Accessibility Of Stressed And Unstressed Pronouns As Anaphors In Oral English Discourse

Within the framework of the accessibility theory proposed by Ariel, the thesis strives to interpret the accessibility degree of stressed and unstressed pronouns in Ariel's accessibility marking scale. Both written and spoken narratives were elicited from fifty Chinese ESL participants by means of a pronoun test followed by a story-telling task. Narrative analysis focused on stressed and unstressed anaphoric pronouns that Chinese ESL participants used to complete a multiple choice test and a story-telling task. The results of this study were then analysed, and the author put forward a tentative re-interpretation of the accessibility of stressed and unstressed pronouns, which differs from that of Ariel's Accessibility Marking Scale. Posterior to an in-depth analysis, the conclusion is made that stress poses as an influential factor in determining the accessibility competition between anaphoric pronouns: with respect to stressed and unstressed pronouns, the former marks a lower degree of accessibility than the latter when it comes to topic pronouns; the former marks a higher degree of accessibility than the latter when it comes to non topic pronouns. This new version of interpretation is of substantial importance in pedagogical practice and can shed light on the differentiation of pronoun reference approaches in both textual discourse and oral discourse, thus bearing certain significance in the teaching methodology of English pronouns and their anaphora in both textual and oral English.