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Narrative text type

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Drivers should not park their vehicles here. ... bedside at a time when other girls pinned up Elvis and Cliff or even Paul Anka. ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Narrative text type


1
Narrative text type
  • Paola Catenaccio
  • Lingua Inglese I (LIN)
  • 2009-2010

2
Text linguistic practice
  • Consider the following two texts.
  • No parking
  • This is a school yard. Drivers should not park
    their vehicles here.
  • Which text is more appropriate to function as a
    street sign? What user-centred standards of
    textuality have influenced your choice?

3
Focus constructions in English and their
functions
  • Inversion And then along comes Mary
  • Sentence type in which the logical subject
    appears in post-verbal position, while some other
    canonically post-verbal constituent appears in
    clause-initialposition. The fronting of a certain
    constituent (usually an adverbial/adjunct or
    complement) triggers subject-verb inversion.
  • Verbs in inversion
  • are copular or intransitive and express existence
    or appearance,
  • typically indicate position (be, stand, lie, sit,
    hang) or motion (come, go, fall, roll),
  • the fronted constituent has locative meaning and
    is usually an adverbial of place or direction,
    hence the term locative inversion.
  • A preferred option in fiction due to its
    presentative, topic- and setting introducing
    function.
  • Relatively rare and strongly conditioned by
    context least common in conversation and
    virtually restricted to the written mode, showing
    its highest frequency in journalistic writing and
    fiction as a device for the description of
    settings and for stylistic effects.

4
Examples of inversion
  • And certainly the atmosphere was less than
    festive in the headmaster's sitting-room. Near
    the fireplace a table had been installed, and on
    it placed two bottles. Behind the bottles stood
    Mrs Crumwallis - tall, bony, straggly of hair,
    the only memorable feature about her being her
    large, round, immensely thick-lensed glasses.
    (BNC H8Y 73-75)
  • It was a pack of cards, walking through the
    garden. There were clubs (they were soldiers),
    and diamonds, and ten little children (they were
    hearts). Next came some Kings and Queens. Then
    Alice saw the White Rabbit, and behind him, the
    Knave of Hearts. And last of all, came THE KING
    AND QUEEN OF HEARTS. (BNC FNS 399-403)
  • Jules Bellaire sat opposite Alice at a white,
    wrought-iron table on one of the large terraces
    outside the Château de St Denis. A sun umbrella
    sheltered them from the wan May sunshine. On the
    table lay several large swatches of fabrics which
    Jules had brought out from Paris for Alice's
    inspection. (BNC FS1 591-593)

5
  • Preposing (fronting) Mary her name was
  • Sentence type in which a canonically postverbal
    phrasal constituent appears in preverbal
    position.
  • Differs from inversion in structural terms in
    that the subject remains in preverbal position.
  • Not limited to the fronting of any particular
    phrasal category, but fronted objects and other
    nominals are most common, while AdjP preposing
    appears to be most constrained.
  • Linking function, relating the preposed element
    to the previous discourse, often by using
    anaphoric deictic markers such as this, that,
    these and such.
  • Echoing preceding information (esp. with fronted
    VPs), also used to convey a speaker's uncertainty
    or disbelief/doubt with respect to the link of
    the preposed constituent.
  • Expressing contrast (contrastive topicalization)
  • Often made explicit by the mentioning of both
    contrasted referents and the presence of
    connectives such as but.
  • Object-fronting is often chosen in contexts where
    there is a need to emphasize or contrast a
    discourse element.

6
  • At the chilly boarding-school to which her
    parents sent her in the mistaken belief that she
    would be less lonely among girls of her own age,
    the prizes for mathematics - a subject which she
    didn't particularly care for but which came
    easily to her - were framed reproductions of the
    works of Italian painters. Duccios and
    Signorellis and Martinis hung by her bedside at a
    time when other girls pinned up Elvis and Cliff
    or even Paul Anka. Such pictures she always found
    calming to her nerves (BNC FB9 74-76 )
  • Mrs Wilson had not died, but it was said she was
    very ill and was expected to die. And die she
    did. (BNC AC7 1072-1073)
  • "He may be happy to see his father!" Ferdinando
    shouted. "He is my son and blood will tell. Now
    let me go." And off he galloped, with her
    watching until he was a speck on the horizon.
    (BNC ADS 1296-1300)
  • "The land was ours by right." Jagatan raised
    himself on one elbow, and Burun guessed that he
    had been drinking for most of the afternoon. "I
    remember when we rode here, your father and I.
    Young and strong we were." (BNC FSE 2890-2892)

7
Remember also
  • Cleft and pseudo-cleft sentences
  • Anticipatory it/existential there ? extraposed
    subjects/objects
  • That this will do any good is far from clear.
  • It is far from clear that this will do any good.
  • I found the problem difficult
  • I found it difficult to solve the problem
  • Passivisation
  • The company sacked 20 employees
  • Tewnty employees were sacked

8
Focus on information flow
  • Identify the information-packaging constructions
    in the following short texts and explain why the
    speaker/writer may have chosen these
    non-canonical constructions
  • Consider the following dialogue
  • A This has blown up into an enormous scandal. I
    hear that theyre going to fire the secretary of
    state.
  • B No, its the secretary of defense who they
    want to fire, not the secretary of state.

