Keynote Speech I On a Clause Relational Approach to Discourse Analysis

Northeast Normal University

[Abstract]Discourse analysis can be approached from as many different ways as available the theories of linguistics and other interdisciplinary branches of learning and research.It not only explores the features of discourse,the creation and shaping of the discourse,but also the social and cognitive processes of how our perception and experiences of the world are put into words for expression.Taking a linguistic and functional perspective,this paper focuses on one of the approaches to discourse analysis:a clause relational approach,particularly to written text analysis.As a predication-based model of discourse analysis,the clause relational approach explores basically the semantics of discourse,that is,how sentences are put together to generate meanings and what logical and cognitive processes are involved in connecting clauses into larger discourse relations.It is believed that a careful study of discourse and text using the clause relational approach can help both teachers and students raise their language awareness in text construction and interpretation,thus beneficial to their language teaching and learning.

Bio Statement

Prof Yang Yuchen,a PhD holder of English Language and Literature,has been working at Northeast Normal University sine 1982.Her linguistic interest lies largely in discourse analysis and English language teaching.She has published 4 volumes of books on discourse related themes,especially on comparative discourse analysis and text construction.She has also written over 50 academic papers,among whichOn Lexical Chunks and its Implication on Language Teaching and Learningis regarded as one of the top 10 Highly Cited Papers in the circle of China foreign language teaching and learning(BeiWai Academic Journals 2020).Prof Yang is also a teacher on various subjects and a respected tutor to around 150 postgraduate students leading to either master’s or Ph.D.degrees.She was elected as one of the popular supervisors at NENU in 2016.