In a response to Craig Hancock, Bob Yates recently wrote:

CH:
>>What is the writer trying to say?  Who seems to
>> be the intended audience and what relationship to the reader is being
>> established?  What does this text reveal about independent happenings in
>> the world?

BY:
>These are wonderful questions to ask about a text, but you have just
left the realm
>of grammar.

This response nicely illustrates the difference between those of us who
believe that sentence-level grammar shapes the character of a text, and
those who don't see such a connection. As to 'What is the writer trying
to say?', this can only be determined clearly if the text is coherent. I
have said over and over that sentence-level grammatical choices (such as
subject, coding of various referents via grammatical relations like
possessive or object of preposition, and other  listers have reminded us
of things like sentence-initial adverbials) are responsible for text
coherence. Aspects of text coherence that sentence structure determines
are things like salience of a topic, connection between main and
subtopics, and general information flow, such that the reader can track
referents of the text and connect new information to the correct
referent. One well-known example of a violation of such coherence is
dangling modifiers, or modifiers placed such that the identity of the
head is ambiguous. I'm not yet far enough into this field to know
whether the research is there to nail down other violations. But a
little work I have done myself and the little I have read in
functionalist discourse analysis points to some robust correlations
between grammatical structure and text purpose. It is in fact the
premise of the most radical discourse analysts (such as Paul Hopper and
Sandra Thompson) that all sentence grammar is the result of text-level
needs, but these scholars are not addressing writing instruction; they
are addressing more-general language use. They are laying the
theoretical groundwork that we will be able to apply to writing instruction.

"Who seems to be the intended audience and what relationship to the
reader is being
established?"

Grammatical choices have a lot of control in this area as well. Choice
of pronouns and other point-of-view establishers are strong indicators
of how close a social relationship to the reader the author wishes to
convey. For instance, are 1st- and 2nd-person pronouns used, instead of
more objective-sounding and exclusive (of writer and reader) 3rd-person
pronouns? Is information stated in the form of questions, giving the
illusion of direct communication between writer and reader, or are
declaratives used, creating greater distance between writer and reader?
Are imperatives used, inviting the reader to participate directly in
constructing the meaning of the text? Imperatives, because they suggest
the writer's right to directly command the reader, also imply a closer
relationship between writer and audience. Sentence fragments increase
the informality of a text, suggesting a closer social relationship
between writer and audience than strict adherence to complete sentences.
This is why we see lots of fragments in ads, but few in the text of a
magazine article. Even sentence complexity can be an index of social
relationship: Sentences with lots of subordination tend to appear in
more formal writing, while less complexity is characteristic of speech,
which tends to occur in less formal situations. The writer/reader
relationship is more distant in formal situations, and closer in
informal situations. Writers can also use extremely simple sentence
structure to patronize or talk down to the reader, suggesting a
superior/inferior social relationship.

People don't communicate with sentences. They communicate with texts.
They build the texts sentence by sentence, and each new sentence
(especially in good formal writing) looks both behind to preceding
sentences and ahead to upcoming ones (this is why we revise--we can
sometimes improve the way a sentence fits in with later ones). This is
more than mere transitional expressions like 'thus' and 'moreover'; it
involves every grammatical choice (what is subject? will I code this
modifier as a relative clause on the subject noun, or as an appositive,
or as a pre-noun modifier? Or will I put it after the verb as a
predicate nominative/adjective? How can I include a reference to the
main topic of my piece in this sentence about a subtopic, so that
readers know I haven't abandoned my main topic, and that this subtopic
is still related to it?)

I remain convinced that the most interesting thing we can teach about
sentence-level grammar is the way it contributes to the coherence and
style of a text. This is something writing teachers will clamor for. We
are certainly beginning to approach grammar teaching in this way (as
with Kolln's book on rhetorical effects of grammatical choices, and
Dykstra's work on speech structure vs. writing structure), but we also
have a long way to go.

For listers interested in sentence-level markers of style, I can
recommend Mick Short's 'Exploring the language of poems, plays, and
prose' in which there are chapters on point of view and on prose style
as related to sentence structure. It is a relatively accessible book for
the non-linguist--I use it in stylistics classes for students who have
had little linguistics. And it's good for analyzing both literature and
expository writing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba   Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue  • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. (805)-756-2184  •  Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone.  756-2596
• E-mail: [log in to unmask] •  Home page: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/