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This paper is the first in a pair of papers that compare two particular accounts: Rhetorical Structure Theory and Systemic linguistics. Rhetorical Structure Theory, Initially formulated In 1983, describes texts in terms of functionally-defined relations that hold between parts. Systemic Linguistics Is a much more comprehensive view of language init...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... taking a stance, the speaker simultaneously assigns a role to the hearer, as illustrated in Table 3.2. ...
Context 2
... each case only one definition applies. Table 3 shows the result, along with the locus of effect for each relation. For the interpersonal relations, it is helpful to remember that the interpersonal metafunction includes the speech-function or speech-act-like effects, the speaker expressing a personal stance toward some ideational message of the text. ...
Citations
... An early attempt at exploring the usefulness of RST in persuasive writing was undertaken by Mann and Matthiessen (1991), who noted that the primary goal of a written text functioned as the nucleus and the supplementary material that supported this goal were contained in the satellites. Later, Azar (1999) also confirmed that many RST relations were related to argumentation including evidence, justification, antithesis, and concessions. ...
This study examines links between human ratings of writing quality and the incidence of argumentative features (e.g., claims, data) in persuasive essays along with relationships among these features and their distance from one another within an essay. The goal is to better understand how argumentation elements in persuasive essays combine to model human ratings of essay quality. The study finds that, in most cases, it is not the presence of argumentation features that is predictive of writing quality but rather the relationships between superordinate and subordinate features, parallel features, and the distances between features. This finding has not only theoretical value but also practical value in terms of pedagogical approaches and automated writing feedback.
... But the asymmetry of the subject matter relations indicate logical information beyond conjunction. The intended effect is a recognition of some feature of the organization of the subject matter (Mann & Matthiessen, 1990), and the logical forms corresponding to the subject matter relations should capture such features. For example, in a causal relation, the dependency between cause and effect may be represented as an implicative relationship. ...
This paper describes how Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) and relational propositions can be used to define a method for rendering and analyzing texts as expressions in propositional logic. Relational propositions, the implicit assertions that correspond to RST relations, are defined using standard logical operators and rules of inference. The resulting logical forms are used to construct logical expressions that map to RST tree structures. The resulting expressions show that inference is pervasive within coherent texts. To support reasoning over these expressions, a set of rules for negation is defined. The logical forms and their negation rules can be used to examine the flow of reasoning and the effects of incoherence. Because there is a correspondence between logical coherence and the functional relationships of RST, an RST analysis that cannot pass the test of logic is indicative either of a problematic analysis or of an incoherent text. The result is a method analyzing for the logic implicit within discursive reasoning.
... As Halliday and Webster (2014: 198) remark, 'RST complements the clausal orientation of systemic-functional grammar by investigating the relations that occur between functionally-significant text spans at clause level and above'. Because both theories are concerned with explaining the functional aspects of text and how they mean in specific contexts, they have successfully been brought into close affiliation (Mann and Matthiessen, 1991;Cloran et al., 2007;Matthiessen and Teruya, 2015). This affiliation could throw additional light on how researchers go about the business of writing research papers. ...
... On the other hand, registers with an orientation towards tenor use a rhetorical organization based on relations of a presentational type that propitiate that a central proposal or proposition be complied or accepted. Although Mann and Thompson (1988) had already made a distinction between subject-matter and presentational relations, Mann and Matthiessen (1991), in order to show the relatedness between RST and SFL tenets, renamed them according to two of Halliday's (1978) metafunctions, viz. ideational and interpersonal, respectively. ...
... By doing this, it was possible to see the rhetorical relations that mostly represented the textual organization of introductions and conclusions in both languages. Second, the relations' types and tokens of each subcorpora were classified according to Mann and Matthiessen's (1991) distinction between ideational and interpersonal ones in order to see if there was a possible correlation with registers oriented towards field and/or tenor. ...
