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HUNGARIAN-ENGLISH LINGUISTIC CONTRASTS. A PRACTICAL APPROACH
As regards crosslinguistic differences, there are considerable differenc¬
es in the conventions of text organization in some written registers between
English and some other languages. Such differences were explored by
research on contrastive rhetoric (Kaplan 1966, Connor 1996), aimed to
uncover culture-specific patterns of text organisation across cultures
and genres. Kaplan showed that students of English with various linguis¬
tic backgrounds (Semitic, Oriental, Romance languages and Russian) use
L1 rhetorical structures in L2 English writing (see Figure 2). While An¬
glo-American essays follow a linear development, Oriental languages use
an indirect approach and come to the point only at the end, while in Rus¬
sian there may be digressions and unnecessary detail. He proposed exer¬
cises to practice writing essays in an Anglo-American style.
English Semitic Oriental Romance Russian
> \
Se ezi
TT , 7
Figure 2. Culture-specific patterns of text organization according to Kaplan (1966)
Studying differences in text macrostructure is particularly relevant in
academic writing skills courses for English majors, who have to write course
assignments and thesis papers in English. Ihis chapter, however, will not be
concerned with Hungarian—English contrasts in macrostructure: on the one
hand, there are few studies on this topic (see, however, Arvay and Tanké 2004,
Neumeyer 2014), and, apparently, the features of academic English can be
studied effectively without reference to contrasts.
9.5 COHESIVE DEVICES
Coherence is the central concept of discourse analysis. Oral and written dis¬
course is supposed to be coherent. Coherence means that the different parts
of a piece of discourse belong together and achieve a unified meaning, i.e. the
given piece of discourse as a whole makes sense. Coherence is supported by
the use of formal links (usually referred to as cohesive ties or cohesive devices),
functional relations and background knowledge (also known as world knowl¬
edge, including cultural knowledge; see Cook 1989). A large number of discourse
studies, following Halliday and Hasan’s work (1976) were focused on textual
cohesive mechanisms. Later research (e.g. Petöfi 2004) showed that textual
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