OJV1 Introduction to Text Analysis Final revision December 18, 2015
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• Explain the most important structural and functional differences between sentences and texts. • Explain the concept of lexeme. Provide one example of a lexeme in English. • Explain the difference between lexeme and morpheme. • What is lexical ambiguity? Provide two examples in English. 2
• What is the basic meaning of the word ’discourse’? What is the scope of the term discourse in textual analysis? • List and explain the three most important aspects (or patterns) of text structure. • Explain the difference between lexical and grammatical cohesion of a text structure.
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• What is text linguistics? What is its focus of interest? • What is your understanding of the term intertextuality?
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Read the following text first, then and identify and chronologically organize the sentences from the paragraph into two different texts. The first text is an advertisement for a charity organization. The second text is a short political speech.
Here is the truth about unemployment. Those who try to fool the electors. $3 pays for two hoes for a refugee family in Mozambique. Thank you! It’s a waste. Individuals suffer. Families suffer. The nation suffers. Here is another. Young people, sixteen, no qualifications, never had a job. A gift from you can bring lasting changes to people’s lives. Madam Chairman, ladies and gentleman. Graduates with lots of qualifications, still can’t get a job. This envelope changes lives. Madam Chairman, unemployment is still far too high. $5 helps to provide clean water for 50 families in Zambia. Professionals, 45, never been out of work, are suddenly made redundant. There are two kinds of politicians. $1.25 buys a bag of cement to line a well in Ethiopia. For 50 years Oxfam has fought poverty in the third world by helping people to help themselves. That is the first truth. And those who tell the truth. Now, please give what you can! Politicians don’t create jobs. Businessmen do. 5
Analyse the text (s). Why does the textual structure break down? Male, 42, home-owner, recently relocated to Bristol. His relocating to Bristol was caused by a very painful divorce. His wife cheated on him and he lost custody of the children. He has three children. Twins are five years old, and the youngest daughter is three. His wife is working as a nurse. They have two kids, a girl who is twelve years old and a newborn baby boy, who's only two months old. They want to have another child, possibly another girl, once their financial situation has improved. However, they haven't realized that little children are only cute when you're not the one who has to take care of them or clean up after.
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To make watercress soup, first saute a finely chopped onion by melting a knob of butter in a saucepan over a medium heat.Second put the water to warm it up in a pot. After the water has boiled, add firstly melted butter and onion. Cook for about ten minutes in half-closed pot on medium heat. Add carrots and let it cook for another ten minutes. After that, you can add any spices or some more vegetables if you like. Cook at max temperature for ten minutes. Because we are all going to die!!! Except if you're a vampire or a zombie, then you have nothing to worry about. In the end of the day something good will happen. You will find out that you are going to get one million dolars. 7
Read the paragraph and write a similar description using metaphors in description to write about SNOW instead of FOG. You should follow a similar structural pattern. Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green ails and meadows; fog down
the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollution of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex Marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ‘prentice boy on deck. Chance of people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds. Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the street, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be soon to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time—as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.
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I’m walking along, through the city. The air is like a dagger that cuts through my throat. Every gasp pushes it deeper and deeper. The wind works, in unison, with the snowflakes, it throws them at me. They are like small, serrated knives. Black ice is hidden beneath my feet by dirty, black, smog covered snow. One careless step and ill fall. Long icicle, like canines, hang from buildings, just waiting to bite someone. On the rooftops snow waits for people to pass beneath it, so it can get a chance to pounce and bury them. Drain pipes contract, and crack, and snap because of the cold. There’s a beggar lying in the gutter. I hope he’s asleep 9
A description of an atmosphere Every time you took a step closer to the house, the dead cold would pierce deeper throuhg your bones. Inside the house, the gloomy lifeless colors of the walls would devour every desperate ray of sunshine that came in through the cracks on the windows. Each step taken sounded like a thousand bones being broken. Above the fireplace, an old painting of two girls with emerald green eyes hung broken and crooked. Even like that, you had a feeling that they were watching you all the time. The morose feeling was overwhelming. 10