9
  • Just as she lit an old candle, there appeared a
    strange face in the window.
  • I work outside in the fresh air, which I really
    enjoy, and I dont have anyone telling me what to
    do every minute. That I also like.
  • That night he was wakened in his blanket by the
    dark force of something he had heard and
    neglected to consider.

10
Focus on cohesion
  • Lunch. The word and the thing itself cause
    endless trouble still in England at that join in
    the class pyramid where it is still called
    dinner. Any Englishman who does call lunch dinner
    indicates at once and for sure to any other
    Englishman that he hails from somewhere below the
    middle of the middle classes. The difficulty is
    relatively new in the long vista of English
    history, since the word till quite recently meant
    a snack between proper meals. There was a time
    when everyone in England who could afford to do
    so dined in the afternoon and supped in the
    evening. Then, with ease and affluence lunch
    began its metamorphosis to a meal in its own
    right. It is now a social divider of infinite
    power.
  • Comment on the following cohesive relations
    instantiated in the text
  • Reference (personal, demonstrative, comparative
    anaphoric, cataphoric)
  • Substitution
  • Lexical cohesion (recurrence and hyponymy)

11
Descriptive texts produced by students (1)
  • One of the most beautiful places in the fashion
    capital is Sempione Park, which is situated in
    the very heart of Milan. Just behind the
    Sforzesco Castle, youll find this fantastic
    green island, in sharp contrast with the
    surrounding noisy roads and grey buildings. Here
    you can relax and forget about your everyday
    routine, immersed in the shade of tall and
    beautiful trees. As you walk one of the many
    winding paths, you can come across a nice still
    little lake with its pleasant freshness.

12
Descriptive texts produced by students (2)
  • Our university is placed in a wonderful and
    new-built area in Sesto San Giovanni. The
    construction was built in 2003 and it is massive
    and well-structured. It rose from the ruins of
    the ancient industrial past, to be transformed
    into a bright, glassy, futuristic place where
    thousands of people meet in a multicultural
    environment.

13
Empire state building
  • http//www.esbnyc.com/tourism/index.cfm?CFID35897
    230CFTOKEN16743613

14
Another narrative text
  • http//www.colgate.com/app/Colgate/US/Corp/History
    /HistoryVideo.cvsp

15
Identifying features
  • Function?
  • Cognitive process involved?
  • Introduction?
  • Thematic text base?
  • Verbs? Tenses?
  • Sequence forms?

16
Introduction and thematic text base
  • Situational introduction.
  • Our 200-year history is a story of innovation,
    popular global brands and the indispensible role
    that people play making a global company
    successful.
  • It begins in the early 1800 hundreds, with an
    Englishman, William Colgate

17
Sequence forms
  • It begins in the early 1800 hundreds At the
    time In 1806 From the beginning

18
  • I first became interested in the study of aging,
    maturity and retirement more or less by accident.
    It was 1973, and I was 23, living and teaching at
    the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. I
    was completing my doctorate and working on my
    first book, Bodymind. I was asked by Dr. Gay
    Luce, who was working on creating an innovative
    new human potential training program, if Id be
    interested in partnering with her. I decided to
    move to Berkeley to join Dr. Luce in crafting
    this program. It was going to be a yearlong
    comprehensive holistic curriculum, very different
    from the weekend workshops and two-hour lectures
    that were becoming popular. Before it even got
    off the ground, it struck Gay that in our
    youth-focused culture, nobody was using any of
    these innovative therapeutic techniques with the
    elderly. She asked if Id be open to joining her.
    As a young man in my early 20s, the idea of
    working with the elderly didnt initially hold
    much charm for me. I liked being with people my
    own age and also doing programs for people in
    their 30s and 40s. I told Gay I would get the
    project started and then move on.
  • http//www.agewave.com/media_files/Life20after20
    50.pdf

19
  • Point of view?
  • Style?
  • Presentation?

20
Different ways of telling the same story?
  • The Tenerife disaster
  • Report
  • Article 1
  • Article 2

21
  • Focus?
  • Text structuring?

22
(No Transcript)
23
Point of view
24
Composition
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