- 3.1 Standards of textuality
- 3.2 Cohesion
- 3.2.1 Substitution and ellipsis
- 3.2.2 Conjunction
- 3.2.3 Reference
- 3.2.4 Lexical cohesion
- 3.2.5 Lexical cohesion in interpreting
- 3.2.6 Cohesion vs. coherence
- 3.2.7 The importance of text structure
- 3.3 Textuality and simultaneous interpreting
- 3.4 Oral and written language - Halliday’s critique
- 3.5 Impromptu speech
3 Textuality in written and oral texts |
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3.1 Standards of textuality |
In the approach to text linguistics by de Beaugrande & Dressler
(1981), text, oral or printed, is established as a communicative occurrence,
which has to meet seven standards of textuality. If any of these standards
are not satisfied, the text is considered not to have fulfilled its function
and not to be communicative.
Cohesion and coherence are text-centred notions, designating operations directed at the text materials. Cohesion concerns the ways in which the components of the surface text (the actual words we hear or see) are mutually connected within a sequence (de Beaugrande & Dressler 1981:3). Coherence on the other hand concerns the ways in which the components of the textual world, i.e. the concepts and relations which underlie the surface text are mutually accessible and relevant (1981:3-7). The remaining standards of textuality are user-centred, concerning the activity of textual communication by the producers and receivers of texts: Intentionality concerns the text producer’s attitude that the set of occurrences should constitute a cohesive and coherent text instrumental in fulfilling the producer’s intentions. Acceptability concerns the receiver’s attitude that the set of occurrences should constitute a cohesive and coherent text having some use or relevance for the receiver. Informativity concerns the extent to which the occurrences of the text are expected vs. unexpected or known vs. unknown/uncertain. Situationality concerns the factors which make a text relevant to a situation of occurrence. Intertextuality concerns the factors which make the utilisation of one text dependent upon knowledge of one or more previously encountered texts. The above seven standards of textuality are called constitutive principles (cf. Searle 1965), in that they define and create textual communication as well as set the rules for communicating. There are also at least three regulative principles that control textual communication: the efficiency of a text is contingent upon its being useful to the participants with a minimum of effort; its effectiveness depends upon whether it makes a strong impression and has a good potential for fulfilling an aim; and its appropriateness depends upon whether its own setting is in agreement with the seven standards of textuality (de Beaugrande & Dressler 1981:11). |
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3.2 Cohesion |
Cohesion is the first of the seven textuality standards identified
by de Beaugrande & Dressler. It has also been a most popular target
for research, probably because it is easy to identify in written texts,
which are the traditional research material of linguists. This does not
mean, however, that there would be a general consensus as to the definition
of the concept and its relation to the second of the textuality standards
listed above, coherence (cf. section 3.2.6).
Since cohesive markers are important for the understanding of oral texts as well as written, it seems feasible to describe this textuality standard in some detail. Interpreters, as all speakers, make extensive use of cohesive devices, for example in order to enhance coherence, but also for reasons of economy (e.g. saving time and alleviating conceptual work load by using anaphoric devices like generalisations and pro-forms). Halliday and Hasan, in their ground-breaking work "Cohesion in English" (1976), describe cohesion as a semantic concept that refers to relations of meaning that exist within a text. According to Renkema (1993) cohesion is the connection which results when the interpretation of a textual element is dependent upon another element in the text. According to Schiffrin (1987:9) cohesive devices are "clues used by speakers and hearers to find the meanings which underlie surface utterances". Halliday and Hasan define two general categories of cohesion: grammatical cohesion (substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, reference) and lexical cohesion. |
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3.2.1 Substitution and ellipsis |
One type of grammatical cohesion is substitution, which takes
two forms: a) substitution per se, which is "the replacement of one item
by another", and b) ellipsis, in which "the item is replaced by nothing"
(Halliday and Hasan 1976:88). There are three types of substitution: nominal,
verbal and clausal.
(a) substitution per se, (b) ellipsis (zero-replacement) Substitution of noun: a) These biscuits are stale. Get some fresh ones.Substitution of verb In English, this is done by replacing a verbal expression with the lexical item "do": a) A: Have you called the doctor?Substitution of clause is accomplished by using the lexical items "so" and "not": a) A: Are they still arguing in there?(Examples are from Renkema 1993:37-38). |
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3.2.2 Conjunction |
Conjunction is a relationship indicating how the subsequent
sentence or clause should be linked to the preceding or the following sentence
or parts of sentence. This is usually achieved by the use of conjunctions.
