On Discourse Specification And Its Textural Function

Human beings need language because people have to use language to talk about the world. However, once a language comes into being, language itself is also a kind of existence of the external world, it also needs to be talked about in language. At present, language describing object world is mainly taken as the research object of linguistics, i.e. to study how language talk about the world beyond language. The phenomenon of how to use language to talk about language in daily communication has not attracted enough attention in the linguistics circle. This dissertation takes discourse specification, which is used to talk about language as a specific component of Chinese, as the research object, discusses the means of using language to talk about language in Chinese, and analyses the essential characteristics of Chinese discourse specification and its function in the texts.Against the philosophical background of self-metalanguage, this dissertation mainly employs some basic theories of textual linguistics, discourse analysis, pragmatics, semantics, and linguistic philosophy, analyses following the researching train of thought from form to function, and aims at probing into the basic feature and textual function of Chinese discourse specification.The whole dissertation consists of seven parts. The paragraphic arrangement and concrete contents are as follows:General statement . This chapter concisely introduces the philosophical background of the study of discourse specification and other researches relating with discourse specification, points out the research object of discourse specification and some content for further research, and illuminates the value of title choice, researching train of thought and framework, and research theories and methods of this dissertation.The first chapter concentrates on discourse reference. According to the features of language unit including form and content (significance), the author divide discourse reference into three levels: holistic reference , formal reference and content reference. With accordance to the different features of reference, the author sorts discourse reference, and finally analyses the differences within discourse reference and between discourse reference and other general reference of language describing object world.Chapter Two: discourse deixis. In this chapter, firstly, through analyzing the problems existing in defining discourse deixis in our country, the author defines discourse deixis, and believes that indicativenes and discourse are essential characteristics of discourse deixis. Secondly, the author sorts discourse deixis according to the deictic object of discourse deixis and its performance in and out text. Thirdly, the author analyses the relation between discourse deixis and discourse reference and the difference between discourse deixis and general deixis. The dissertation holds that the deictic object of discourse deixis can appear in the text, which is the biggest difference between discourse deixis and general deixis.Chapter Three: discourse presence. On the basis of defing presence, the author puts forward the level-sorting system of discourse presence. Afterwards, the author emphasizes on talking about the difference between oral communication and the written presence of textual discourse. And then, the author employs the theory of speech act to analyse the speech actual features of different types of discourse presences. Finally, the author analyses the relationship betweendiscourse presence, discourse reference and discourse deixis.Chapter Four: citation. On the basis of studying the citations at home and abroad, the types of Chinese citations are assorted. The author analyzes the generalizing mechanics of citation with the intentionality theory and discusses the recurrence structure of citation. Finally, the author analyzes the relation of citation with discourse reference, discourse deixis and discourse presence. Chapter Five: textual organizing function of discourse specification. This chapter discusses the connective functions of and inlaid f...