwards to work out the relationship between “he” as well as “himself” and the already mentioned “Buck” Here, “he”, “himself” and “Buck” are text-internal Charles and Hal went out in the evening and brought six outside dogs These, added to the six of the original team, and Teek and Koona, the huskies obtained at the Rink Rapids on the record trip, brought the team up to fourteen But the outside dogs, though practically broken in since their landing, did not amount to much Three were short-haired pointers, one was Newfoundland, and the other two were mongrels of indeterminate breed They did not seem to know anything, these newcomers (Chapter 5) Tải FULL (file doc 49 trang): bit.ly/3nQNrG4 Dự phòng: fb.com/TaiHo123doc.net 18 There are many other types of grammatical ties in this text , nevertheless, within this part, let us pay more attention to referent markers Firstly, “Teek and Koona” are intepreted cataphorically, since readers have to continue forwards to “the huskies obtained at the Rink Rapids on the record trip” to realize their identity Meanwhile, “their” in “since their landing” is anaphoric on referring to “the outside dogs” in the first part of that sentence Lastly, “they” in “They did not seem to know anything” is cataphoric refererent of “these newcomers”, appearing in the final part of the whole text Surprisingly, with regards to endophora, anaphora is exploited in greater number That is to say, in most cases, readers have to move forwards to understand thoroughly the linguistic expressions they are reading The next part of this chapter is the statistical analysis of Reference Markers in “The Call of the Wild” 3.1.2 Statistical Analysis of Reference Markers As mentioned in the previous chapter, there are three types of reference: personal, demonstrative and comparative The following table will show in more detail the number of occurences of each type in the novel To begin with, let us have a look at personal referent items used in this novel No of occurences Personal Function Plural Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter His 189 237 328 180 94 273 305 Hers Her 12 66 It Its Its 19 25 53 30 70 54 100 They/them theirs Their 34 86 135 40 138 46 100 Possessive Deitic Masculine He/him His Feminine She/her Neuter Class Singular Chapter Determinative Table 3.2 Personal Reference in “The Call of the Wild” Table 3.2 shows that throughout the seven chapters of the book, the writer has used a great deal of personal reference, both singular and plural, though different in terms of frequency This seems to be correspondent to the number as well as gender of characters appearing in the story Except for human roles, all the animals – specifically dogs – are personified; thus, they perform as “he” or “she” After analysing the chapters thoroughly, we can find here 2627 cases of personal reference (100%) On the average, with a total of 1606 times occuring, singular determinative masculine (he/him/his) accounts for 61.1 % which ranks first On the contrary, that of singular determinative feminine is only 3.5 % with only 91 occurences The proportions of singular determinative neuter and plural are 19 13.4 % and 22 % respectively (351 occurences for it/its and 579 times for they/them/their/theirs) Next, the frequency of demonstrative reference can be illustrated by the table below: No of occurences Demonstrative Function Head Deitic Near This/these This/these Far That/those That/those It The Class Adjunct Specific Nonspecific Here (now) There (then) Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter 13 17 25 31 11 16 18 22 223 197 385 220 486 434 462 Table 3.3 Demonstrative Reference in “The Call of the Wild” Like personal reference, demonstrative items appear very frequently with a total of 2598 occurrences (100%) We can see from this table that non-specific demonstrative “it” and “the” get a remarkable number of occurrences in all chapters of the novel: 2407 times, accounting for 92.6 % The uses of near demonstrative (this/these/here) are a bit preferable to far demonstrative (that/those/there) with the number of occurrences of 108 times (4.2 %) compared to 83 times (3.2 %) Lastly, the following table is the data analysis of comparative reference in “The Call of the Wild”: Comparative Function Class Deitic/numerative Same, equal, identical Similar, General additional Other, different Frequency Chapters Specific quantifier Chapters Adjunct/submodifier 21 identically So, similarly, such likewise Otherwise, else, 38 differently Com.adj & adv; 39 Frequency Chapters Epithet More, fewer, less, further; so-, as-, + Frequency so-, less-, as-, more- + adj 56 19 Com.adj & adv; so-, 51 less, as-, more- + 47 adv Table 3.4 Comparative Reference in “The Call of the Wild” Table 3.4 demonstrates very clearly the difference between specific and general comparative in “The Call of the Wild” In terms of general comparative, the expressions Tải FULL (file doc 49 trang): bit.ly/3nQNrG4 Dự phòng: fb.com/TaiHo123doc.net 20 showing identity are rarely used We can find among seven chapters here only words “same”, as in: They were of the same large type as Thornton, living close to the earth, thinking simply and seeing clearly ( ) (Chapter 6) “Same” here turns out to compare the appearance of the three men: Thornton, Hans and Pete It is an instance of comparative reference Also for general comparative, “equal”, “identical” and “identically” even not appear in this novel Apart from “additional” – which does not appear, and “similar” – with two times in occurrences, words denoting similarity and differences appear quite often The number of occurrences of “such” is 21 whereas “so”, “similarly” and “likewise” make a total up to 56 times There are 38 cases in which “other” and “different” are used “Otherwise”, “else” and “differently” appear a bit fewer with 19 times To see these more clearly, let us take the following sentences as examples: He saw the silent circle, with gleaming eyes, lolling tongues, and silvery breaths drifting upward, closing upon him as he had seen similar circles close in upon beaten antagonists in the past (Chapter 3) Buck was no less eager, and no less cautious, as he likewise circled back and forth for the advantage (Chapter 3) It would have required an experienced man to keep the top-heavy sled upright, and Hal was not such a man (Chapter 5) With regard to specific comparative, the frequency is quite remarkable Comparative adjectives & adverbs, so-, less-, as-, more + adjectives rank first with 51 times of occurrences Being on the second scale, Comparative adjectives & adverbs, so-, as-, more-, less- + adverbs are 47 times repeated The last group, more, fewer, less, further, so-, as-, + quantifier appear 39 times The following are some examples of specific comparatives As the number of occurrences is quite great, we just give here some typical instances in which specific comparative references are used as means of cohesion Never in all his life had he been so vilely treated, and never in all his life had he been so angry (Chapter 1) They were camped near the long store, where she, in her friendly way, made advances to a husky dog the size of a full-grown wolf, though not half so large as she (Chapter 2) On studying the book thoroughly, it seems to us that superlatives and comparatives are used quite often As a matter of fact, comparison is to make distinguishing 6811888 ... 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... clearer to have an overview on the “hidden messages” in ? ?The Call of the Wild? ?? 15 CHAPTER 3: AN ANALYSIS OF GRAMMATICAL COHESION USED IN ? ?THE CALL OF THE WILD? ?? As mentioned above, ? ?The Call of. .. 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