Post on 07-Mar-2015
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1. INTRODUCTION
To the present tendency of social development, mass media play an important
part in the life. Mass media are tools for the transfer of information, concepts,
and ideas to both general and specific audiences, the mass media such as
television, newspapers, radio, internet, books, etc.. Thereby books, historically,
had been in use for centuries. Books may also refer to a literature work, or a
main division of such a work. In library and information science, a book is called
a monograph, to distinguish it from serial periodicals such as magazines,
journals or newspapers. The book is produced with the intellectual investments
in a long time and considered “spiritual child” of writer. To write or publish a
book is possible to last a lot of years, even the writer’s whole life, so the
published book is the concise knowledges and experiences that the writer
recommends to. On coming to book, readers will be able to shorten the self-
experiential process in the real life and get how to live rather than they have to
experience by themselves. In other words, reading book also makes the readers
interested, even addicted, they feel like they are living in the plot which the
writer built, even they cannot put the book down until the last page. The
vehement attraction of book excites the writers to continue writing; inspire the
film directors to adapt into the films such as Gone With The Wind by Margaret
Mitchell was adapted into film in 1939; The Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer
have been adapted consecutively from 2008 to 2010.
With the above conveniences, book seems to become an essential necessity in
the daily life; book is popularized everywhere and diversified the genre for ages.
However, there is a problem that approaching the qualitative and best-selling
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books is not easy for readers in the dozens of books, so to help readers to have a
best choice is what reviewing book is really required.
1.1. Statement of the problem
In the countries with highly educational development, the interest in
studying book review is attached special importance; it even becomes a main
subject in university curriculum in the United States, Australia, and Canada. In
Vietnam, this subject area is still strange and there has not been study and
materials about it yet.
In the recent years, the need of importing books as well as introducing
foreign books to Vietnam, in one word, has been increasing much; there are most
kinds of books in a bookstore, a library, or on the internet. People feel highly
enthusiastic in reading books, even the books in their native languages. In other
words, a lot of good books in Vietnamese need introducing to the foreign
countries.
Because of such the large number of books and people’s enthusiasm, I
recognize that book reviews are indispensable to help the readers to approach the
content, slot, argument and merit of books. Book review is not just a summary or
introduction to a book, but also requires the reviewer’s opinion and justification
about the writer’s viewpoint. To carry out well a book review, the reviewer must
be highly qualified in writing skill in order to describe and develop a review best
as well as know how to lead it up to the readers most attractively and
convincingly.
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Besides, I also recognize linguistically that the book reviews use a large
number of syntactic features, lexical features cohesive devices that refer to the
terms of discourse analysis.
For this reason, I choose to do research on the topic “A DISCOURSE
ANALYSIS OF BOOK REVIEWS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE”. This
thesis is carried out with the hope that the research result will provide certain
linguistically useful practical knowledge for teachers and learners of English,
especially students majoring in writing as well as those who are keen on the
field.
1.2. Aims and objectives
1.2.1. Aims:
This study is expected to provide the Vietnamese learners of English with a
description of discourse features of book reviews in English and Vietnamese.
1.2.2. Objectives:
- To find out the discourse features (layout, lexical andsyntactic features,
and cohesive devices) of book reviews in English and Vietnamese.
- To find out and explain the similarities & differences between the two
groups.
- To suggest some implications for teachers and learners of English,
especially students in charge of writing.
1.3. Research questions
The study tries to answer the following questions:
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- What are the typical discourse characteristics of book reviews in
English and Vietnamese in terms of their layout, lexical features,
syntactic structures and cohesive devices?
- What are similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese
book reviews in terms of layout, lexical feature, syntactic structures
and cohesive devices?
- What are some suggestions for teaching and learning English as well as
writing book reviews?
1.4. Definitions of terms
1.4.1. Book review
According to the website lavc.edu, a book review is a description, critical
analysis, and an evaluation on the quality, meaning, and significance of a book,
not a retelling. It should focus on the book's purpose, content, and authority. A
critical book review is not a book report or a summary. It is a reaction paper in
which strengths and weaknesses of the material are analyzed. It should include a
statement of what the author has tried to do, evaluates how well (in the opinion
of the reviewer) the author has succeeded, and presents evidence to support this
evaluation.
