A discourse analysis of information organizing devices in lectures in english

Abstract

This thesis aimed to examine the information organizing devices used in the lectures in English at the discourse level. With the purposes of exploring the functions of these devices and identifying their linguistic realizations, the study collected samples of 100 extracts of lectures in the listening passages in TOEFL iBT materials. The analysis was executed with a descriptive study to seek the qualitative information about the functions and syntactic structures of the information organizing devices. The results showed that information organizing devices could be found in the three crucial parts of the lecture such as introduction, body and conclusion. These information organizing devices were found to signal different relationships between two portions of information at the micro level of lecture discourse and the overall structure of information organization at the macro level. The function of these linguistic tools in the former level could be named here as defining the key concepts, giving examples, showing contrasting ideas, comparing the categories, emphasizing the characteristics of the topic object, reminding the previous key ideas, summarizing the main points … The functions of the latter could listed here as signaling the overall structure of information organization such as listing steps in a process, listing key characteristics of a topic object, listing the properties of the topic in the order of importance…The results also revealed the syntactic structure of the linguistic realizations of the information organizing devices from single words, phrases to sentences of different kinds, which realized the forms of different kinds of speech acts used in the lecture such as representative, directive, question and commissive. Furthermore, some difficulties as well as solutions were suggested in order to help the students as audiences of lecture have a overall view in understanding and using these organizing devices with the support of some kinds of exercise.