The Merits and Demerits of Hoey's Matching Patterns
THE MERITS AND DEMERITS OF HOEY 'S MATCHING PATTERNS
By
Prof.Dr Lubna Riyadh Abdul Jabbar
Abstract
Within the realm of the linguistic description of text, Hoey has adopted the approach that sees text as possessing organization, that is, describable in terms of patterns of organization. Accordingly, organizational statements of text describe what is done by accounting for probabilities. In such an approach, no linguistic combination is impossible, but some are decidedly improbable. Hoey claims that the structural description of text cannot attain perfection in any area of language study, and that the formation of structural principles forces the linguist to consider the exceptions, and thus to discover new regularities through the process of matching patterns . The present study shed some light on the merit and demerits of such an approach and the possibility of applying it in the analysis of texts.
THE MERITS AND DEMERITS OF HOEY 'S MATCHING PATTERNS
The Matching Patterns In his work Patterns of Lexis in Text, Hoey (1991) introduces a detailed model of how the cohesive features combine to affect the organization of text. He believes (ibid.: 11) that any description of cohesion gives rise to an important trio of questions:
1. How does the presence of cohesion contribute to the coherence of a text?
2. How does the presence of cohesion affect the ways in which sentences are perceived to be related to each other as complete propositions?
3. Does cohesion contribute to creating the large organization of a text?
The first question presupposes that coherence is not synonymous with cohesion. Hoey states that coherence could only be determined by the addressee’s evaluation and assessment, whereas cohesion is a property of text. In other words, cohesion is an objective feature inherent in the text, while coherence is a relative and subjective feature which is dependent on the addressee’s
By
Prof.Dr Lubna Riyadh Abdul Jabbar
Abstract
Within the realm of the linguistic description of text, Hoey has adopted the approach that sees text as possessing organization, that is, describable in terms of patterns of organization. Accordingly, organizational statements of text describe what is done by accounting for probabilities. In such an approach, no linguistic combination is impossible, but some are decidedly improbable. Hoey claims that the structural description of text cannot attain perfection in any area of language study, and that the formation of structural principles forces the linguist to consider the exceptions, and thus to discover new regularities through the process of matching patterns . The present study shed some light on the merit and demerits of such an approach and the possibility of applying it in the analysis of texts.
THE MERITS AND DEMERITS OF HOEY 'S MATCHING PATTERNS
The Matching Patterns In his work Patterns of Lexis in Text, Hoey (1991) introduces a detailed model of how the cohesive features combine to affect the organization of text. He believes (ibid.: 11) that any description of cohesion gives rise to an important trio of questions:
1. How does the presence of cohesion contribute to the coherence of a text?
2. How does the presence of cohesion affect the ways in which sentences are perceived to be related to each other as complete propositions?
3. Does cohesion contribute to creating the large organization of a text?
The first question presupposes that coherence is not synonymous with cohesion. Hoey states that coherence could only be determined by the addressee’s evaluation and assessment, whereas cohesion is a property of text. In other words, cohesion is an objective feature inherent in the text, while coherence is a relative and subjective feature which is dependent on the addressee’s
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