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Signalling coherence in Austrian students‘ seminar papers: macro- and micro-structural cues

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Based on a corpus of Austrian students’ texts from three disciplines (personnel management, business psychology, economic history) analysed with Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST), this paper investigates the macro-structural expectations which tables of content (ToCs) raise, the cues by which these expectations are triggered, and the “predictive quality” of ToCs. The ToCs in the personnel management group’s texts offer the best “prediction” of the actual macrostructures, whereas in the other two groups ToC and textual macro-structures diverge from each other in various ways. The analysis also shows a high degree of similarity between relation cues at the textual micro- and macro-levels. The results are discussed with respect to genre differences, student writers’ generic competence and institutional factors of students’ text production.

References

  1. Bärenfänger, Maja , Marco Hilbert , Henning Lobin , Harald Lüngen , and Csilla Puskás
    2006 “Cues and Constraints for the Relational Discourse Analysis of Complext Text Types – The Role of Logical and Generic Document Structure.” In Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Constraints in Discourse (CiD 2006) , Maynooth, Ireland, ed. by Candy Snider , John Harpur , Anton Benz , and Peter Kühnlein , 27–35. Available at: www.constraints-in-discourse.org/cid06/
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  3. Czinglar, Christine , and Karin Wetschanow
    2006 “Metakommunikation.”InGenre, Habitus und wissenschaftliches Schreiben, ed. by Helmut Gruber , Markus Rheindorf , Karin ­Wetschanow , Martin Reisigl , Peter Muntigl , and Christine Czinglar , 117–141. Münster: LIT-Verlag.
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  5. Gruber, Helmut
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  8. Gruber, Helmut , Peter Muntigl , Martin Reisigl , Markus Rheindorf , Karin Wetschanow , and Christine Czinglar
    2006 Genre, Habitus und wissenschaftliches Schreiben. Münster: LIT Verlag.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Gruber, Helmut , and Birgit Huemer
    2008 “Two Views on Text Structure: Using Rhetorical Structure Theory and Register and Genre Theory in Improving Students’ Academic Writing.”Odense Working Papers in Language and Communication29: 332–365.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Mann, William C. , Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen , and Sandra A. Thompson
    1992 “Rhetorical Structure Theory and Text Analysis.”InDiscourse Descriptions, ed. by William Mann , and Sandra Thompson , 39–77. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/pbns.16.04man
     https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.16.04man [Google Scholar]
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    1988 “Rhetorical Structure Theory: Towards a Functional Theory of Text Organization.”Text8 (3): 243–281.
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  12. Marcu, Daniel
    2000 “The Rhetorical Parsing of Unrestricted Texts: A Surface-based Approach.”Computational Linguistics26 (3): 395–448. doi: 10.1162/089120100561755
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    2006 “Die Makrostruktur der Seminararbeiten.”InGenre, Habitus und wissenschaftliches Schreiben, ed. by Helmut Gruber , Markus Rheindorf , Karin Wetschanow , Martin Reisigl , Peter Muntigl , and Christine Czinglar , 67–91. Münster: LIT Verlag.
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    2004 RSTTool. Available at: http:/www.wagsoft.com/RSTTool/
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  16. Swales, John
    1990 Genre Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Taboada, Maite
    2006 “Discourse Markers as Signals (or not) of Rhetorical Relations.”Journal of Pragmatics38 (4): 567–592. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2005.09.010
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  18. 2009 “Implicit and Explicit Coherence Relations.”InDiscourse, of Course. An Overview of Research in Discourse Studies, ed. by Jan Renkema , 127–143. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/z.148.13tab
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  19. Taboada, Maite , and William C. Mann
    2006 “Rhetorical Structure Theory: Looking Back and Moving Ahead.”Discourse Studies8 (3): 423–459. doi: 10.1177/1461445606061881
     https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445606061881 [Google Scholar]
  20. Teufel, Simone , Jean Carletta , and Marc Moens
    1999 “An Annotation Scheme for Discourse-Level Argumentation in Research Articles.” Proceedings of EACL ’99 , 110–117. Available at: www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sht25/papers/eacl99.pdf
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References

