Ashfaq Aslam

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Written Text Analysis

This essay aims to analyse an online newspaper article using the seven standards of textually as
proposed by De Beaugrande and Dressler (1981). De Beaugrande and Dressler (1981) argue that
'communicative occurrence' does not take place unless a text meets the following seven standards:
cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality and intertextuality.
By way of example, I intend demonstrate how this newspaper article fulfils the seven standards of
textuality, and thus be considered a text.

Halliday and Hasan (1976, p.7) define cohesion as

non-structural text-forming relations,

meaning, the study of a text beyond the structural (or grammatical level). Cohesion, therefore,
relates to the formation of semantic ties within a text at the level of a sentence or beyond to
create meaning (Crane, 2008). Reference is one such means by which a semantic tie is established.
Reference is the retrieval of presupposed information from within the text (endophoric) or outside
of the text (exophoric), and It is this endophoric referencing which is the focus of cohesion theory
(Crane, 2008, p. 133). Endophoric reference is further divided into three parts: anaphoric,
cataphoric and esphoric. Here we will focus only on anaphoric reference; which is a word in a text
that refers to some previously mentioned information. In the article a statement reads They are
sworn to secrecy. If one were to read this statement, the obvious question to ask would be who
does 'they' refer to? Grammatically the above sentence is sound; we understand in a general sense
that two or more persons - who are not the interlocutors - are sworn to secrecy. However, there still
remains some semantic ambiguity in the word 'they'. Therefore, the word 'they' presupposes there is
another referent in the text, in this case it's 'the 115 cardinal electors'. Another important cohesive
device is lexical cohesion. It is a cohesive device which helps to bind a text together through the
selection of vocabulary (Halliday and hasan, 1976). Thus, a text is said to be lexically cohesive

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when the lexemes in a text are semantically connected to each other. For example, in this text we
find lexemes such as Pope, cardinals, the Vatican, chapel, Benedict and mass; these words collocate
i.e the tendency of words to share the same lexical environment (Halliday and Hasan 1976:
286). In this article we see the use of cohesive devices such as reference and collocation to tie
article together to create texture in text.

Crane (2008, p. 132) states texture is created within text when there are properties of coherence
and cohesion. It is not sufficient that the text is cohesive, but it must additionally be coherent.
Hoey (1991, p.12) states that cohesion is a property of the text and that coherence is a facet [i.e.
side] of the reader's evaluation of a text. For example, consider the following statement in the
article Last tweet before the conclave: May Our Father hear and answer with love and mercy all
prayers and sacrifices offered for a fruitful outcome, South African Cardinal Wilfrid Napier
tweeted. The author uses cohesive devices such as additives to structurally tie the sentence
together. However, to someone unaware of the modern social media nomenclature may wonder
why is the cardinal tweeting ( i.e. chirping), and secondly, how did the news reporter understand his
tweeting. For this individual, though this sentence is cohesive, it most certainly is not coherent. The
cardinal assumes that we have in our schemata - The preexisting knowledge structures stored in
the mind. (Nassaji, 2007:83) knowledge of modern social media; that we understand that not
only do we communicate through traditional mail, we, in the modern era, use the internet to send
messages across the globe. And that 'twitter' is one such internet messenger. Even prior to this, he
assumes that we have knowledge about what the internet is, and prior to that that we know about
computers and so on. Without this hierarchical knowledge structure the cardinal's statement would,
certainly, be absurd and incoherent.

An author does not compose a piece of writing without well established intentions as to the goals

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and purposes of the text. Dressler and De Beaugrande (1981, p.107) state Text producers utilize
texts to pursue and fulfil their intentions. This is known as the standard of intentionality. The
theme of the article suggests that its primary audience are anglophone Roman Catholics. The
frequent use of Catholic religious vocabulary such as 'cardinal', 'pope', 'Sistine chapel', 'pontificate'
is a clear indication of the primary target audience. As a reader unaccustomed to the Catholic
tradition would find such terms difficult to understand, and perhaps may find the overall theme of
the article the election of a new Pope irrelevant. The author is producing the article for BBC
news website, and the purpose of most news websites is to impart information relating to current
affairs, sports weather, etc., that is pertinent to their readership. Ye (2010, p.147) states that
declarative sentences are statements to give as much as possible information to the audience; the
author, therefore, exclusively uses declarative sentences to achieve this end.

The other end of the intentionality standard is the acceptability standard. The author produces a text
with particular aims and objectives; and the reader, also, has aims and objectives when approaching
the text. According to Hoey (2001 p.15) The readers also have a purpose in reading the text which
may not be the one that the writer had in mind and may not be congruent with the authors original
purpose. The authors primary aim would be to inform his readership about the current happenings
with regards to the election of the Pope. However, the article being the subject of an essay of a
linguistics undergraduate student would not have have been one of his aims. The reader would have
certain expectations as to what is present in the article. The topic of this article is the papal election,
if the reader is not informed about the elections in the article, then it would fail the acceptability
standard. Or if the article lacks use the appropriate register, then, again, it would fail this standard.
The author uses formal register, with appropriate vocabulary, for example, the use of 'abdication'
rather than 'resignation' and other such lexemes particular to Catholicism, which was mentioned
above. One can, therefore, conclude that the author was successful in producing a text which meets

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the acceptability standard.