Frequently occurring relationships are addition, causality and temporality.
The relationship can be hypotactic, combining a main clause with a subordinate clause or phrase, or paratactic, combining two main clauses. 3.2.2.1 Junctionde Beaugrande & Dressler (1981) prefer to call the type of cohesion in question "junction", and discuss four major types of junctive expressions:conjunction links things which have the same status, e.g. both true in the textual world. Conjunction is the default junction, since, unless specified otherwise, events and situations are combined additively in a text. Thus, there is no motive to place "and", "also", "in addition" etc. between every clause or sentence, but only when interdependency is not obvious and should be stressed (1981:71-72). disjunction links things which have alternative status, e.g. two things of which only one can be true in the textual world. "Or" is the most common disjunction signal, sometimes expanded to "either/or", "whether/not" etc. Within a sentence, "or" joins alternatives both of which are current in active storage, but only one of which obtains in the textual world. Between sentences, it tends rather to announce an afterthought, an alternative not considered before. When processing disjunctions, text users will have to carry forward both alternatives in active storage until a resolution is at hand, probably making disjunctions difficult to process (1981:71-72). contrajunction links things having the same status but appearing incongruous or incompatible in the textual world, e.g. a cause and an unanticipated effect. It is signalled by "but" (most often), "however", "yet", nevertheless", etc. It is the function of contrajunction to ease problematic transitions at points where seemingly improbable combinations of events or situations arise (1981:71-73). subordination links things when the status of one depends on that of the other, e.g. things true under certain conditions or for certain motives (precondition/event, cause/effect, etc.). It is represented by a large number of conjunctive expressions: "because", "since", "as", "thus", "while", "therefore", etc. Subordinating junctives make explicit a) coherence relations, e.g. cause (necessary conditions), reason (rational human reaction); b) relations of temporal proximity ("then", "next", "before", "after", "since", "whenever", "while", "during", etc.); c) modality, i.e. the probability, possibility, or necessity of events and situations, e.g. "if". (de Beaugrande & Dressler 1981:71-74). |
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3.2.3 Reference |
Reference is another well researched area within linguistics. It is
defined by Halliday & Hasan (1976:31) as a case where the information
to be retrieved is the referential meaning, the identity of the particular
thing or class of things that is being referred to. The cohesion lies "in
the continuity of reference, whereby the same thing enters into the discourse
a second time."
In other words, reference deals with semantic relationship. Reference can be accomplished by Halliday & Hasan (1976) describe the following types of reference: When looking closer at our interpreting corpus it is striking how extensively
reference is used as a coherence-enhancing device both by speaker and interpreter.
Typically, the interpreter has no problems in keeping threads alive even
during long and complicated sequences:
References in bold print Figure 3 -1 References in interpreted speech |
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3.2.4 Lexical cohesion |
Lexical cohesion does not deal with grammatical or semantic connections
but with connections based on the words used. It is achieved by selection
of vocabulary, using semantically close items. Because lexical cohesion
in itself carries no indication whether it is functioning cohesively or
not, it always requires reference to the text, to some other lexical item
to be interpreted correctly. There are two types of lexical cohesion: reiteration
and collocation.
