Discourse Analysis From The Ergative Perspective

In discourse analysis,the transitive perspective is the most frequently adopted perspective regarding the interpretation of the experiential meaning.However,it can only provide a specific interpretation of process types and is unable to interpret the cause-and-effect relationship between participants which is also an indispensable part of the experiential meaning.The ergative analysis,as a complementary model of the transitive analysis,interprets the cause-and-effect relationship between participants.Some scholars adopt the ergative model to reveal the goal of the discourse and put forward several ergative approaches.However,the previous ergative approaches focus on whether the cause-and-effect relationship is expressed by the clause in an explicit way and are applied to the analysis of different types of discourse without any feasible specific step.In view of this,this research,by specifying the crucial elements of the cause-and-effect relationship(the peripheral participant which is also called agent,the core participant which is also called medium,and the effect of the agent on the medium),points out three aspects regarding the analysis of the cause-and-effect relationship including the uncertainty of the agent and the medium in the clause,the association of the cause triggered by the clause and the affectedness expressed by the discourse,and provides a more detailed ergative approach to the interpretation of the cause-and-effect relationship.Besides,this research adopts the proposed ergative approach to analyze a self-built corpus of scientific discourse,so as to see how this approach is used to interpret the discourse.The proposed ergative approach is as follows.Based on the uncertainty of the existence of the agent and medium,any phenomenon can be represented by three potential types of expressions including the ergative clause,the non-ergative clause with medium,the non-ergative clause with agent.Based on the association of the cause,any phenomenon can be expressed by two potential types of expressions,namely,the clause tending to trigger the association of the cause and the clause not tending to trigger the association of the cause.Based on the affectedness,any phenomenon can be represented by two potential types of expressions,namely,the clause expressing high affectedness and the clause expressing low affectedness.Taking into account the three aspects,any phenomenon can be represented by nine potential types of expressions.The features which are revealed by all phenomena in the discourse from three aspects are combined to present the overall characteristics of the discourse.The advantages of the ergative analysis depend on the interpretation of the cause-and-effect relationship.Compared with the past ergative approaches,the ergative approach proposed by this research can interpret the cause-and-effect relationship from three aspects,including not only whether the cause-and-effect relationship is expressed in an explicit way,but also the emphasis on the cause and the degree of the effect exerted by the agent on the medium.Correspondingly,the use of this ergative approach in the analysis of the self-built corpus reveals that this approach can interpret the discourse from three aspects.Firstly,more ergative clauses mean that the discourse emphasizes the interaction between participants.Secondly,more clauses tending to trigger the association of the cause means that the discourse emphasizes the cause behind the phenomenon.Thirdly,more clauses expressing high affectedness means that the discourse intends to attract the attention of the reader or the listener.