MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING THE UNIVERSITY OF QUY NHON VÕ THỊ NGỌC ÁI LEXICAL COHESION USED IN THE STORY “WHITE FANG” BY JACK LONDON Field: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS Code: 8 22 02 01 Supervisor: NGU THIEN HUNG, Ph.D BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN VÕ THỊ NGỌC ÁI LIÊN KẾT NGỮ VỰNG TRONG TIỂU THUYẾT ―NANH TRẮNG” CỦA TÁC GIẢ JACK LONDON Chuyên ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh Code: 8 22 02 01 Người hướng dẫn: TS.NGŨ THIỆN HÙNG i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I totally assure that the thesis ―Lexical cohesion used in the novel ―White Fang‖ by Jack London‘‘ is my own work for the purpose of graduating the MA course of English Linguistics. The content of this thesis has not been published or written by any other authors except for some references which are used in this thesis. The thesis has not been submitted for any degree or diploma in any university. Quy Nhon, August, 2022 VO THI NGOC AI ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS During the period of doing the research, considerable support and great encouragement from my teachers, friends and family were given to me so that I could overcome difficulties and complete my master thesis.
First of all, I would like to show my deep gratitude to my respected supervisor, Dr. Ngu Thien Hung who gives me his helpful guidance and stands by me from the beginning to the end of my thesis. Without his accompaniment and encouragement, I could hardly finish this MA thesis. Second, I owe an unpaid debt to all the qualified and experienced teachers who helped me broaden my knowledge about English Linguistics and my friendly classmates who gave me unforgettable memories.
Last but not least, I am extremely thankful to my beloved family and my friends for their love, care and support during the fulfillment of this study. iii ABSTRACT This study aims to examine the lexical cohesion realized through lexical cohesive devices in the first four chapters of ―White Fang‖ by Jack London in order to gain an insight into the distribution of types of lexical devices and their textual functions. As a descriptive study, the thesis sought the qualitative and quantitative information for the issues of the lexical cohesive devices used in the first four chapters of ―White Fang‖ by Jack London, the lexical ties performed by these lexical cohesive devices in the Thematic Progression of the text of the novel. Adopting the descriptive framework by Halliday and Hasan (1976) and Halliday and Matthiessen (2004), the study analyzed the data collected from clauses and sentences containing lexical items that created the cohesion and coherence of the text.
The analysis of 1.002 instances of Reiteration and Collocation reveals that instances of Reiteration with repetition of the same word(s), synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, meronymy and general words outnumbered those of collocation with binomials and lexical chains. The instances of lexical cohesion were also found with the textual functions as elaborating, extending and enhancing. In fulfilling these functions, the lexical items that realized the cohesive text also were acknowledged with their contribution to Thematic progression of the text of the novel. Finally, implications about the teaching and learning concerning lexical cohesion were put forwards to the employment of the framework of Systemic Functional Grammar by Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) in analyzing the cohesion of a text, and the recommendation to pedagogical moves in enhancing the interpretation of a text and the writing skills with the use of lexical devices to achieve a cohesive text.
iv TABLE OF CONTENT STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP. iii TABLE OF CONTENT. iv LIST OF TABLES. vi LIST OF FIGURES.
Aims of study. Scope of the study. Justification of study. Organization of the study.
LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND. Review of previous studies. Definitions of coherence. Definitions of cohesion.
Theme – Rheme Structure. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY. Sample and sources of data. Data Collection Procedures.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. Lexical Cohesive Devices as Tools for Thematic Progression. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS. Implication to the Language Teaching and Learning.
Limitation and Recommedation to Further Study. 90 APPENDICES vi LIST OF TABLES Table 4. Quantitative results of lexical devices used in first four chapters of the novel White Fang by Jack London. Distribution of Reiteration with lexical items in the first four chapters.
Reiteration of the same word(s). Reiteration of synonyms. Reiteration with antonyms. Reiteration with hyonyms and hypernyms.
Reiteration with general words. Reiteration with meronyms. Collocation with binomials. Collocations with lexical chains.
Textual functions of lexical Devices of cohesion. Thematic Progression Patterns with Lexical cohesion. 81 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2. zig-zag Thematic Progression pattern (Eggins, 1994).
Repeated Thematic Progression Pattern (adapted from Danes, 1974). Derived Thematic Progression Pattern (adapted from Eggins, 2004). Rationale From the linguistic view, text is a communicative occurrence which meets seven standards of textuality that should be satisfied for a text to be communicative. Beaugrande and Dressler (1992), these standards are the constitutive principles defining communicative purpose of the text and help to realize the connectedness of occurrences through syntactic relations on the surface (cohesion); through conceptual relations in the text (coherence), through the attitudes of the author and reader to the text (intentionality and acceptability), through the transfer of the information (informativity), through the setting (situationality); and through the reciprocal relationship of separate texts (intertextuality).
In linguistics and literary studies, textuality is the property by which successive sentences form a coherent text. Among the three basic domains of textuality - texture, structure, and context, the term texture encompases the various devices used in establishing continuity of sense and thus making a sequence of sentences working in terms of both cohesion and coherence. Cohesion analysis has been a growing interest in several branches of linguistics. Halliday and Hasan (1976), Halliday and Matthiessen (2004), Tanskanen (2006) aimed to develop an appropriate taxonomy for the analysis of all kinds of texts.
