CONTENTS :

1. Introduction
2. Lexical Cohesion
3. Lexis in Talk
4. Textual Aspects of Lexical Competence
5. Vocabulary and the Organising of Text
6. Signalling Larger Textual Patterns
7. Register and Signalling Vocabulary
8. Modality
9. Conclusion
INTRODUCTION
• Vocabulary will still be the largest single element in
tackling new language for a learner.
• This chapter explains about vocabulary in extended
texts in speech and writing and consider if anything
can be usefully exploited to give a discourse
dimension.
LEXICAL COHESION
• Repetition of words and the role played by certain
basic semantic relations between words in creating
textuality.
• According to Halliday & Hassan (1976), the relations
between vocabulary items in texts are two principal
kinds, namely :

Reiteration Collocation
REITERATION
• Restating an items in a later part of the discourse by
direct repetition or else reasserting its meaning by
exploiting lexical relations.
• Some ways to restate an item :
1. Synonymy
2. Hyponymy
EXAMPLES OF REITERATION
• Lexical cohesion by synonymy
1. Eggplant and aubergine
2. The meeting commenced at six thirty. But from the
moment it began, it was clear that all was not well.
EXAMPLES OF REITERATION
• Lexical cohesion by hyponymy
1. Rose and flower
2. There was a fine old rocking-chair that his father
used to sit in, a desk where he wrote letters, a nest
of small tables and a dark imposing bookcase. Now
all this furniture was to be sold, and with it his own
past.
 Britain’s green and pleasant meadows yesterday became
“killing fields” with the start of the fox cub hunting season.
More than 6,000 young foxes enjoying their first flush of
life will be hunted down in the next three months to give
inexperienced young hounds a blood lust.
But the dogs will also suffer. Anti-hunt campaigners
estimate that 7,500 young hounds will be destroyed because
they fail to make the grade.
And many experienced hounds will be killed because
they are too old to hunt.
The cub hunting season is just a curtain-raiser to the
traditional pastime of killing adult foxes.
(from News on Sunday, 2 August 1987)
LEXIS IN TALK
• How speakers reiterate their own and take up one
another’s vocabulary selections in one form turn to turn
and develop and expand topics in doing so. This
phenomenon called relexicalisation.
(Two women are talking about ‘Bonfire Night’ the night when many people in
Britain have large bonfire and fireworks in their gardens.)
A: No, I don’t think we can manage a large bonfire but the fireworks
themselves er we have a little store of …
B: Oh yes, they’re quite fun, yes.
A: Mm yes, the children like them very much so I think as long as one is
careful, very careful (B: Oh yes) it’s all right.
B: Mm.
A: But erm I ban bangers, we don’t have any bangers. (B: Yes) I can’t stand
those (B: Yes) just the pretty ones.
B: Sparklers are my favourites.
A: Mm Catherine Wheels are my favourites actually but er you know we have
anything that’s pretty and sparkly and we have a couple of rockets you
know, to satisfy Jonathan who’s all rockets and spacecraft and things like
this.
(Crystal and Davy 1975 : 28)
TEXTUAL ASPECTS OF LEXICAL COMPETENCE
• Sometimes our expectations as to how words are
conventionally used are disturbed when the writers
arrange usual lexical relations for particular purposes
of the text.
• Example :
The depressing feature of Allen’s documents is the
picture which emerges of smart but stupid military
planners, the equivalent of America’s madder
fundamentalists, happily playing the fool with the
future of the planet.
(The Guardian, 13 November 1987 : 15)
VOCABULARY AND ORGANISING OF TEXT
• Discourse organizing words have a broader textual
function to signal to the reader what larger textual
patterns are being realized.
• A distinction between grammar words & lexical words
in language.
Grammar Words Closed system

Lexical Words Open system

Discourse Share the qualities of both the

Organizing Words open and the closed-set words
SIGNALLING LARGER TEXTUAL PATTERNS

Functions :
1. To show how organizing words used to wrap round a
long text.
2. To signal what larger textual patterns are being
realized.
3. To increase our awareness in realizing the pattern.
SIGNALLING LARGER TEXTUAL PATTERNS

Problem – solution pattern Claim – counterclaim pattern

PROBLEM SOLUTION CLAIM COUNTERCLAIM

1. Concern 1. Result 1. Claim 1. Truth
2. Difficulty 2. Answer 2. Assert 2. False
3. Dilemma 3. Consequence 3. State 3. In reality
4. Drawback 4. Effect 4. Argue 4. Against
5. Hamper 5. Outcome
6. Hinder 6. Solution
7. Obstacle 7. Solve
8. Problem 8. Resolve
9. Snag
10. Challenge
PROBLEM – SOLUTION PATTERN CLAIM – COUNTERCLAIM
PATTERN
TV Violence: No Simple Solution
Local authorities believe strongly in
There is no doubt that one of the the involvement of the public sector
major concerns of both viewers and and the need for public planning.
broadcasters is the amount and They think it is more important to
nature of violence on our television protect jobs which already in their area
screens. than to attract more from outside. And
since they hold that production is the
The chief ‘lesson’ of all our
key to economic revival, they think it
viewing, reading and discussion is is more important to sustain
that there is no simple solution to manufacturing industry than to switch
the problem of violence on to alternatives, such as the service
television industry.
REGISTER AND SIGNALLING VOCABULARY
• The relationship between vocabulary and register needs
to be brought out when studying textual signalling.
• Idiomatic phrases are used as signals of the response
and its occurrence after a previous negatively evaluated
response.
• Moon (1987) suggests that writers and speakers use
idiomatic phrases to organise their discourse and to
signal evaluation.
MODALITY
• It is often thought of as the province of the closed
class of modal verbs ( must, can, will, may, etc)
• The vocabulary of modality includes :
1. Verbs such as appear, doubt, guess, suggest, think.
2. Adverbs such as actually, certainly, obviously,
possibly.
CONCLUSION
The study of vocabulary and discourse is
concerned with patterns in text generated by the
vocabulary relation that are found over clause and
sentence boundaries, the role of certain words in
organising discourses and signalling their structure, and
the relationship these features of textuality and the
register of the end product.