Another related standard to the two previously mentioned standards is situationality. This standard
focuses on the context in which the text is produced; Halliday & Hasan (1976) provides three
categories though which the context can be assessed. They are Field, tenor and mode. Field is
addresses the topic of the text. As this is a newspaper article in a popular news website targeted for
the general laity, therefore, it is of a general field covering one topic, namely the papal elections .
One point of contention would be that it uses specialist vocabulary pertaining to the catholic
traditions therefore should it be considered to have a specialist field. Despite the fact that the author
uses some specialist vocabulary, the majority of the article is composed of a formal register.
Though these lexemes maybe not be understood by the population at large, the article as whole is
definitely intelligible to an average reader., thus, it cannot be said to have a specialist field. The
second category is tenor which is the relationship between the author and the reader. The non-use of
slang terms, lack of contractions and correct use of punctuations are indicative of the formal nature
of the relationship between the author and the reader. Finally, mode deals with the text type which is
written and planned.

As established earlier, informing the populous of the current events in Vatican is one of the principal
goals of the article. As with any current affairs news, the when and where of an incident are
important questions the reader expects to be answered. Halliday (2004, p.78) asserts the beginning
of the clause is thematically significant,, we can then deduce that the article will contain temporal
or locational themes to highlight the answering of such questions. Theme is the first constituent of
the clause (Thompson, 1996) The following are some locational and temporal themes in the
article: On Tuesday morning, At 16:30 local time, Once inside the Sistine Chapel, From
Wednesday. It is interesting to note that all the above themes are marked. Marked themes, as

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opposed to unmarked themes, are a move way from the default construction of the sentence to
achieve a particular effect. Huddleston (1988: 187) mentions foregrounding of focused
information - that is promoting a phrase which is usually found in rheme to theme position to to
draw attention to themselves (Thompson, 1996, p.121) - as one such effect. Therefore, the above
mentioned phrases are marked themes, and are evidence of the author's intent to highlight, what
could be, significant information to the reader.

Adler (1972, p.60), in his famous book, sets his first rule of analytic reading as you should know
what kind of book your reading.... preferably before you begin to read. Though the author is
specifically giving instruction for reading books, the applicability of this rule, nonetheless, stretches
far beyond the realm of books. According to bakhtin (1986) every utterance, whether spoken or
written, is determined in varying degree - by previous utterances. Whenever we are exposed to a
text, we gauge the text with the many genres available in our repertoire, assessing the features of
the text in hand to pigeon-hole it to an appropriate category. This is referred to as intertextuality,
"the relationship between a given text and other relevant texts (Neubert and Shreve 1992, p.117).
Alder's advice relies on this notion of intertextuality. The ability to pigeon-hole texts and adhere to
conventions are an important prerequisite in understanding and/or producing any text. Hoey (2001,
p.43) concurs by stating the writer knows that the reader will expect certain things on the basis of
previous texts of the same kind. Therefore, When a reader approaches a text, s/he should be able to
readily identify and categorise the text if the writer was successful adhering to the set
conventions. This article is categorised as an online newspaper article, as opposed print newspaper
article or any other genre, by some its salient features. Features such as the headline, pictures,
quotations, and how theses different components are presented, which distinguish it from other
genres and even from other forms of the same genre. The first item presented to reader in the
newspaper articles is the headline Rome conclave: Cardinals to begin voting for new Pope. One can argue

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that this is the most prominent feature of any news article. Then, a multimedia entry a video (a picture other articles)
- followed by a summarised statement of the article Cardinals have entered the Vatican's Sistine Chapel,
where they will begin voting to elect a new Pope. Finally, the article follows with short paragraphs,
intertwined with pictures, facts and journalistic commentary. Despite the fact that most of the
features found in this article are also present in print paper, there are some distinguishing features
between the the two. They are: the video multi-media entry entry is the most prominent;
additionally, the omission of columns in the layout is another stark feature. Finally, Hyperlinks to
other stories and/or other pages of the website are also present in the same page.

We can conclude, in light of the above analysis, the seven standards of textually was, in fact, met in
this article. The sentences and paragraphs of this text are cohesively woven together through
grammatical and lexical ties; and through the close inspection of its register intentionality,
acceptability and coherence of the text are established. The themes of clauses gives us an
indications of what the author looks to emphasise in the article, for example, The marked temporal
and locational themes in the article shows the author's intentions to addresses the readers questions
of when and where first, before he presents other relevant information. Through intertextual
analysis, this text can be pigeon-holed into the online news article category as it meet the salient
features that define online news articles. And therefore, it qualifies, according to standards of De
Beaugrande and Dressler, as a communicative occurrence i.e. a text.

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Bibliography

Adler, M. J., (1972). How To Read A Book: the Classical Guide To Intelligent Reading. New York:
Touchstone
Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech Genres & Other Late Essays. Austin:University of Texas.
De Beaugrande, R., and W. U. Dressler., (1981). Introduction to text linguistics. London: Longman.
Crane, P., (2008). Texture in text: A discourse analysis of a news article using Halliday and Hasans
model of cohesion. Nagoya University of Foreign Studies Research Journal, 30, 131-156.
Halliday, M.A.K. and Hasan, R., (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman
Hoey, M., (1991). Patterns of Lexis in Text. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hoey, M., (2001). Textual interaction. London: Routledge.
Huddleston, R. (1998). English Grammar : An Outline. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nassaji, H., (2007). Schema theory and knowledge-based processes in second language reading
comprehension in Language Learnings, 57 (1): 79-113
Neubert, A, and Shreve., (1992). Translation as Text. Kent State University Press.
Thompson, G., (1996). Introducing Functional Grammar. New York: Oxford University Press.
Ye, Ruijuan., (2010). The Interpersonal Metafunction Analysis of Barack Obama's Victory Speech.
English Language Teaching. 3 (2), p147-149.

Word Count: 2053

Article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21750661

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