Research articles have been the object of study of many scholars within the ESP tradition, most notably, since Swales' (1990) studies on academic language. Such studies have focused mainly on ‘moves' and ‘steps', i.e. on the part-whole relations that comprise each of the sections in a research article. However, little is known about the iterative connectivity of sentences and paragraphs that make up the discourse organization of research articles sections. This study uses Rhetorical Structure Theory (Mann and Thompson, 1987) for the analysis of discourse relations in introductions and conclusions of research articles from applied linguistics journals in two languages, English and Spanish. It also uses Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday, 1985) in order to locate introductions and conclusions within a general theory of register. The results showed significant trends across registers and languages that can inform the teaching of writing within the context of academic expository texts.
... In fact, as stated in the previous sections, SFL has been the starting point for many metadiscourse studies as well as discourse marker ones (Vande Kopple, 1985;Hyland, 1998Hyland, , 2000Hyland, , 2004aHyland, , 2005Crismore et al., 1993). Moreover, it is close to RST and some linguists have carried research in the two fields like Mann et al., (1992), Mann and Matthiessen (1991 Unlike the formalist approach to language which views the sentence as the most important unit for analysis, SFL considers 'texts' more prominent for linguistic and grammatical studies. Although the clause and more importantly the clause complex is of immense value within SFL theory, it still remains a part of a text. ...
This thesis aims to describe how the discourse function of elaboration is used in academic writing. Elaboration is realized via various forms and can imply several semantic and rhetorical functions. The thesis describes how elaborative definitions, rewordings and exemplifications are deployed for interpersonal purposes to explain and guide readers towards specific understanding of ideas and results and how they are structurally used to create coherence within texts. These functions are mainly tracked in the literature on metadiscourse studies, Discourse Marker studies and Systemic Functional Linguistics. These perspectives are chosen because they offer grammatical and functional descriptions of how different forms of elaboration can be used in real contexts. Metadiscourse studies classify code glosses, reformulations and exemplifications as forms of textual metadiscourse and as forms of "interactive markers" that help readers grasp functions of ideational material (Hyland, 2005). Discourse Marker studies focus on the signals used to bond elaborated and elaborating segments so as to guarantee an explicit aspect of communication (Blakemore, 2002). Systemic Functional Linguistics considers elaboration as a logico-semantic function that expands the structures and meaning of clauses, the meaning of which is fundamentally constrained by the notion of context. Based on these views, this thesis hypothesizes that the units and functions of elaboration are structurally and semantically complex and that the choice of a particular structure and function is shaped by the contexts of genre and discipline. To test these hypotheses, a corpus of Research Articles and PhDs Dissertations belonging to the disciplines of Linguistics and Computer Science is compiled and a sample is annotated using UAM CorpusTool. Findings show that academic writers in the fields of Linguistics and Computer Science elaborate on their wordings, claims and ideas sometimes in similar ways and some other times in different ways. Elaboration is seen to vary considerably when disciplines are compared and to a lesser extent when genres are compared. In most of the cases, academic writers elaborate on nominal groups and different types of clauses more than other types of units and have used similar structures in elaborating units. The link between the two units has been found to be explicitly realized via conjunctive markers and elaborating verbs which have been proven to help unpack types of relations and meanings more than the other types of markers. The move from elaborated unit to the choice of a particular elaboration marker, then to a specific elaborating form has been found to imply a move from the least compact to the most compact forms of elaboration and vice versa. Concerning the various functions that elaboration can imply, it has been found that academic writers use definitions more frequently than rewordings which are in turn more frequently used than exemplifications. These three main functions are also found to carry various meanings. Definitions are specifically more frequently used in the PhDs and therefore seem to be constrained by genre belongingness rather than disciplinary variables. Defining segments have been construed as Complements within relational identifying clauses and as rank-shifted clauses within nominal groups, and are as such marked by their intra-clausal aspect. Within the sub-classes of definitions, explanations (classical definitions) have been used more frequently than the other types and have been linked in particular to mathematical definitions in the computer science discipline. Rewordings, on the other hand, have been found to be more frequently used in the research articles of linguistics but comparatively more common in the PhDs of computer science. Summarizing and generalizing, two sub-functions of rewording, have