The Discourse Analysis of The Blanket

胡勍 赵冰清

【Abstract】The analysis of novel have always focused on rhetoric， psychological description and so on， seldomly pay attention to the discourse analysis. Therefore， this paper chooses a famous short story written by Floyed Dell to roughly analyze from the cohesion perspective. This paper is to discuss the cohesion’s efforts to help readers understand the topic as well as the discourse structure， so as to provide some insightful ideas to literature’s appreciation and guide the literature reading practice.

【Key words】discourse analysis; cohesive device

【作者簡介】胡勍（1988.07-），女，汉族，山西人，山西工商学院，讲师，硕士，研究方向：商务英语;赵冰清（1990.01-），女，汉族，山西忻州人，山西工商学院，助教，硕士，研究方向：语用学。

1. Introduction of the theory

According to Schiffrin （1991）， discourse analysis is widely recognized as one of the most far-reaching， but also one of the least well defined， areas in linguistics.  Cohesion is an important means of making text communicative and meaningful.There are two levels of DA. They are static description of structures beyond sentence level; and dynamic analysis of how meaning is conveyed in communication. This paper is a static description of a short novel.

2. Analysis of the story

The analyzed text The Blanket is a famous short story written by Floyed Dell，whose fiction examined the changing mores in sex and politics among American bohemians before and after World War I. The novel skillfully use the blanket as a main stream to connect all the plots， and use it as an intensifier to sharpen the contradiction. One of the most significant character of this novel is the frequent use of reference， especially personal pronouns by the way of repetition and synonymy.

2.1 Reference

After analysis， we can see that in this story， personal pronouns and demonstratives are used many times. For example：

He（1）（2）here refer to the boy Petey， his（3） refers to Dad， and he（4）refers to granddad. All the “she” here refers to that girl. These personal pronouns require reader to dig out the implied meaning so as to better understand the interpersonal relations.

2.2 Text reference

①But instead of the fiddle he brought out the blanket. It was a big， double blanket， red， with black cross strips.

②The boy went abruptly into the shanty. He was looking for something.

Both anaphoric and cataphoric are used in this novel， the above example ① and ② are anaphoric， which is commonly used in English writing. The reference “it” refers to “the blanket” and “he” refers to “the boy”， that have mentioned in the precedent sentences. While cataphoric is seldomly used， it has the same function with anaphoric to make the whole text coherent.

2.3 Substitution and ellipsis

④There will be few blankets there the equal of this one！

⑤It was the last night they’d be having together. There wasn’t any need to say， “Play all the old tunes.” granddad tuned up for a minute， and then said ， “This is one you will like to remember.”

The above 2 examples are all noun substitutes. In example④“this one” refers to the blanket bought by Petey’s father， “one” in example⑤refers to the old tune usually played by Petey’s grandfather. The substitution used here is because the writer thinks the substitute elements are obvious from the context.

2.4 Conjunctions

In the novel， addictives used 30 times， especially addictive “and” used so many times. That’s because the relationship among the three generation is deepened step by step. From Petey doesn’t believe dad would send granddad away， to granddad showing him the blanket his father bought as a leaving present; from the woman’s appearance showing her tart and hypocrisy， to his disappointment to his dad， the series of emotional changes demonstrated by the repeated “and”.

3. Conclusion

This paper based on the cohesive device of grammatical and lexical cohesion to analyze the short novel The Blanket. The alternative use of reference， substitution， conjunction， reiteration and collocation in the story make the whole text coherent and topic prominently. Readers can deeply feel each person’s emotional move and the deep love among grandfather， father and son. By using the words associated with each other， the writer achieves the purpose of depicting the participants and event in a relevant and coherent manner. I hope this analysis can provide some insightful ideas for English writing and reading.

References：

[1]Deborah Tannen， Heidi E. Hamilton， and Deborah Schiffrin. The Handbook of Discourse Analysis[M]. Wiley-Blackwell Press，1991.