  1. Bärenfänger, Maja , Marco Hilbert , Henning Lobin , Harald Lüngen , and Csilla Puskás
    2006 “Cues and Constraints for the Relational Discourse Analysis of Complext Text Types – The Role of Logical and Generic Document Structure.” In Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Constraints in Discourse (CiD 2006) , Maynooth, Ireland, ed. by Candy Snider , John Harpur , Anton Benz , and Peter Kühnlein , 27–35. Available at: www.constraints-in-discourse.org/cid06/
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Bateman, John A
    2008 Multimodality and Genre. A Foundation for the Systematic Analysis of Multimodal Documents. Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Czinglar, Christine , and Karin Wetschanow
    2006 “Metakommunikation.”InGenre, Habitus und wissenschaftliches Schreiben, ed. by Helmut Gruber , Markus Rheindorf , Karin ­Wetschanow , Martin Reisigl , Peter Muntigl , and Christine Czinglar , 117–141. Münster: LIT-Verlag.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Genette, Gérard
    1980 Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method. New York: Cornell University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Gruber, Helmut
    2006a “Die Kohärenzstruktur der Seminararbeiten.”InGenre, Habitus und wissenschaftliches Schreiben, ed. by Helmut Gruber , Markus Rheindorf , Karin Wetschanow , Martin Reisigl , Peter Muntigl , and Christine Czinglar , 91–117. Münster: LIT Verlag.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. 2006b “Rhetorical Structure Theory and Quality Assessment of Students’ Texts.”Information Design Journal & Document Design14 (2): 114–129. doi: 10.1075/idj.14.2.04gru
     https://doi.org/10.1075/idj.14.2.04gru [Google Scholar]
  7. 2007 “Rhetorical Structure Theory and Text Analysis.”InEmpirical Approaches to Discourse Analysis, ed. by Helmut Gruber , Martin Kaltenbacher , and Peter Muntigl , 51–88. Frankfurt am Main; Wien [u.a.]: Peter Lang.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Gruber, Helmut , Peter Muntigl , Martin Reisigl , Markus Rheindorf , Karin Wetschanow , and Christine Czinglar
    2006 Genre, Habitus und wissenschaftliches Schreiben. Münster: LIT Verlag.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Gruber, Helmut , and Birgit Huemer
    2008 “Two Views on Text Structure: Using Rhetorical Structure Theory and Register and Genre Theory in Improving Students’ Academic Writing.”Odense Working Papers in Language and Communication29: 332–365.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Mann, William C. , Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen , and Sandra A. Thompson
    1992 “Rhetorical Structure Theory and Text Analysis.”InDiscourse Descriptions, ed. by William Mann , and Sandra Thompson , 39–77. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/pbns.16.04man
     https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.16.04man [Google Scholar]
  11. Mann, William C. , and Sandra A. Thompson
    1988 “Rhetorical Structure Theory: Towards a Functional Theory of Text Organization.”Text8 (3): 243–281.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Marcu, Daniel
    2000 “The Rhetorical Parsing of Unrestricted Texts: A Surface-based Approach.”Computational Linguistics26 (3): 395–448. doi: 10.1162/089120100561755
     https://doi.org/10.1162/089120100561755 [Google Scholar]
  13. Martin, James R
    1992 English Text. System and Structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/z.59
     https://doi.org/10.1075/z.59 [Google Scholar]
  14. Muntigl, Peter
    2006 “Die Makrostruktur der Seminararbeiten.”InGenre, Habitus und wissenschaftliches Schreiben, ed. by Helmut Gruber , Markus Rheindorf , Karin Wetschanow , Martin Reisigl , Peter Muntigl , and Christine Czinglar , 67–91. Münster: LIT Verlag.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. O’Donnell, Mick
    2004 RSTTool. Available at: http:/www.wagsoft.com/RSTTool/
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Swales, John
    1990 Genre Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Taboada, Maite
    2006 “Discourse Markers as Signals (or not) of Rhetorical Relations.”Journal of Pragmatics38 (4): 567–592. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2005.09.010
     https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2005.09.010 [Google Scholar]
  18. 2009 “Implicit and Explicit Coherence Relations.”InDiscourse, of Course. An Overview of Research in Discourse Studies, ed. by Jan Renkema , 127–143. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/z.148.13tab
     https://doi.org/10.1075/z.148.13tab [Google Scholar]
  19. Taboada, Maite , and William C. Mann
    2006 “Rhetorical Structure Theory: Looking Back and Moving Ahead.”Discourse Studies8 (3): 423–459. doi: 10.1177/1461445606061881
     https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445606061881 [Google Scholar]
  20. Teufel, Simone , Jean Carletta , and Marc Moens
    1999 “An Annotation Scheme for Discourse-Level Argumentation in Research Articles.” Proceedings of EACL ’99 , 110–117. Available at: www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sht25/papers/eacl99.pdf
     [Google Scholar]

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