A STUDY ON GRAMMATICAL MEANS AND PROSODIC MEANS AS COHENSIVE DEVICES IN NARRATIVE DISCOURSE

INTRODUCTION

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I. Rationale

Linguistics has become a big scientific area and thanks to many linguists, there have

been a lot of studies, researches, books, article, etc about linguistics. In the past, linguistics

and language studying have mostly examined in terms of phonological, lexical and syntactic

features and sentences which are preferably taken out of the context. Then the theory of

Chomsky of the power of linguistics and some other researches born and have gradually

changed the previous views. Nowadays, linguistics has been studied “in their full textual,

social and psychological context” (Cook: 1989: ix). It means that language now is studied

comprehensively how people communicate successfully, what parameters help them to take

language into communication or in other word discourse, “the language in use for

communication” (Cook. 1989). Discourse has been approached by many linguists as

Halliday, M.A.K (1985), Crytal, D (1992), Coulthard, M. (1985), Moore, J. et al. (1980),

Reichman, R (1985), etc. They have contributed a lot on the theory of discourse. In

Vietnam, we have Assoc. Prof. Dr Nguyen Hoa, Assoc. Prof. Dr Vo Dai Quang, Dr. Hoang

Van Van, Dr. Tran Ngoc Them. And there are some other studies on discourse as Bui, N. A.

(2003), Dam, T.H. (2007), etc.

Cohesion is an important factor of discourse which has attracted a lot of attention of

linguists. The most significant research on cohesion is “Cohesion in English” by Halliday

and Hasan (1976). In which, grammatical items are analyzed in terms of the way they link

sentences together. Besides that, Halliday and Hasan (1976) also give “a brief discussion of

the cohesive function of intonation”. And Coulthard, M. (2001) also introduces the

significance of intonation in discourse. These researches theoretically discuss how

grammatical means and intonation can relate meanings within one sentence or within

sentences to make them coherent. Moreover, they also get the practical value that help

language user to apply these theories into everyday communication to gain the best result.

People who can use grammatical and intonation as effective means of cohesion, can easier

get successful in communication.

Doing this thesis, I wish to understand more about cohesion as well as to improve

my ability to use language as an effective mean of communication but understanding about

cohesion is not an easy task to do. In this thesis, I examine here the four types of

grammatical cohesion: reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction in terms of their

cohesive function. And intonation is an important factor in creating cohesion that can’t be

ignored. It is impossible to say that the thesis can cover all factors relating to grammatical

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means and intonation as cohesive devices in narrative discourse but I do hope that it can

benefit something for the readers.

II. Aims and objectives of the study

The aims of the study are to explore the grammatical and prosodic means as

cohesive devices in narrative discourse. Specifically, the thesis is targeted at the following

objectives:

• How reference, ellipsis, substitution and conjunction function as cohesive

devices in narrative discourse.

• How prosodic means in general and intonation in particular become cohesive

devices in narrative discourse

III. Scope of the study

As far as I mentioned before that cohesion in discourse is such a broad category that

it is very difficult to cover every aspect so what I focus on here is cohesion in narrative

discourse by analyzing grammatical means and intonation as cohesive devices in narrative

discourse in general and the film “The Perfect Man” in particular.

IV. Methodology

The major research method of the dissertation is inductive which uses particular

facts and examples to form general rules and principles. In this study, the particular

examples from which the general rules and principles are formed, are resulted from the film

“The Perfect Man” on HBO . Besides that, analytic method is also used as a minor method

to analyze the examples of the film. Moreover, the major technique of the study is

description supported by systemization as a minor.

V. Structure of the study

The study consists of three main parts

* Introduction: introduces the rationale, the aims, the scope, method and structure of the

study

* Development: this part consists of three chapters:

Chapter I: theoretical background: provides overview of discourse, narrative

discourse, cohesion and intonation in English

Chapter II: Grammatical means as cohesive devices in narrative discourse

Chapter III: Intonation as a mean of cohesive device in narrative discourse

* Conclusion: give some summary of concluding remarks of the thesis and suggestions for

further researches.

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DEVELOPMENT

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