Text organizing devices

Text organizing devices includes “discourse signals” that “refers to discourse acts, sequencing, and text-stages” (or what Hyland’s called frame markers; Hyland, 2005)
The following tags are used when we interpret the writer’s intension is to let the reader know about the organization of its own text itself (independent from the content of the argument).

Tag	Description	Examples
Goal-announcing	Signal the purpose/goals of the text itself	`my purpose is`, `Section 2 describes`, `the chapter/section focuses/proposes`, `we intend to`, `in this chapter`
Text-sequencing/staging	Signal sequences and stages of argumentative elements in the text	`First`, `Lastly`, `to start with`, `so far`,
‖—Summative**	Signal summary/conclusion of a part of the text	`to conclude`, `in short`, `overall`, `to sum up`, `The conclusion is`

* in the table shows that the item’s function needs to be distinguished between logical and text-organizing.

Goal-announcing

NEW in version 2

Goal-announcing expressions are those that signal the purpose/goals of (a part of) the text itself.

Description

Two typical patterns of goal announcing include:

The writer of the sentence describes the goals/purposes of the piece of text.
The writer of the sentence announces what is going to be written about in the immediate piece of writing.

Typical items categorized as goal-announcing are following (Bold-face are the span for this category.):

We aim to present …
The goal of this section/chapter/paper is …
In this section, we demonstrate ….
This chapter focuses on
This paper seeks to identify three key elements of effective communication.

Typical constructions for this category include:
Prepositional phrases Prep + Det + Noun: (in) this chapter, (in) this part, (in) this section
Communication and mental verbs SUBJ + VERB: we aim to V, intend to V, I focus on Ving, I want to V, We wish to V, I would like to V -> These verbs helps the writer of the sentence to announce the goal of the writing explicitly.
Nominalized constructions Possessive + NOUN (+ is/are): Our objectives are, My purpose here is, intention -> These nouns, when used with The X of this paper/section is to or similar construction, signals the goals of the writing.

Coreference

Any construction which coreferences a goal-announcement should also be tagged as goal-announcing.

Coreference of a goal-announcement can happen when coordinated verb phrases share a subject that is goal-announcing. In the example below, “The paper will first examine” is the main goal-announcment. “will explore” and “will discuss” are also tagged as goal-announcing because they share “The paper” as a subject that is goal-announcing.

Coreference of a goal-announcement can also happen in separate main clauses. In the example below, “It will then examine” is tagged as goal-announcing because “It” coreferences “The paper”.

The paper will first examine three primary theories on social movements (Classical Collective Behavior, Resource Mobilization, and the Political Process Model), [#REF 3] will explore how each body of literature explains why individuals participate in social movements, and will discuss the flaws of each model. It will then examine Klandermans’ four-part theory of social movement participation.

Examples (Span of this category is shown in bold-face.)

In order to address the issues outlined in the introduction (PURPORSE), the study aimed to uncover the processes through which the three writers completed their assignments.
The aim of this study is to shed some light on whether it is beneficial to devote classroom time to the explicit teaching of a limited number of academic FS and how this might be best achieved.
I will now discuss each of these core businesses.

Text-sequencing/staging

NEW in version 2

Text-sequencing/staging devices signal sequences and stages of argumentative elements in the text.

There are three subcategories of markers, which we classify under this TEXT-SEQUENCING category.

Sequencing

Text sequences typically signals the order of the elements to be considered in the argument. For example, writers may list three reasons for their argument by using sequencing: first, second and third/last. This is the typical use of text-sequencing devices.

Other less obvious examples include:

to start with (to initiate the discussion)
then (to organize the argument)
Listing and numbering such as a., b., and c. or 1., 2., and 3..
Firstly, next, subsequently, finally, lastly, and similarly functioning expressions.

Staging

Text staging typically act as a signal where the current statement stands in the overall argument.

so far, at this point, thus far (to remind the reader of what has been talked about previously)
for the moment (to indicate that the thesis is going to be developed in the later section)

Topic-shifting

now, moving onto X, regarding X, back to (to signal a shift in topic of discussion)

Examples

In this section we first describe the student participants’ reports of their experiences and their perceptions of their EAP classes, and then the teachers’ perceptions.
First, a supportive online environment should enable learners to take charge of their online actions … Second, resonating with previous findings … Finally, to increase students’ engagement and motivation, online writing tools could incorporate popular gaming elements.
First, despite its macrostructure, the RA shouldhave a separate Discussion section. Second, the first availabledrafts had to have been written by the students (the first authors) on their own.
Returning to the more frequent referential discourse function, normalized mean per-text counts of the subfunctions between sub-corpora are displayed in Table 7.
We now look at our results in more detail, beginning with moves.
The possible explanation are two-fold. The first explanation concerns the way in which …
The items had been produced by ANPWS for the following reasons : ( a ) to generate publicity ( for some of Australia ‘s national parks ) , ( b ) to meet existing information requests from school students and the general public ( such as on Australia ‘s endangered plants ) , ( c ) to generate interest in particular topics ( such as remnant vegetation ) , and ( d ) to explain government policy ( on kangaroo harvesting ) .

The followings are NOT examples of Text-sequence:

the sample encompassed the first, second, third, and fourth year candidates along with graduate students.
Finally (Text-sequencing), for the Farsi group, none of the 10 linguistic variables bore a strong relationship with comprehensibility.
Megan’s intonation indicated that she was not convinced. Finally (TEMPORAL; out of scope), Emily (11) reminded the group that the task did not include identification of NPs, and so this was a side issue as far as she was concerned.

Summative

NEW in version 2

Summative devices are those that signal summaries and restatements in the text.

Description

Simply, the Exemplifying tag is used for expressions that are functionally equivalent to in summary and in short. So, this category includes following expressions:

to conclude, in brief, in conclusion, in short, in sum, in summary, to sum up, to summarize
to repeat, to reiterate, again

Expressions of summative devices are considered in one way a subcategory of text-staging devices, but we will deal with this category separately because of the significance of its function in an argumentative discourse.

Examples

To summarize, the concept of parallel language use is not transparent.
Overall, we believe that the concepts of linguistic capital and performative competence complement each other by allowing us to see how professional capabilities and practices are construed in discourse.