International Journal of Liberal Arts and Social Science Vol. 4 No. 7 October 2016 A Quantitative Study on Discourse Coherence in Linguistic Research Articles from the Perspective of Thematic Progression Pattern Jiafen FAN 1 and YI ZHANG 2 1School of Foreign Languages, Northwestern Polytechnical University 2School of Foreign Languages, Northwestern Polytechnical University Funded Project: Talent Plan for Social Science, Shaanxi Province, 2016. (Project Number: 2016KA190002C190001) Corresponding author: YI ZHANG Northwestern Polytechnical University, Number 1 Dongxiang Road, Chang’an District, Zip code:710129, Xi’an, China E-mail: [email protected] Abstract This study aims to investigate characteristics of discourse coherence from the angle of thematic progression (TP) pattern. 30 research articles (RAs) were randomly selected from the Modern Language Journal and Language Learning: A Journal of Research in Language Studies. Findings suggested that the most frequently used pattern was constant pattern (60.4%), followed by parallel pattern (30.8%), concentrated pattern (7.7%) and intersection pattern (1.1%). Regarding features of TP patterns in moves, there was no significant difference in the usage of constant pattern in all moves (P > .05). Followed by parallel pattern, statistical significance was observed in Move2, Move3 and Move6 (P < .05). In addition, the usage of concentrated pattern and intersection pattern in all moves shows significant differences (P < .05). It is expected that this study provides insights into the analysis of TP patterns in linguistic RAs. Implications for reading and writing linguistic RAs are shared. Key words: linguistic RAs; TP pattern; move; discourse coherence 61 International Journal of Liberal Arts and Social Science ISSN: 2307-924X www.ijlass.org 1 Introduction Coherence, as a significant share of discourse analysis, has produced a significant body of research. In respect of the relationship between the most relevant terms, cohesion vs. coherence, cohesion refers to the grammatical and lexical elements on the surface of a text which can form connections between parts of the text. Halliday and Hasan (1976) defined five cohesive devices: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion. Nevertheless, coherence refers to the semantically connection between parts of text. Scholars who are dedicated todiscourse analysis conducted the thorough research on how to realize discourse coherence, and reach an agreement on this claim that cohesive discourse might not be coherent (Yang, 2004). In other words, cohesion is one of the ways of signaling coherence. In addition to cohesion, discourse coherence can be studied from different perspectives such as information structure, context, TPpattern, pragmatics, etc. Research evidence shows that TP pattern is positively related to semantic coherence in terms of discourse analysis (Zhu, 1995; Yang, 2004). As an implicit way to achieve discourse coherence, TP pattern can illuminate intersentential semantic relationship and developmental model of major ideas in segmented discourse. Furthermore, TP pattern reveals the essence of discourse coherence to a great extent (Qi, 1993). Halliday (1994) defined that the theme, as the point of departure of the message and the first position in the clause, was considered to play an essential role in the organization of texts, especially in the construction of the message. Regarding the genre of scientific texts, Halliday (1994) believed that theme, as an organizer, acts a crucial part in scientific texts. Swales (1990) pointed out that moves perform different rhetorical functions, which require different linguistic resources to realize those functions. In other words, this relationship leads us to regard thematic analysis as potentially useful in developing genre awareness, as the choice of first position in the sentence is significant as part of a writer’s available linguistic resources. Although RAs are characterized by professional terms and complex sentences, those texts organized in a clear thematic pattern can make it more readable. TP pattern reveals how a series of sentences are connected to form semantic chain and reflects logicality of scientific thinking and discourse coherence (Hu, 2005). RAs become a way to master and manage the ever increasing information flow in the scientific community. The analysis of TP pattern contributes significantly to exploring the discourse coherence. Since linguistic researchers penetrated into discourse analysis, they have emphasized macrostructure and communicative function in discourse. Therefore, discourse analysis has been a concern in linguistics. Swales (1990) defined genre as a class of communicative events in a specific socio-culture background, but