‘Actually given’ versus ‘presented as given’ and ‘actually new’ versus ‘presented as new’
What happens when the ‘presented as’ gets out of step with the ‘actually’?
This paper considers the relevance of various approaches to the study of ‘Given’ and ‘New’ to a number of
practical problems: complaints from listeners to UK radio programmes that presenters place emphasis on the wrong words;
inaudibility of openings of utterances in radio news bulletins; and ambiguity of pronouns. Approaches to ‘Given’ and ‘New’ to be
discussed include those whose concerns are with intonation (e.g.,
Halliday & Matthiessen
2014), those who pay attention to definiteness/indefiniteness in the nominal group (e.g.,
Martin 1992), and those who are more concerned with what is in the minds of hearers and readers (e.g.,
Prince 1981;
Lambrecht 1994). The
underlying questions that are being investigated are: How free are speakers and writers to assign ‘Given’ or ‘New’ status to
entities? Are there constraints on what they can do intonationally, or with definiteness, or with pronouns?
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The problems
- 2.1Problem 1: The “wrong” use of intonation by radio presenters and newsreaders
- 2.2Problem 2: Missing first elements of clauses
- 2.3Problem 3: Ambiguous third person pronouns
- 3.Problem 1: The “wrong” use of intonation by radio presenters and news readers
- 3.1Intonation and Given and New
- 3.2Lexicogrammar and Given and New
- 3.3Propositional content and Given and New
- 4.Problem 2: Missing first elements of clauses
- 5.Problem 3: Ambiguous third person pronouns
- 6.Concluding remarks
- Notes
-
References