Text as tautology: an exploration in inference, transitivity, and logical compression

Rhetorical structure theory (RST) and relational propositions have been shown useful in analyzing texts as expressions in propositional logic. Because these expressions are systematically derived, they may be expected to model discursive reasoning as articulated in the text. If this is the case, it would follow that logical operations performed on the expressions would be reflected in the texts. In this paper the logic of relational propositions is used to demonstrate the applicability of transitive inference to discourse. Starting with a selection of RST analyses from the research literature, analyses of the logic of relational propositions are performed to identify their corresponding logical expressions and within each expression to identify the inference path implicit within the text. By eliminating intermediary relational propositions, transitivity is then used to progressively compress the expression. The resulting compressions are applied to the corresponding texts and their compressed RST analyses. The application of transitive inference to logical expressions results in abridged texts that are intuitively coherent and logically compatible with their originals. This indicates an underlying isomorphism between the inferential structure of logical expressions and discursive coherence, and it confirms that these expressions function as logical models of the text. Potential areas for application include knowledge representation, logic and argumentation, and RST validation.

Review of the Discussion Section of Research Articles: Rhetorical Structure and Move

The discussion section forms an integral part in the writing process of a research article (RA). Research authors find it difficult to write and produce a well-structured discussion for their findings. The reason could be due to the unawareness of the main components (rhetorical moves) that shape this section. Therefore, this paper aims to provide a review of the studies that have been done to analyze the discussion section of RAs over the last 36 years. Also, this review seeks to examine the discussion section of RAs across various scientific disciplines and different types of journals. The review showed that the rhetorical structure of RAs discussion section witnessed some changes over the course of time. New moves such as Research Implications and Research Limitations started to be parts of the discussion section of RAs. In addition, it was revealed that differences in writing the discussion section can be varied broadly across disciplines such as soft sciences (e.g., applied linguistics, sociology, psychology) and hard sciences (e.g., engineering, chemistry, biology) and slightly across types of journals such as ISI and local journals. In conclusion, this paper offered several suggestions for further research to be conducted in the area.

Framing of Covid-19 Vaccine News on CNN Website

This study is intended to analyze the form of Framing of Covid-19 vaccine new on CNN website based on Discourse Analysis perspective theory of Framing Analysis by Zhondang Pan & Gerald M. Kosicki. The objective of this research is “To describe how are the forms of framing of covid 19 vaccine news on CNN website”. This research used the descriptive qualitative method. The researcher used Zhondang Pan & Gerald M. Kosicki Framing Models to analyze the data. The source of the data in this research was taken from News on CNN Website. The data was collected through reading intensively, identifying and selecting, classifying, describing, and interpreting the data to get a complete conclusion of Framing Covid-19 Vaccine News on CNN Website by Zhondang Pan & Gerald M. Kosicki theory. The researcher analyzes six pieces of data or news from the CNN website. The result showed there are framing the researcher found based on four models of framing Pan & Kosicki namely: Syntactical Structure, Script Structure, Thematical Structure and Rhetorical Structure in six data or news from CNN website.

TED Talks: A genre analysis

This research aims at investigating TED Talks as a genre. The analysis focuses on its rhetorical structure, characterized by moves and steps and the communicative purposes of the genre. The corpus comprises 10 talks selected from the website TED Talks. The data are discussed in the light of Bhatia’s (1996/2004) and Swales’ (1990/2004) theories of genre. Results demonstrate that, in terms of the analysis of the rhetorical structure, it reveals a constant pattern of moves and steps along the corpus, since every talk contained the five moves identified by the analysis. These cyclical and more frequent moves are: topic introduction, speaker presentation, topic development, concluding messages, and acknowledgments/gratitude. In terms of its communicative purpose, TED aims to celebrate ideas to a diverse audience worldwide, due to the variety of topics encompassed. This study also allowed us to develop a deeper view of this spoken genre, its features, and the way individuals may benefit from it in their lives.

‘Ozymandias’

The textual history of Shelley’s famous, much-anthologized sonnet ‘Ozymandias’ is brought into relationship with the poem’s own central concern with the ironies accumulating around a monument which long outlasts the occasion and moment of its first creation. A detailed analysis of the poem’s rhetorical structure, poetic technique, and ramifying ironies leads in to a meditation on the status of the literary work of art, and its reliance for transmission through time on an editorial tradition. Successive early versions of the poem, both manuscript and print, are compared, and the significance of their differences considered as exemplifying a variation of the ironies at play within the poem. The lesson taught to tyranny by the survival of the ruined statue has affinity with the dependence of the poem itself on the editorial tradition which has maintained its existence.

