Page 298 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

284 CHAPTER 11
ENUMERATIVE "CATCH-ALL"NOUNS
Halliday and Hasan's (1976) study of cohesion noted the importance of what they called general words with such broad and vague meanings that they can play the role of lexical substitutes for a variety of nouns. In various anal- yses of written academic corpora in English, these nouns are also called enumerative (Partington, 1996; Tadros, 1994; see chap. 6 for additional dis- cussion and teaching suggestions). Enumerative nouns are far more com- mon in academic than other types of writing. Highly prevalent items include the following.
approach aspect category challenge change characteristic circumstance class
difficulty
event manner subject experience method system
facet phase task
fact problem tendency factor process topic feature purpose trend form reason type
issue result item stage
These nouns can be very useful for establishing cohesive chains in aca- demic text because, for instance, such nouns as approach—method, sub- ject—topic, problem—difficulty, or tendency—trend can be employed interchangeably as lexical substitutes for other nouns with more specific meanings. A few examples from student papers illustrate the usefulness of
enumerative catch-all nouns in text:
• The author mentions pollution, water shortage, and loss of soil issues con- cerning the threat of overpopulation. In his article, he mostly talks about the environment but does not mention the health and nutrition problems. The health challenges are created when there are too many people in the world.
Lexical ties/substitutions: issues—problems—challenges
• Foralongtime,philosophershavebeendiscussingthefactors thatcreatea happy marriage. We find characteristics of happy marriages in the work of Aquinas, Singer, and sociologist Wallerstein, who argue about the aspects of marriage to show which ones are happy and which ones are not and why.
Lexical ties/substitutions: factors—characteristics—aspects
• Americans aregetting more and more uninterested in politics, and political
scientists and educators have been trying to understand the trend that Amer-
TLFeBOOK