English Text Construction - Volume 17, Issue 2, 2024

Discourse competence is crucial in constructing a unified text (Canale 1983). However, while the importance of discourse competence in written discourse has been emphasized, studies of effects of specific features of discourse competence on the quality of a text have been neglected (Purpura 2008). Moreover, little research has used a Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) approach to analyze cohesion and coherence features in writing discourse. Therefore, this study employed an SFL approach to examine how cohesion and coherence features were used in 45 non-native academic written responses across proficiency levels. The study aimed to provide an insight into learners’ second language discourse competence development. The analyses from four multinomial logistic regressions suggested that comparative conjunctions, accurate use of referential expressions, lexical cohesion, and theme-rheme patterns provided useful insights into learner discourse competence progression. The study has implications for teaching academic writing and for developing a rating scale for a writing assessment.

This study explores the possible interplay between the rhetorical functions of the introduction section in applied linguistics research articles and the linguistic structuring of its argument through the use of that-clause that expresses evaluative meanings. To this end, article introductions were analyzed in terms of the formal/functional coding of that-clauses. The findings highlight that complement clauses are frequently used for the epistemic evaluation of current/previous research. Of note, however, is that nuanced differences in the writers’ intended purposes give rise to variations in the use of that-clause parameters, particularly those concerning verbal entities that evaluate the author’s claims, as opposed to those reviewing previous research findings and/or attributing an evaluation to distinct sources. The study concludes that tactful structuring of academic arguments hinges on the skilled exploitation of function-dependent variations associated with the evaluative components of that-clauses.

Thom Gunn grows to fame and popularity with the Movement poets in the 1950s. Coming from a well-educated family with a stake in journalism, Gunn develops a taste for literature from childhood and enhances his cachet at Cambridge. Culture expands into a principal issue in Gunn’s poems manifested in the field of literature and his drawing on canonical English poets like Shakespeare, and practicing the motorcycling subculture. Moreover, Gunn exhibits his cultural competence and artistic distinction through discussing the uncanny workings of canonicity of art in the field of religion. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological concepts like habitus, capital and distinction, this study sheds some light on Gunn’s work and career. The aim is to explicate how Gunn rises to a high status as a poet by accumulating different forms of capital in the field of culture; particularly literature, art, and subculture.

This paper takes a construction morphological approach to the word formation process of OUT-prefixation, based on a corpus study using the Collins Word Banks Online corpus. It distinguishes two distinct constructions: spatial OUT-prefixation, conveying movement “outside”, and comparative OUT-prefixation, used for scaling dimensions. These constructions are characterised by their own semantic and morphosyntactic properties, including differences in compositionality, argument structure, applicative potential, and event structure. While the base remains active in an OUT-verb, each construction functions as a constructional idiom at the word level, integrating the fixed prefix OUT- into a higher-level schema with predictable properties and constraints. The study challenges formal approaches by demonstrating that OUT-prefixation is more productive than previously assumed, particularly through coercion effects. Although the comparative construction is shown to be more productive, the spatial construction is more conventionalized but still capable of generating emergent patterns, illustrating the productivity and flexibility of these constructions.

This paper studies the effect of prosodic prominence on the production of English checked steady-state vowels. Previous studies found that prosodic factors, such as proximity to a strong prosodic boundary, influence vowel production, but the effect of prosodic prominence has not been studied in sufficient detail. This paper addresses this gap, examining if vowel duration correlates with prosodic prominence, more specifically with a three-way distinction between primary, secondary and non-prominence. This effect is compared to that of proximity to a strong prosodic boundary and to the prosodic boundary strength. This allows us to investigate not only the potential role of prosodic prominence in vowel production but also how it holds up to the previously observed effects of proximity and prosodic boundary strength. The findings provide new insights into the production of English vowels, while also adducing evidence for the relevance of a three-way phonological distinction between primary, secondary and non-prominence.