Rhetorical Structure of Ghanaian Tourist Destination E-Brochures

Currently, Ghana‘s economy seems to be relying on income generated from the tourism industry to support national growth. However, interest in tourism appears unattractive as compared to developed countries. It is in the light of this that this research focused on conducting an investigation into one of the main means of persuading potential tourists. This research, therefore, used purposive sampling to select 20 Ghanaian tourist destination e-brochures from the website of the Ghana Tourism Authority. The texts were analyzed using the English for Specific Purposes (ESP), Swales' (1990) genre analysis approach. The purpose was to explore the rhetorical structure of the tourist destination brochures. The results showed that the Ghanaian tourist destination e-brochure could be constructed with seven different communicative functions which constitute its Moves (Identifying Tourist destination, Providing Background Information, Detailing Tourist Destination, Providing Service Information, Soliciting Response, Providing Extra Information, and Urging Action). However, their frequency of occurrence showed that only three of the Moves (Identifying Tourist Destination, Providing Background Information, Providing Service Information) occurred in all the texts. The first four Moves constituted the commonest sequencing pattern of the texts. In terms of length of the texts or textual space given to the Moves, the second Move occupied the largest space of the tourist e-brochures studied. This research has implications for the Ghana tourism industry in improving the rhetorical structure of its brochures and also academic research.

ON TELE-SCOPING AND THE ROLE OF RHETORICAL RELATIONS IN DISCOURSE SEMANTICS

В статье обсуждаются два решения, предложенные (Э. Кешетом и Ш. Чжу) для объяснения «дально-действия» (tele-scoping) - избирательной способности именных групп с универсальной семантикой связывать местоимения через границу предложения в зависимости от риторической структуры дискурса. Исходя из их сильных и слабых сторон мы формулируем требования к формализации, в которой семантический вклад самих риторических отношений состоит в том, что они задействуют различные операции обновления информации в дискурсе. В качестве первого шага в этом направлении предложено различать две операции обновления, одна из которых применяется в случаях «дально-действия». The paper makes a case for encoding different types of update operations directly in the rhetorical structure of discourse. First, I discuss two solutions for the puzzle of tele-scoping, i.e. the conditional ability of universal DPs to bind a pronoun across a sentential boundary, proposed by Ezra Keshet and by Shensheng Zhu. Basing on their relative advantages and disadvantages, I outline an agenda for a formalisation which, instead of linking discourse structure to some features of the interpretative pipeline, directly encodes different types of update into the interpretation of rhetorical relations. The degree to which this direction is worth pursuing is illustrated for tele-scoping, whose difference from cases where cross-sentential binding is impossible is argued to be that the latter use the “oblivious” type of update, which cannot preserve the values of universally quantified variables.

Constructing the Corpus of Chinese Textual ‘Run-on’ Sentences (CCTRS)

Chinese is a discourse-oriented language. “Run-on” sentences (liushui ju) are a typical and prevalent form of discourse in Chinese. These sentences show the capacity of the Chinese language for organizing loose structures into an effective and coherent discourse. Despite their widespread use in Chinese, previous studies have only explored “run-on” sentences by using small-scale examples. In order to carry out a quantitative investigation of “run-on” sentences, we need to establish a corpus. The present study selects 500 “run-on” sentences and annotates them on the levels of discourse, syntax and semantics. We mainly adopt PDTB (Penn Discourse Treebank) styles in the discourse annotations but we also borrow some features from RST (rhetorical structure theory). We find that the distribution of the frequency of discourse relations in the data extracted from this corpus follows the power law. The preliminary results reveal that semantic leaps in “run-on” sentences are closely related to the use of the topic chain and the animacy and the span of discourse relations. This corpus can thus aid in carrying out further computational and cognitive studies of Chinese discourse.

Computing perspective shift in narratives

Natural language allows changing the point of view in narrative texts without overt perspective-shifting operators. A well-known example of such a perspective shift is free indirect discourse. But how do hearers (readers) know that they need to change the point of view in the first place? And when there are reasons to believe that the point of view is not that of the narrator, how do they know whose perspective is being developed? These questions have been rarely addressed in the literature, with the notable exceptions of Wiebe (1990, 1994) and Hinterwimmer (2019). This chapter reviews these proposals, adds a few new observations about the importance of rhetorical structure, and proposes to incorporate all the previous insights into one unified framework.

relações retóricas sinalizadas pelo marcador discursivo mas em estratégias de construção do texto falado

Este trabalho tem como objetivo investigar o funcionamento do marcador discursivo (MD) mas como marca formal de relações de coerência, visando a contribuir para os estudos acerca da construção do texto falado. Para isso, utilizamos um corpus constituído por dez entrevistas orais disponíveis no banco de dados do Grupo de Pesquisas Funcionalistas do Norte/Noroeste do Paraná (Funcpar). Em nossas análises, buscamos como aporte teórico a Teoria da Estrutura Retórica (Rhetorical Structure Theory – RST) (MANN; THOMPSON, 1988; MANN; MATTHIESSEN; THOMPSON, 1989), uma teoria descritiva funcionalista que se dedica ao estudo das relações de coerência estabelecidas entre as partes de um texto. As relações estudadas pela RST partem do nível discursivo e, apesar de não exigirem a presença de marcas formais para serem estabelecidas, podem ser sinalizadas por elementos como o mas. Após a tabulação dos dados, constatamos que o mas inicia inserções parentéticas, reintroduz tópicos, marca o início de paráfrases e de perguntas retóricas, além de atuar na dinâmica de turnos (FÁVERO; ANDRADE; AQUINO, 2006; JUBRAN, 2006). Assim, o MD sinaliza as relações retóricas parentética, same-unit, reafirmação multinuclear e elaboração.