According to wikipedia.org, a book review (or book report) is a form of
literary criticism in which a book is analyzed based on content, style, and merit.
It is often carried out in periodicals, as school work, or on the internet. Reviews
are also often published in magazines and newspapers. Its length may vary from
a single paragraph to a substantial essay. Such a review often contains
evaluations of the book on the basis of personal taste. Reviewers, in literary
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periodicals, often use the occasion of a book review for a display of learning or
to promulgate their own ideas on the topic of a fiction or non-fiction work. At
the other end of the spectrum, some book reviews resemble simple plot
summaries.
1.4.2. Discourse Analysis
Discourse is one of those elastic terms which one sometimes encounters in
linguistics. It is used in somewhat different ways by different scholars. Discourse
is used beyond the boundary of isolated sentences. It means that any sequence of
language in written or spoken form is concerned with the use of language in
stretches larger than a sentence.
According to Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics (1995) discourse
is defined as “a general term for examples of language use.” It refers to larger
units such as paragraphs, conversations and interviews which are produced as a
result of an act of communication.
David Nunan made some extracts from a number of different sources about
discourse in “Introducing Discourse Analysis” (1993). Consider the following
statements which he quoted:
Discourse is a “continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger
than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument,
joke or narrative” (Crystal 1992:25)
Discourse is “stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified and
purposive” (Cook 1989:156)
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David Nunan himself reserved the term discourse to refer to the
interpretation of the communicative event in context.
Briefly, all concepts of discourse stress the communicative dynamics for
language. Therefore, there is a strong tendency for discourse analysts to rely
more heavily on observation of language use during interactions in natural
sequences of sentences.
In this paper, I take the view of Brown and Yule [1] to recommend that we
should adopt a compromise position which suggests that discourse analysis, on
the one hand, includes “the study of linguistic forms and the regularizes of their
contribution” and on the other hand, involves a consideration of the “general
principles of interpretation” by which people normally make sense of what they
hear and read.
1.4.3. Cohesion
According to the Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics
(Richards, Platt J. and Platt H. [16]), cohesion is the grammatical and/or lexical
relationships between the different elements of a text. Also, Halliday and Hassan
[11] state that cohesion is how words and expressions are connected using
cohesive devices which can be categorized into five groups: reference,
substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion.
In Vietnamese, Trần Ngọc Thêm [30] categorizes cohesion into two facets:
content cohesion and form cohesion. “Content cohesion” is expressed through a
system of form cohesion devices and “form cohesion” is embodied in content
cohesion. Thus, a coherent discourse should include these two facets which help
to distinguish a discourse from disconnected jumbles.
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1.4.4. Coherence
Coherence is still an elusive concept. Coherence has been seen as one of the
prime conditions or characteristics of a text: “Without coherence, a text is not
properly a text” said Hatch [4]. Coherence can be generally viewed in two
aspects: text-based and reader-based coherence (John, [15]). The former refers to
the features associated with internal structure of the text itself. The latter,
meanwhile, is associated with the meaningful aspect of writer-reader/speaker-
hearer interaction. So, coherence is the implicit link in the text, it exists in how
people interpret text rather than in the texts themselves (Yule, [16]).
2. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
It is not excessive to say that books play an indispensible role in transferring
information, experiences, knowledge to readers and learners, and with a rapid
increase of a large number of books in the present globalization trend, reviewing
them is really essential. Moreover, to approach the books fastest and most
effectively is to ask for book reviews. Thus, to write a book review requires the
reviewers to master not only the plot, content, merit of the book but also the
reading and writing skill, which helps to make a strong impact on readers, as
well as learners, at the first sight.
A large number of book reviews, written in English and Vietnamese
correlating with the books available, urge me to investigate the study at
discourse level.
As can be seen the discourse characteristics in the book reviews and the
significance to study them in English and Vietnamese. For this reason, the thesis
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is conducted with the hope that A Discourse Analysis of Book Reviews in
English and Vietnamese will be helpful for teachers and learners of English and
especially students in charge of writing; as well as writing book reviews in
English to introduce to foreigners.
3. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
The term Discourse Analysis first entered general use in a series of
newspaper articles by Zellig Harris in early 1952. Although he had not worked
out a comprehensive model in this field, he paved the way for linguists to
analyze language above the sentence level - Discourse. Crystal (1992:25) defines
discourse as “a continuous stretch of language larger than a sentence, often
constituting a coherent unit”. According to Brown and Yule (1983), discourse is
characterized as a process not a product; the regularities which the discourse
analysts describe will be normally expressed in dynamic, not static terms; and
the data investigated are the result of “original language behavior”.
Contrary to most of traditional linguists, discourse analysts not only study
language use beyond the sentence boundary, but also to analyze “naturally
occurring” language use, not invented example. Discourse Analysis does not
provide a tangible answer to problems based on scientific research, but to enable
us to understand the conditions behind a specific problem and make us realize
the essence of that problem and its resolution lies in its assumptions. In other
words, Discourse Analysis enables to reveal the hidden motivations behind the
text, behind the choice of particular method of research to interpret that text. In
this sense, language should be considered in the light of other sciences such as
sociology, logic and psychology. A study into such field, thus, promises a
challenging but interesting work.
Actually, many scholars such as Halliday and Hassan (1976) with “Cohesion
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in English”, Brown and Yule (1983) with “Discourse Analysis”, Widdowson
(1994) with “Linguistics”, Cook (1989) with “Discourse”, etc. have devoted a
lot of intellect and energy to this complex domain. However, most of their works
are confined to providing a systemic theory concerning Discourse Analysis.
Winifred Crombie (1985) in “Process & Relation in Discourse and Language
learning” indicates some semantic relations in discourse. According to him, we
communicate to one another through language not by means of individual words,
clauses or sentences, but by means of coherent stretches of interrelated clauses
and sentences in relation to the linguistic and situational context. Cohesion,
Coherence, Theme - Rheme structure, Information Structure, Frame, Schemata,
Role of Context, Genre, Register, etc. are the main domains in their theory. Even
though there has not been a consensus on the conceptions relating to these, to
some extent, such works equips us with a quite relatively satisfactory theoretical
base to investigate language in use.
In Vietnam, Discourse Analysis seems to be brought in much later.
Nevertheless, a variety of linguists have made every effort to embark on
pursuing and applying this new approach into Vietnamese. Trần Ngọc Thêm
(1999) with “Hệ thống liên kết văn bản Tiếng Việt” is worth mentioning as the
pioneer who works on this field. Subsequently, Diệp Quang Ban (2003) with
“Giao tiếp -Văn bản – Mạch lạc - Liên kết – Đọan văn” has given us a more
overall view of text and utterance especially above the sentence level. More
recently, Nguyễn Hòa with “Phân tích diễn ngoôn phê bình” (2006) or
“Nghiên cứu diễn ngôn về chính trị - xã hội” (1999) and many other relevant
articles has made a great contribution to our linguistic branch and create a great
impetus to this field. The fact that more master theses and doctoral dissertations
relating to Discourse Analysis such as “Phương tiện liên kết phát ngôn – Đối
chiếu ngữ liệu Anh – Việt” by Phan Văn Hòa (1998), “Reason - result link
words in English and Vietnamese Discourse” by Bùi Thị Ngọc Anh (2001) or
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“Some discourse features of political speeches in English and Vietnamese”
by Ngô Thị Thanh Mai (2007), etc. have been carried out proves that this
approach draws much attention from many researchers.
With respect to book reviews, to the best of my present knowledge, there is
no evidence that any research on investigating the discourse features of book
reviews in English and Vietnamese has been done. Thus “A Discourse Analysis
of Book Reviews in English and Vietnamese” would be conducted with the
aim of contributing a minor part to fulfill the overall picture of this field.
4. METHODS AND PROCEDURES
Research methods
Descriptive method
Contrastive method
4.1. Procedure
- Examine 100 English and 100 Vietnamese book reviews in popular e-
news and websites
- Investigate these book reviews in terms of their layout, lexical features
and syntactic structures, cohesion and coherence.
