Monday 28 December 2009

Linking texts?...

When linking texts for an English exam: one must be aware of the 6 ways to do this.


1. Pragmatics - the context and time factor involved with each piece; which pieces are in the context and    which are different?


2. Lexis- the semantic fields, difficulty of vocabulary and types of word used the most - are they similar in that way or do the texts differ when it comes to words?


3. Grammar- Look at the grammatical cohesion of the pieces, do they have grammatical devices like antithetical parallelism or synonymous parallelism? Or maybe more sophisticated devices like Chiasmus. What are the sentence structure and why? What is the most popular word class and why? So for example if one text contain more abstract nouns and one contain more concrete nouns is it because one is aimed at a more intellectual audience?


4. Phonology- If you read the pieces aloud what kinds of sounds would you hear? Would one be more aggressive because it has more plosive consonants whereas the other may sound different because it is full of sibilance  and does this fit in with their contents?


5. Discourse structure - What is structure of the piece? Look at the paragraphs? Is it in chronological order? How are they similar and how do they differ?


6. Graphology- What is appearance of the text? Typography? Use of images? How is it suited to its audience?


Those are the 6 major linguistic frameworks!

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