Newmark (1987), the topic of cohesion has always been the most useful constituent of discourse analysis or text linguistics applicable to translation. Analysis of cohesive devices within a text gives us more insight into how writers structure what they want to say and may be crucial factors in our judgments of whether something is well-written or not. Cohesion helps to 2 create texture through meaning relation that requires one element to be interpreted by reference to another. In other words, there is cohesion, where the interpretation of an item in the discourse depends upon reference being made to some other item in the discourse.
Along with the emphasis on the importance of text cohesion to show text relations, Givón (1983) stated that as the realizations of cohesion, cohesive devices enable communicators to produce language which is connected, coherent, and relevant to the subject at hand. Among the different types of cohesive devices, namely, reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion (Haliday & Hasan, 1976), lexical cohesion is of great importance and has different applications in translation studies, computational linguistics, information retrieval researches and teaching and learning issues. Lexical cohesion involves the choice of vocabulary that is concerned with the relationship that exists between lexical items in a text such as words and phrases. Different genres may show a tendency towards the use of some specific types of different cohesive devices for creating texts.
Since their role in discourse organization is genre-dependent, cohesion is dominant in certain genres, whereas in other genres coherence might be more dominant in the organization of discourse. Halliday & Hasan (1976), cohesion is sensitive to the varieties of discourse. Although lexical cohesion is present in the cohesion structure of all these forms of discourse, the distribution of the cohesive types strongly differs for genres. We can find occurrence of certain cohesive links more typically in certain varieties of discourse than others.
For instance, for investigations of participant chains, referential cohesion is a characteristic type of narrative discourse (Fox, 1987). In spite of the importance of lexical cohesion in shaping the unity and connectedness of text and the distribution of cohesion in different genres, the 3 literature review has seen few descriptive studies on lexical cohesion in literary works. There have been some studies on the lexical cohesive devices, namely reframed narrativity in literary translation: an investigation of the explicitation of cohesive chains (Li & Li, 2021), analysis of lexical cohesion on the students‘ writing (Sadibutar, 2021), the contribution of lexical cohesion to the text cohesion in EFL students‘ expository texts (Adiantika, 2018). In sum, there have been many studies concerning with different aspects of lexical cohesion in which studies on the meaning and structure of a text also mention the relationship between clauses in clause complexes.
Although lexical cohesion have been studied in details as lexical cohesion between clauses, these studies only focused on fairy tales, short stories, not much on novels. The latest work that has investigated the cohesive devices used Chapter 5 ―White Fang and the Indians‖ in the novel ―White Fang‖ by Jack London in view of Systemic Functional Linguiscs (SFG) was conducted by Nguyen (2012). Unfortunately, this descriptive study put its focus on the grammatical cohesive devices with two types of logico-semantic relation – expansion and projection. Also, the textual functions of the lexical devices to realize cohesion in the text, namely Thematic Progression has not been mentioned and discussed in these descriptive studies.
Moreover, binomials, a kind of collocation which are frequently used in literary texts have not been addressed as one type of lexical items for lexical cohesion. For those reasons, I chose the novel ―White Fang‖ written by Jack London to investigate the lexical cohesion within simple clauses and between clauses in clause complexes. The reason for my selecting the novel is not only because of its popularity but also because of its precise prose style. Moreover, doing this research gives me a chance to get to know the novel with lessons on bravery, patience, tolerance and love through the use of lexical cohesion in the text.
Aims of study This study aims to examine the lexical cohesion realized through lexical cohesive devices in the first four chapters of ―White Fang‖ by Jack London in order to gain an insight into the distribution of types of lexical devices and their textual functions. Research questions To achieve the aims of study, the thesis attempts to answer the following questions. 1) What are the lexical cohesive devices used in the first four chapters of ―White Fang‖ by Jack London? 2) What are the lexical ties performed by the lexical cohesive devices used in the first four chapters of ―White Fang‖ by Jack London? 3) What are the textual functions performed by these lexical cohesive devices in Thematic Progression in the first four chapters of ―White Fang‖ by Jack London? 1. Scope of the study The novel consists of 20 chapters but I chose only the first four chapters as the illustrated material for the analysis because through these chapters, the lexical cohesion are realized quite clearly as the lexical chains that set up the scenes of the story at the beginning.
As the result, readers can understand more about the lexical cohesion used to start the journey along with the writer. Thus, my study was restricted to the examination of Lexical cohesion used in first four chapters in the novel ―White Fang‖ by Jack London. The issues of lexical cohesive devices to realize cohesion of the text of the four chapters and the textual functions performed by these lexical cohesive devices in Thematic Progression in the first four chapters of ―White Fang‖ by Jack London will be discussed in the perspecitives of Halliday and Hasan‘s (1976) model of lexical cohesion and Halliday and Matthiessen 5 (2004) with the analytical framework of SFG. Also, the two terms binomial and lexical chain as naming the lexical items for cohesion were used in this study.