- Discuss the result of analysis above, compare the similarities and
differences between the two languages then give explanation to these.
- Suggest the examples for introducing the book review to the Vietnamese
books.
- Suggest some implications for teaching and learning English as well as
for writing book reviews.
4.2. Sampling
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- 100 English and 100 Vietnamese book reviews collected from different
and popular newspapers and reliable sources on the Internet.
- The length of these is from 500 to approximately 1000 words
4.3. Instrumentation : Mostly Google Search, Bing Search, PDF Search
Engine
4.4. Data Collection
- Data for the research are collected from popular e-news and websites
of Vietnam, the United States, Australia, Canada and the United
Kingdom from websites on the Internet such as :
http://www.vinabook.com
http://www.tuoitre.vn
http://www.evan.express.net
http://www.sggp.org.vn
http://www.ngoisao.net
http://www.books.google.com
http://www.amazone.com
http://www.bookreview.com
http://www.nytimes.com
http://www.bbc.co.uk
http://www.laist.com
http://www.bookreport.com
http://www.lovevampires.com
http://www.unc.edu
http://www.lavc.edu
http://library.queensu.ca
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http://www.library.uwaterloo.ca
4.5. Data Analysis
Data collected will be mainly analyzed on the basis of the following
points:
- Lexical features: We examine semantic features and the choice of the
vocabularies which frequently used in book reviews; compare them
between English and Vietnamese.
- Syntactic structures: We examine which sentence structures are
frequently used in book reviews, compare them between English and
Vietnamese.
- Cohesion: We examine the frequency of the use of lexical and
grammatical cohesion as cohesive devices, how many percents each group
takes up; compare them between English and Vietnamese.
- Coherence: We examine elements that make a unified text in general and
in book reviews in particular such as the unity of ideas, organization of
points, link and reference (cohesion), etc and then compare them between
English and Vietnamese.
4.6. A proposed Outline
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Statement of the Problem
1.2 Aims and Objectives of the Research
1.3 Significance of the Study
1.4 Research Questions
1.5 Definition of Terms
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1.6 Scope of the Study
1.7 Organization of the Research
Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Literature Review
2.2 Theoretical background
2.2.1 Theory of Discourse
2.2.1.1 Discourse Analysis
2.2.1.2 The Notion of Discourse
2.2.1.3 Discourse & Text
2.2.1.4 Spoken & Written Discourse
2.2.2 Co-text & Context
2.2.2.1 Co-text
2.2.2.2 Context
2.2.3 Coherence & Cohesion
2.2.3.1 Coherence
2.2.3.2 Cohesion
2.2.5 Book Reviews
2.2.4.1 Types of Reviews
2.2.4.2 Book Reviews
2.2.4.2.1 Definition of Book Reviews
2.2.4.2.2 General Characteristics of a Book Review
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Chapter 3: METHODS AND PROCEDURE
3.1 Research Design
3.2 Samples
3.3 Instrumentation
3.4 Data Collection
3.5 Data Analysis
Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
Chapter 5: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATONS
5.1 Summary of the Development of the Study
5.2 Implications
5.3 Limitation and Suggestions for Further Research
5.4 Conclusion
REFERENCES
APPENDIXES
5. LIMITATIONS AND DELIMITATIONS
In order to conduct the study in time, the focus has been restricted to the
investigation of some discourse features such as lexical features, syntactic
structures and cohesive devices of book reviews in electronic newspapers,
websites. In fact, there are other discourse features of book reviews that are not
fully mentioned here. Therefore, the findings of the study will not generalize
over all book reviews in newspapers, websites as a whole. However, they can be
expected to contribute useful knowledge to the reading and learning English as
well as writing book reviews.
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6. REFERENCES
English
[1] Angela Downing; Phillip Locke. (1995) a university course in English
grammar, Phoenix ELT
[2] Alexander, L.G. (1994), Longman Advanced Grammar, Nxb T.p Ho Chi
Minh
[3] Brown, G.; Yule, G. (1983), Discourse Analysis, Cambridge.