been used to reduce long chunks of text but while the first has been used to narrow down meaning the second has been used to widen it up to reach that of a scientific or logical fact. Specifications, another sub-function of rewording, have been used to supply further details and to help in expanding meanings and arguments. Exemplifications have also ii been used more frequently in the linguistics section. They are realized in the form of nominal groups to illustrate entities and in the form of prepositional phrases and clauses to provide illustrative situations. Writers in the two disciplines and in the two genres have chosen illustrative entities more than situations because of their concrete and realistic nature. The main conclusion of this thesis shows that the different (sub)functions of elaboration primarily help in creating solid irrefutable argumentation of scientific experience. While these acts of definitions, reformulations and exemplifications are linked to a metadiscursive use of language, in the sense that they shape the way writers want their readers to understand a specific aspect of their statements (Hyland, 2007), they also have been found to boost argumentation as they intervene in the overall process of building solid claims and explaining research results. iii
... These patterns have been theorised in SFL using the concept of metaredundancy, which postulates the existence of redundant patterns across the multiple strata of language (Martin 1991(Martin , 1999. It is worth mentioning here that the possible points of contact between SFL and RST have also been explored in the work of Mann and Matthiessen (1990) and Bateman and Rondhuis (1997). While the exploration of this issue does not fall within the scope of this dissertation, it is definitely an issue that warrants further investigation, especially in the field of SFL-inspired multimodal research. ...
This dissertation studied the structure of multimodal artefacts, or how language, image and other semiotic modes combine and interact in documents. This places the study within the emerging field of multimodal research, which uses linguistic methods to study the interaction of multiple semiotic modes.
Despite the growing amount of multimodal research, the structure of multimodal artefacts has not received the attention it warrants. Previous studies have been either very detailed or exceedingly abstract, leaving a significant gap between data and theory, which this dissertation attempted to bridge. To do so, the dissertation adopted a data-driven approach to multimodal analysis, addressing the structure of multimodal artefacts, the factors that shape the artefact structure, and the role of structure in the recognition and interpretation of the artefacts.
The data consisted of tourist brochures produced by the city of Helsinki between 1967 and 2008, which allowed a longitudinal perspective to their multimodal structure. A total of 58 double-pages were annotated for their content, visual appearance, layout and rhetorical organisation, and compiled into an XML-based multimodal corpus. To study the corpus, the dissertation developed visualisation methods that combined information from multiple analytical layers of the corpus to represent the multimodal structures in the data.
The study revealed the functional motivation behind the structure of the tourist brochures, identifying patterns in their hierarchical and rhetorical organisation, which were used to fulfil specific communicative tasks. The configuration of these patterns, in turn, signalled how the brochure was to be interpreted. The results also showed that after the year 1985, which marked the introduction of desktop publishing software, the organising principles of the tourist brochures have shifted towards a more fragmented and non-linear structure.
Full text available at http://hdl.handle.net/10138/41736
... This is the logical system of RECURSION: the contrast between stopping the development of a rhetorical complex ('stop') and augmenting it by introducing an additional rhetorical relation to link to a new text segment ('go on') g . However, there is also one more system, one that is not familiar from clause complexingat least not as part of the systemic description; but it is familiar from the description of cohesive conjunction, introduced already by Halliday and Hasan (1976), developed by Martin (1992a) and discussed in relation to rhetorical relations by Mann and Matthiessen (1991); see also Chapter 9 of the 4 th edition of Halliday's Introduction to Functional Grammar. ...
... Like internal relations in general, they link supporting satellites to a nucleus, thereby increasing the likelihood of the success of the nuclear speech function in terms of the addressee's response (cf. Mann and Matthiessen 1991). The satellites build valuepositive value attributed to Korean Air. ...
Registerial cartography is the activity of systematically describing the registers that make up a language — with register in its original sense of a functional variety of a language, i.e. of the adaptation of the meaning-making resources of a language according to context of use. A register map of a language would thus show its composition of registers — of meanings at risk in the various cultural domains that constitute a culture. This variation according to use — register variation — is located along the cline of instantiation between the overall meaning potential of a language operating in the context of culture and the instantiation of this meaning potential unfolding as texts in contexts of situation.