Reiteration includes (examples below are from Renkema 1993) repetition (often involving reference) A conference will be held on national environmental policy. At this conference the issue of salination will play an important role.synonymy (often involving reference) A conference will be held on national environmental policy. This environmental symposium will be primarily a conference dealing with water.hyponymy (superordinate vs. subordinate concepts) We were in town today shopping for furniture. We saw a lovely table.metonymy (part vs. whole) At its six-month check-up, the brakes had to be repaired. In general, however, the car was in good condition.antonymy The old movies just don’t do it anymore. The new ones are more appealing.Lahdenmäki (1989) calls these relations "(direct) synonym-type relations, since they all refer to another word which has the same referent (e.g. ’I met a man yesterday. The bastard stole all my money’)". Collocation is any pair of lexical items that stand to each other in some recognisable lexico-semantic relation, e.g. "sheep" and "wool", "congress" and "politician", and "college" and "study". Red Cross helicopters were in the air continuously. The blood bank will soon be desperately in need of donors.(Examples above from Renkema 1993.) Like in the case of synonymous reference, collocational relation exists without any explicit reference to another item, but now the nature of relation is different: it is indirect, more difficult to define and based on associations in the reader’s mind (e.g. ’I looked into the room. The ceiling was very high.’). Interpretation of such relations is completely based on the knowledge of subject fields (Lahdenmäki 1989). |
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3.2.5 Lexical cohesion in interpreting |
The interpreter sometimes "adds" coherence to the text by adding cohesion
markers. In the following example where the referent is a book, the speaker
uses an anaphoric pronoun to refer to it in the second clause while the
interpreter chooses to add a synonym:
Figure 3 - 2 Addition of synonym (repetition of concept) |
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3.2.6 Cohesion vs. coherence |
The term "cohesion" is often confused or conflated with "coherence".
But it is necessary, both from a theoretical and a practical point of view
to retain this distinction between connectivity on the surface and connectivity
of underlying content.[4]
The term coherence, apart from being polysemic, is also controversial. While de Beaugrande & Dressler (1981) treat coherence as number two of the two text-centred standards, Carstens (1997), in his thorough work on Afrikaans text-linguistics, takes up coherence as the last standard of textuality, as coherence in his opinion entails all of the other six standards. According to Lundquist (1989:123; cited in Carstens 1997) coherence is not a typical linguistic problem, but a general principle for the interpretation of all human activity, verbal or non-verbal. Neither is coherence a property which is inherent in texts, but rather a property which is assigned to a text by its reader. To put it differently: texts are not automatically coherent, but become coherent when the recipients of the texts find them coherent (Carstens 1997:481-482). Lahdenmäki (1989) underlines, that coherence is a purely semantic property of discourse, while cohesion is mainly concerned with morpho-syntactic devices in discourse. A coherent text is a semantically connected, integrated whole, expressing relations of closeness, e.g., causality, time, or location between its concepts and sentences. A condition on this continuity of sense is that the connected concepts are also related in the real world, and that the reader identifies the relations. Each sentence must also "satisfy" the text topic (van Dijk 1977:138) which "controls" or places limits upon things a concept can be related to (de Beaugrande 1987). Therefore, if two concepts are logically and associatively too distant in semantic space, they cannot function coherently, even if they were connected in the surface text by overt cohesion markers, e.g. connectives. Instead, in a coherent text, there are direct and indirect semantic referential links between lexical items in and between sentences, which the reader must interpret (Lahdenmäki 1989:27). In the present study we are not primarily interested in whether or not coherence is a purely text-centred standard of textuality. But from a communicative point of view - because interpreters are paid to communicate! - a text must be coherent enough for the interlocutor to be able to interpret. It seems probable that this coherence can be achieved either through cohesion, i.e. markers/clues in the speakers' text, or through the employment of the "user-centred" textuality standards of intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality and intertextuality. |
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3.2.7 The importance of text structure |
To sum up this section, it is interesting to quote the following point
made by van Dijk & Kintsch (1983):
"On full analysis there are probably few surface structure items that are not produced in order to signal a semantic, pragmatic, cognitive, social, rhetorical, or stylistic function. Thus, at this level, little is left of the old Saussurian arbitrariness in the relations between expressions (signifiers) and their meanings (signifieds)." .... "Nearly all underlying (semantic, pragmatic, etc.) information can be mapped onto surface structures and parallel paratextual action." ... (Dijk & Kintsch 1983:285)But the relation between surface structures and their semantic, pragmatic, or interactional functions on the one hand, and their relevance for production on the other, cannot be too strict: "Some languages have quite varied surface structures, and it remains to be seen whether this will always directly presuppose different comprehension and production strategies." ... "Further work regarding these relationships between the (functional) structures of sentences in different languages and their cognitive processing is necessary — especially taking into account the textual relevance of these functions." (Dijk & Kintsch 1983:285) |
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3.3 Textuality and simultaneous interpreting |
de Beaugrande & Dressler’s standards of textuality have been used
as a basis for theoretical work by, e.g., Hildegund Bühler (1990).
