Text and Contextual Conditioning in Spoken English: A genre approach

© Guenter A. Plum 1988, 1998, 2004 vi one end to the classic ‘narrative of personal experience’ and anecdote to the increasingly interpersonally-oriented ‘exemplum’ and ‘observation’, both of which become ‘interpretative’ of the ‘real world’ in contrast to the straightforwardly representational slant taken on the same experience by the more experientially-oriented texts. The explanation for the generic variation along this continuum must be sought in a system of generic choice which is essentially cultural. A quantitative analysis of clausal theme and clause complex-type relations was carried out, the latter by means of log-linear analysis, in order to investigate their correlation with generic structure. While it was possible to relate the choice of theme to the particular stages of generic structures, clause complex-type relations are chosen too infrequently to be related to stages and were thus related to genres as a whole. We find that while by and large the choice of theme correlates well with different generic stages, it only discriminates between different genres, i.e. generic structures in toto, for those genres which are maximally different. Similarly, investigating the two choices in the principal systems involved in the organisation of the clause complex, i.e. the choice of taxis (parataxis vs. hypotaxis) and the (grammatically independent) choice of logicosemantic relations (expansion vs. projection), we find that both those choices discriminate better between types more distant on a narrative continuum. The log-linear analysis of clause complex-type relations also permitted the investigation of the social characteristics of speakers. We found that the choice of logico-semantic relations correlates with genre and question, while the choice of taxis correlates with a speaker’s sex and his membership of some social group (in addition to genre). Parataxis is favoured by men and by members of the group lowest in the social hierarchy. Age on the other hand is not significant in the choice of taxis at all. In other words, since social factors are clearly shown to be significant in the making of abstract grammatical choices where they cannot be explained in terms of the functional organisation of text, we conclude that social factors must be made part of a model of text in order to fully account for its contextual conditioning. The study demonstrates that an understanding of the linguistic properties of discourse requires empirical study and, conversely, that it is possible to study discourse empirically without relaxing the standards of scientific inquiry. TEXT AND CONTEXTUAL CONDITIONING IN SPOKEN ENGLISH Volume One: Text © Guenter A. Plum 1988, 1998, 2004 vii Acknowledgments I wish to express my gratitude and appreciation to my many friends and colleagues who have supported, advised and encouraged me during my work on this thesis. There is room to thank only a few by name. First and foremost I wish to thank the two people in the Department of Linguistics at Sydney University who have made the most direct contribution to my attempt in this study to bring together the two theoretical perspectives of systemic-functional grammar and variation theory, my supervisor Dr James Martin, and Dr Barbara Horvath. While my theoretical debt to Dr Martin will be obvious from the thesis itself, my debt to Dr Horvath will not be so self-evident and I would therefore like to record that she, in her role as my teacher of variation theory, not only first encouraged me to explore issues of linguistic variation in a systemic framework but that she has also always been prepared to act as the second supervisor ‘from the other side’ when needed. I consider myself fortunate to have had the benefit of both my teachers’ advice. My debt to Professor Michael Halliday exceeds the contribution his theoretical work has made to my study; it certainly extends to the inspiration he provides to anyone who has had the privilege of working with him. His specific contribution to the accomplishment of this study lies in his discussing with me the many finer points of his analysis of the clause complex in the light of seemingly recalcitrant spoken data and I thank him for his forbearance. My very special thanks go to my friend and colleague Joan Rothery who has provided the kind of support which is as invaluable as it is rare – intellectually stimulating, knowledgable and insightful she has also been unconditionally supportive personally. Not only has she discussed my work with me on countless occasions, she also familiarised herself with ‘my texts’ so well in order to discuss theoretical problems with me that they may now form a subtext in our conversations even when these are not concerned with problems of text. I also thank her for reading as much of my very own text, undoubtedly much less entertaining, as she found possible and for her helpful comments and suggestions. I thank Ann Cowling for her invaluable assistance with the statistical analysis of the clause complex. Any errors evident in the discussion will be entirely due to my insufficient understanding of (the language of) statistics.