In this paper, I will report on a long-term register cartography project concerned with the analysis and description of the registers that collectively constitute the meaning potential of a language. The maps produced as part of the project are based on context in the first instance, since register variation is precisely variation according to context of use. Thus registers can be located within the map according to the “longitude and latitude” of context, i.e. according to the contextual parameters of field, tenor and mode. Here I will focus on a field-based map, more specifically one based on a typology of fields of activity — a characterizations of different goings-on in context. This typology differentiates eight primary types of field of activity, ‘expounding’, ‘reporting’, ‘recreating’, ‘sharing’, ‘doing’, ‘enabling’, ‘recommending’ and ‘exploring’, and their secondary and tertiary subtypes. I will then illustrate how texts operating in contexts characterized by these different fields of activity are organized semantically in terms of logico-semantic (rhetorical) relations (based on a version of RST, Rhetorical Structure Theory), showing that different relations are “at risk” depending on the nature of the field of activity. I will round off the paper by discussing how field-based maps of registers have and can be used in different areas of application.
... acceptance, belief, positive regard) while subject matter relations are intend to make the reader able to recognize the relation in question. From a systemic functional perspective subject matter and presentational relations are responsible for creating ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings (Mann & Matthiessen 1991, Hovy et al 1992). Thus RST relations can be approved a useful tool in interpreting how several combined semiotic resources represent and organize knowledge in the form of LOs, and which kind of pedagogical relations these LOs are able to trigger among their represented content and the student (). ...
In the present article we propose a genre-based conceptual framework for designing content for learning objects. We review some content aggregation models in order to stress the lack of such an approach. We also consider learning objects as multimodal macrogenres. These macrogenres are constituted of content object assemblies. The successful and coherent aggregation of these content objects can be achieved through the recognition of potential rhetorical relations among them. Finally, adopting this framework, an author/teacher is supported with a repertoire of concepts that make him capable of affect and motivate students in particular ways through her intended learning materials.
... My memories of daily interactions with Bill and his team come to an end with my departure from ISI in August 1988, although Bill and I continued our joint work on RST, one result of which was Mann and Matthiessen (1991). As it happens, 1988 was also the year that the founding director of ISI, Keith Uncapher, retired from that position, and Herbert Schorr took over, bringing with him executive and research experience from IBM. Norm Sondheimer also left in 1988, to become the manager of the Information Technology and Artificial Intelligence Laboratories at the GE Corporate Research and Development Centers. ...
We show that under certain conditions, a language model can be trained on the basis of a second language model. The main instance of the technique trains a finite automaton on the basis of a probabilistic context-free grammar, such that the Kullback-Leibler ...
... My memories of daily interactions with Bill and his team come to an end with my departure from ISI in August 1988, although Bill and I continued our joint work on RST, one result of which was Mann and Matthiessen (1991). As it happens, 1988 was also the year that the founding director of ISI, Keith Uncapher, retired from that position, and Herbert Schorr took over, bringing with him executive and research experience from IBM. Norm Sondheimer also left in 1988, to become the manager of the Information Technology and Artificial Intelligence Laboratories at the GE Corporate Research and Development Centers. ...
... Concession may be interpreted either internally -'I concede that x, but I still hold that y' -or externallyfrustrated cause. According to the relation definitions given inMann & Thompson (1987), concession is treated as an internal relation (cf.Mann & Matthiessen, 1991). However, here I will use the external interpretation (for example, in the counts presented below), treating it as frustrated cause. ...
The papers in this volume in honor of Sandra Annear Thompson deal with complex sentences, an important topic in Thompson’s career. The focus of the contributions is on the ways in which the grammatical properties of complex sentences are shaped by the communicative context in which they are produced, an approach to grammatical analysis that Thompson pioneered and developed in the course of her distinguished career.