Bühler discusses some characteristic features of orality or speech as contrasted to literacy or writing in the context of translation studies. She also relies heavily on the seven standards of textuality accounted for by de Beaugrande & Dressler (1981) as a theoretical framework for her discussion. Referring to Halliday (1986:78), Bühler sees the issue from three interrelated aspects: the nature of the medium, the functions served, and the formal properties displayed. The most striking formal difference between written and spoken language is the density with which the information is presented: lexical density is generally supposed to be about twice as high in written language as in speech. There is also a higher degree of redundancy in spoken language (cf. Chernov 1985). Speech is dynamic, it is impromptu and tentative, and can be rapidly adjusted as context changes (cf. section 7.1.3 on Chernov’s "probability prediction mechanism".) Speech is furthermore characterised by brief silences, filled and unfilled pauses, hesitation, false starts, repetitions, and parenthetic remarks. In contrast, written language is "static, follows close-knit syntactic structures and develops an elaborate grammar" (Bühler 1990:537-538; cf. Halliday’s (1987) critique of this widely held opinion, see section 3.4). Cf. Ong (1982:32; cited in Garcia-Landa 1985:188): "Written discourse develops more elaborate and fixed grammar than oral discourse does because to provide meaning it is more dependent simply upon linguistic structure, since it lacks the normal full existential contexts that surround oral discourse and help determine meaning in oral discourse somewhat independently of grammar."The different formal properties of spoken and written language are inherent in a text in whatever form it is actually presented to us. Speeches presented at conferences range from unprepared oral texts to the reading of meticulously prepared written texts. Since conference interpreting itself by its nature is an oral activity, there will be clashes between its features and the features of orally presented written texts (Bühler 1990:538). But features of impromptu speech will always be present in the final product of interpretation, and it cannot have all the features of the written original (Kopczin´sky 1982:259 f.). Bühler stresses that too little attention has so far been given, in the context of interpreting, to the textual standard of intertextuality, which is responsible for the evolution of text types. A typology of text types in interpretation would be helpful for interpreters and also for interpretation teaching. This has also been suggested by Alexieva (1985); see section 4.4.1. As for the nature of the medium, a written text is presented synoptically, spread out on the page, whereas when you listen to speech, the text is presented dynamically, it happens, as waves travel through the air. This "evanescence" of the spoken text is an important basis of the theory of interpreting put forward by Seleskovitch and others (Bühler 1990:358-359; cf. section 2.2 above). In this theory, it is assumed that the spoken original is retained in short-term memory for only a few seconds, leaving non-linguistic memory traces, from which the target text is reformulated. Mere substitution or transfer of lexical items is done only of proper names, numbers, and standardised technical language. The theoretical model thus shows a three-phase process, including a phase of analysis and a phase of restructuring, with an "interlingua" phase in-between. Since speech production has a rhythmic character, where periods of hesitancy alternate with periods of fluency - following cycles of planning and production of speech - interpreters, following this rhythm as they go along with the speaker, can discern sense units that may serve as translation units. In addition to verbal cues, interpreters will therefore be aware of non-verbal (often subsumed loosely under the heading of paralinguistic phenomena, such as voice quality, pitch, loudness, and timing), and non-vocal (i.e. visual) signs, which are highly relevant for the understanding of the spoken texts (Bühler 1990:539-540). |
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3.3.1 Cohesion in spoken texts |
While textual cohesion in written texts rests upon syntactic surface
structures, for spoken texts a number of other cohesive systems are available:
rhythm, intonation and stress, degrees of loudness, timbre, pausing and
phrasing.