[4] Cook, G (1998) , Discourse , Oxford University Press
[5] Green, G. M. (1996), Pragmatics and Natural Language Understanding,
Lawrene Erlbaum Associates, Nnc.Publishers, New Jersey
[6] Halliday, M.A.K (1989), An Introduction to Functional Grammar,
Edward Arnold, London
[7] Halliday, M.A.K, and Hassan, R(1976), Cohesion in English, London and
New York, Longman
[8] Hatch, E. (1992), Discourse and Language Education, CUP
[9] Hatim, B.& Mason, I. (1990), Discourse and the Translator, Longman,
London & NY
[10] Johns, A.M. (1986), “Coherence and Academic Writing: Some
Determinants and Suggestions for Teaching” TESOL Quarterly, 20(2) pp.
247 – 265
[11] McCarthy, M. (1991), Discourse Analysis for Language Teacher, CUP
[12] Richards, Platt J. and Platt H. (2003), Dictionary of Language Teaching &
Applied Linguistics, Pearson education limited
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[13] Sally Wehmeier, (2005), Oxford advanced learner’s dictionary 7th edition,
Oxford university express
[14] Salkie, R. (1995), Text and Discourse Analysis, Routledge, London &
New York
[15] Stubbs, M. (1983), Discourse Analysis – The Socio- linguistic Analysis of
Natural Language, Basil Blackwell, Oxford
[16] Tran Thi Thuy Huong. (2002), Substitution in Discourse, M.A. thesis,
Danang
[17] Tran Van Phuoc; Truong Bach Le. (2003) An introduction to Discourse
Analysis, Hue
[18] Yule, G. (1996), Pragmatics, Oxford, OUP
Websites
[19] Book reviews. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/review.html
[20] Book Review Writing Tips.
http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/bookrev/read.htm
[21] How to Write a Book Review. California Library.
http://www.lavc.edu/library/bookreview.htm
[22] How to Write a Book Review. Stauffer Library.
http://library.queensu.ca/inforef/bookreview/wri.htm
[23] How to Write a Book Review. Dalhousie University Libraries.
http://www.library.dal.ca/How/Guides/BookReview/
[24] Writing Book Reviews. University of Waterloo Library.
http://library.uwaterloo.ca/libguides/1-12.html
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[25] Writing Book Reports & Book Reviews. Internet Public Library.
http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/bookreportFARQ.html
[26] Wikipedia. http://wikipedia.org
Vietnamese
[27] Diệp Quang Ban (2003), Giao tiếp -Văn bản – Mạch lạc - Liên kết – Đọan
văn, Nxb Khoa học xã hội TP HCM
[28] Diệp Quang Ban (1999), Văn bản và liên kết trong tiếng Việt, Nxb GD,
HN.
[29] Nguyễn Hoà (2003), Phân tích diễn ngôn - Một số vấn đề lý luận và
phương pháp, NXB ĐHQG
[30] Nguyễn Hoà, ( ) Phân tích diễn ngôn
[31] Nguyễn Hoà (2006), Phân tích diễn ngôn phê bình, NXB Đại học quốc
gia, HN
[32] Phan Văn Hòa, (2008) Hệ thống từ nối biểu thị quan hệ logic- ngữ nghĩa
trong tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt, NXB GD
[33] Trần Ngọc Thêm (1985), Hệ thống liên kết văn bản tiếng Việt, NXB Giáo
dục, Hà Nội.
Corpora
[34] Google book reviews. http://books.google.com
[35] Amazon. http://www.amazon.com
[36] Book Review. http://www.bookreview.com
[37] Book Review. http://laist.com
[38] Book Review. http://bookreporter.com
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[39] Review of Books. http://www.reviewsofbooks.com
[40] Sunday Book Review, New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com
[41] Twilight, Stephenie Meyer.
http://www.lovevampires.com/smtwilight.html
[42] Chạng Vạng, Stephenie Meyer. báo SGGP http://www.sggp.org.vn
[43] Điểm Sách, Nhà Sách Online Vinabook. http://www.vinabook.com
[44] Điểm Sách, Báo Ngôisao.net. http://ngoisao.net/News/Truyen-hay
[45] Điểm Sách, Evan Báo vnexpress.net http://evan.express.net
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