did not link genre directly to a single text or structure. And the principal criterial feature that turns a collection of communicative events into a genre was some shared set of communicative purposes. One of discourse genre’s functions was to classify discourse and make complicated discourse more simplified and systematic. Yang Ruiying (2006) believed that it contributed to understand macrostructure of discourse and offer guidance to academic writing and reading by the genre-based analysis of academic discourse. If linguistic researchers make comprehensive analysis of discourse, it is significant to study academic genre and thematic progression pattern from macro- and micro-perspective. Halliday (1994) believed that theme in a clause was the element which served as the point of departure of the message, it was that with which the clause was concerned, while rheme was the part of the clause in which the theme is developed. As was mentioned earlier, theme was the point of departure for the message, so it was familiar information, 62 International Journal of Liberal Arts and Social Science Vol. 4 No. 7 October 2016 either mentioned earlier in the text or shared by the reader’s world knowledge. On the other hand, rheme, that was, the remainder of the sentence, contained unfamiliar or new information, and the writer moved from theme to rheme in writing. From TP patterns, it was convenient for readers to explore the rule of discourse structure and realize how to establish and develop topic. In addition, Fries (1995) pointed out that there was a specific relation among different text types. He proposed that thematic progression pattern corresponded to text type. Presumably, there might be certain rule among different moves in a discourse. However, despite the importance of TP pattern for a better understanding of discourse coherence in RAs, studies on TP pattern in combination with academic genre are still scarce. There are even fewer studies thatinvestigate discourse coherence of full texts in RAs by integrating TP pattern with academic genre. In addition, compared with previous studies, both quantitative and qualitative designs are applied to academic genre and TP patterns in this study, which can fill a research gap from perspective of research methodology (Samraj, 2002; Yang & Allison, 2003; Loi, 2010; Parkinson, 2011; Basturkmen, 2012). Therefore, this study is designed to explore the features of discourse coherence in RAs by the employment of TP patterns given different communicative purpose. The study aims to address the following research questions: 1.What are the features of TP patterns in linguistic RAs on a macro level? 2.What are the features of TP patterns in each rhetorical move of linguistic RAs? 2 Method 2.1 Research subjects The corpus used in this study consists of 30 empirical research articles published from 2011 to 2015 in the field of linguistics, in which 15 research articles are randomly selected from Modern Language Journal (MLJ) and 15 are Language Learning: A Journal of Research in Language Studies (LLJ) .The randomly selected articles cover as many research subjects as possible so as to ensure the validity of the study. Moreover, the corpus was restricted to empirical studies. Theoretical articles and articles published in special issues were excluded from the scope of the present study. The restriction was motivated by the observation that the overall organization (i.e. rhetorical structure) of an article may vary in accordance with its type (Crookes, 1986). 2.2 Identification of Moves This study follows and revises E. Cotos et al.’ (2015) move/step framework for introduction and method sections and Yang & Allison’ (2004) move/step framework for results and discussion. It is found that E. Cotos et al.’ (2015) move/step IMRD framework for introduction and method sections is appropriate to the macrostructures of 30 RAs in this study and their framework for introduction and method sections is similar to previous studies (Loi, 2010; Chang & Kuo, 2011). However, E. Cotos et al.’ (2015) move/step IMRD framework is too wide-ranging to be well-suited for linguistics results and discussion section in this corpus. While Yang & Allison (2003) selected applied linguistics RAs as research subjects, whose discipline is the same as 30 RAs in this study. Therefore, this study employs Yang & Allison’ (2003) move/step frameworks for results and discussion in applied linguistics RAs from the first move “presenting results” to the final move “offering final conclusions or some other form of closure”. Table 1 illustrates an overview of moves and steps identified in this study. 63 International Journal of Liberal Arts and Social Science ISSN: 2307-924X www.ijlass.org Table 1An overview of moves and