David Brazil (1975), cited in de Beaugrande & Dressler (1981), has described intonation in whole texts or in texts within discourses. Brazil connects intonation with the kind of discourse actions involved. (An action is an intentional act which changes a situation in a way that would not have happened otherwise; a discourse action would then be reflected in the changes it effects upon the situation and the various states of the participants: knowledge state, social state, emotional state, etc.) (de Beaugrande & Dressler 1981:123). Discourse actions involved are: invoking ("referring"): when the speaker presents predominantly known or expected material; informing ("proclaiming"): when the speaker presents predominantly new, unexpected, corrective, or contrastive material. There is also a neutral option when neither action applies. Brazil gives a detailed account of tones used in English for each of the above purposes. This basic scheme is combined with a differentiation of keys, i.e. whether the pitch used is considered normal for the circumstance, or if it is above or below the norm. |
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3.3.2 Intonation in interpreting |
Miriam Shlesinger (1994) has made a twofold experiment designed at
isolating the salient features of intonation in interpretation as a distinct
mode of language use; and to examine the cumulative effect on these features
on how well a text is perceived in terms of comprehension and recall. The
results indicate that pauses within grammatical structures are the most
salient feature of tonality in interpretation: interpreters are prone to
introduce a disproportionate number of pauses in "unnatural" positions,
liable to impede understanding. As for clause and sentence boundaries,
the interpreted passages generally included pauses at sentence boundaries,
but they tended to be tentative rather than final. Since tentative pauses
usually serve a parenthetic function and correlate with an attitude of
uncertainty, the cumulative pragmatic effect is bound to be altered (Shlesinger
1994:229).
Other frequent observations in the study include: anomalous tonicity, leading to misperceptions of new vs. given information; the use of nonfinal pitch movement in positions where a final one would be expected, likely to impede comprehension; unnatural placement of tone, impeding inferencing and disambiguation; and non-standard alterations of speed, liable to encumber comprehension in various ways. The level of listener comprehension and recall was found to be lower in subjects who listened to interpreted texts than in those who listened to the same texts read aloud by the same speakers (Shlesinger 1994:233). According to Williams (1995), anomalous stress may be a result of automatic mechanisms beyond the interpreter’s conscious control. In her study, Williams found that the anomalous stress produced by the interpreter while interpreting the previous message was immediately preceded by salient stress in the input that the interpreter was listening to. Thus it seemed as though the interpreter reacted to a stressed word in the speaker’s "new" sentence by inadvertently producing salient stress while still producing the "old" sentence. One explanation to this phenomenon may be found in the tendency, in certain circumstances, to adapt one’s own pitch to that of the interlocutor ("F0 mirroring"). Another explanation may be perceptual mixing of the speaker’s prosody and the interpreter’s own prosody ("proprioceptive audial control"). |
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3.4 Oral and written language - Halliday’s critique |
Halliday (1987) criticises the generally held idea that spoken discourse
is a "disorganised array of featureless fragments". We are told that speech
is "marked by hesitations, false starts, anacolutha, slips and trips of
the tongue, and a formidable paraphernalia of so called performance errors;
these are regularly, more or less ritually, cited as its main distinguishing
feature." (Halliday 1987: 68; cf. Linell's classic (1982) on the "written
language bias" in linguistic research). Halliday acknowledges that these
things occur, although less often than we think. But what is described
here are characteristics of the rather self-conscious, closely self-monitored
speech that takes place in, e.g., academic seminars: if you consciously
plan and monitor your speech as it goes along, you will naturally tend
to lose your way, and to hesitate, back up, cross out and stumble over
the words, etc. But spontaneous discourse is not like that - it tends to
be fluent, highly organised and grammatically well formed. Spontaneous
discourse is also typically more regular in its patterns of rhythm.
