Seidlhofer, Barbara.; (1991) Discourse analysis for summarization. Doctoral thesis , Institute of Education, University of London.

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Abstract

Summarization is an activity which language students are frequently called upon to perform, often without any explicit guidance. In a wider sense, it might be said that all learning, whether of language or anything else, involves the ability to distinguish what is important from what is not, and to incorporate it into existing schematic knowledge. In this respect, summarization can be seen as central to education in general as well as language education in particular. This thesis is an attempt to gain insights into the essential criteria for summarization. After the first chapter has outlined the scope and methodology of the enquiry, chapters 2 to 5 review a number of models of text analysis and discourse processing which, on the face of it, promise to provide a systematic basis for the identification of "main ideas" in written texts. It reviews a number of models of text analysis and discourse processing which, on the face of it, promise to provide a systematic basis for the identification of "main ideas" in written texts. These include the analysis of thematic structure associated with the work of Halliday and the Prague School, the Macrostructures proposed by van Dijk and Kintsch, and Meyer's studies of rhetorical structure. A critical investigation of these models leads to a consideration of a very different approach which focuses not on the text itself as product but on the reader's reaction to it in the process of interpretation. This emerges from the empirical analysis of student summaries and accounts in chapter 6, and is further discussed in the last chapter. In general, the thesis considers the theoretical validity of these different approaches to text description and their practical utility as points of reference for summarization. It surveys applied work based on them, relates them empirically to the analysis of summaries and accounts elicited from advanced Austrian students of English at university level, and works its way towards a set of principles and procedures which might be made operational in language pedagogy.

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