The myth of the "scrappiness" of speech may have its origin in two factors: the kind of discourse that was first recorded, and the misleading conventions used for its presentation. When you speak, you cannot destroy your earlier drafts, as you do when writing. Halliday points out that if we were to represent written language in a way that is comparable to the conventional way spoken language is represented, then we should include in the text "every preliminary scrap of manuscript or typescript, with all the crossings out, misspellings, redraftings and periods of silent thought; this would then tell us what the writer actually wrote." (Halliday 1987:69). For other than, e.g., educational and clinical purposes, the discarded first attempts are just trivial, they clutter up the text, make it hard to read, and give it an air of quaintness. Even more serious is that this kind of transcription gives a false account of what it is really like. The lexical density is the proportion of lexical items (content words) to the total discourse. Halliday (1987) has analysed lexical density in written and spoken texts with two measures: the number of lexical items (1) as a proportion of the number of running words, and (2) as a proportion of the number of clauses. He concludes that lexical density in written texts increases not because the number of lexical items goes up but because the number of non-lexical items — grammatical words — goes down, and the number of clauses goes down even more. But only to say that spoken discourse has more words and clauses in it does not say anything very significant about spoken texts. When looking at how the words and clauses are organised in samples of written and spoken text, Halliday found that the sentence structure of spoken texts is more complex than the written one. Thus, the spoken text has a lower degree of lexical density, but a higher degree of grammatical intricacy. One sample text consisted of 13 clauses. However, these clauses were not strung out end to end, but constructed into a small number of clause complexes of mixed paratactic and hypotactic construction. A typical pattern is one in which both these kinds of interdependency between clauses occur, with frequent alternation both between parataxis and hypotaxis and also among their various subcategories. "The more natural, un-self-monitored the discourse, the more intricate the grammatical patterns that can be woven. Usually, this kind of discourse will be spoken, because writing is in essence a more conscious process than speaking. But there are self-conscious modes of speech, whose output resembles what we think of as written language, and there is relatively spontaneous kinds of writing; spoken and written discourse are the outward forms that are typically associated with the critical variable, which is that of consciousness. We can use the terms spoken and written language, to refer to the idealised types defined by that variable." (Halliday 1987:66).Thus, spoken language tends to accommodate more clauses into the syntagm (to favour grammatical intricacy), with fewer lexical items in the clause. Written language tends to accommodate more lexical items in the clause (to favour greater lexical density), with fewer clauses in the syntagm. But this does not mean that the average number of clauses per clause complex will be greater in spoken language - it would be better to say that the greater the intricacy of a clause complex the more likely it is to be a product of spontaneous speech. (Halliday 1987:71). |
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3.4.1 The oral–literate continuum in simultaneous interpreting |
Shlesinger (1990) has explored shifts in the position of a target text
along the oral-literate continuum, relative to that of its source, as a
result of simultaneous interpreting. The position of a text on the oral-literate
continuum is a function of the combined effect of various textual features.
The five most salient parameters of textual orality are the degree of planning,
shared context and situational knowledge, lexis, degree of involvement,
and the role of nonverbal features.
The long-term aim of Shlesinger’s study was to test hypotheses concerning the equalising effect of simultaneous translation on the position of a text on the oral-literate continuum by analysing several texts simultaneously interpreted from Hebrew to English by native English speakers. According to Shlesinger, the applicability of the oral-literate continuum to interpretation research is encumbered by limited previous experience in its use with languages other than (American) English and overlooking the interpreter as the addressee of spoken discourse. |
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3.5 Impromptu speech |
Enkvist (1982) has introduced the term "impromptu speech" which he
defines in the following way:
"...there are certain types of situations which call for rapid processing of spoken discourse, whether literally in real time or in small batches, and ... the needs of such processing are then reflected in the macrostructure and microstructure of the resulting texts. Such texts will be called ’impromptu’."Enkvist mentions the conference paper as a common text type whose metamorphoses run from script through speech back to script: the author has written his paper to be read at a meeting, but is also, and perhaps primarily, thinking of its ultimate publication after the conference. There is a scale from completely unscripted speech to fully scripted speech, and we must decide what part of this scale we accept as "impromptu". But "unscripted" does not necessarily mean "unprepared" or "unplanned". An unscripted text may very well have been meticulously worked out in advance, cf. political speeches. Enkvist points out the importance of "planning-spans" in the preparation of texts. A text has a long planning span if it can be planned in advance and produced according to plan and without interference. Lectures[5] can often be planned, and so can dialogues in which the planner remains in control, e.g. as cross-examiner, interviewer, etc. Socially inferior or respondent members of unscripted dialogue on the contrary cannot control the dialogue enough for proper planning. They must adjust to whatever comes (Lehtonen 1982). Lehtonen (1982) gives a classification of speaking types in terms of the immediacy of planning: a speech may be impromptu, i.e. delivered spontaneously without prior preparation; extemporaneous, i.e. planned in advance but presented freely; memorised, i.e. carefully prepared, committed to memory, and read by rote; or it may be a manuscript delivery, i.e. a speech read from a written manuscript. In impromptu speech, both verbal and nonverbal choices made by the speaker are spontaneous, not planned as they might be, to some extent, in non-impromptu speech. In general, the importance of the nonverbal channel depends on the function of the discourse, which also determines the communication style. More informative discourse depends more on the linguistic code, while emphasis on the social and expressive function of the communication means greater dependence on the nonverbal (Lehtonen 1982). |
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