MACROSTRUCTURES - Teun A. van Dijk

1 MACROSTRUCTURESAn Interdisciplinary Study of Global Structuresin Discourse, Interaction, and CognitionTeun A. van DijkLAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS1980 Hillsdale, New JerseyCopyright 1980 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced inany form, byphotostat, microform, retrieval system, or any othermeans, without the prior written permission of the Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers365 BroadwayHillsdale, New Jersey 07642 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication DataDijk, Term Andrianus van, 1943- MACROSTRUCTURES : an interdisciplinary study ofglobal structures in discourse, interaction, : Human Psycholinguistics. 4. Concept of Intuitive Notions of Toward a Theoretical Concept of Problems Around a Representation Format for Semantic(Macro-) in Introduction Microstructures of Themes, Topics, and Global Meanings of Macrorules Examples of Formal Properties of Properties of Completeness and Levels of Description in Sentence Topic Versus Discourse MACROSTRUCTURES and and Superstructures Some Superstructure Superstructure Constraints on Conclusions and Open in Action and Introduction: Aims and The Structures of Action Interaction and Interaction MACROSTRUCTURES of (Inter-) Functions of MACROSTRUCTURES in (Inter-) The Description of Global MACROSTRUCTURES in Social andOpen Introduction.

2 Aims and Problems of Speech Act Macrospeech Pragmatic and The Cognitive Basis of Local Discourse Discourse Comprehension of The Representation of Discourse in The Role of Knowledge in Discourse Comprehension:Schemata, Frames, Scripts, Etc. Cognitive Set in Discourse Relevance Assignment in Discourse Discourse Comprehension and Cognitive Change in Long-Term Memory: Learning, Opinion, andAttitude Retrieval, Reproduction, and Reconstruction of DiscourseInformation From Memory Comprehension and Processing of Interaction and Planning and Executing Complex (Inter-) Discourse MACROSTRUCTURES in Other Cognitive Concluding Remarks291 References296 Author Index305 Subject Index309 PrefaceIn several disciplines of the humanities and the social sciences, variousnotions of global units and structures play an important role. In thelinguistic theory of discourse, for instance, terms like topic, "theme, "gist, or upshot require explicit description.

3 Similarly, in conversation analysis,we must explain what the point of a dialogue is. In microsociology,concerned with the analysis of interaction in social contexts, it seemsrelevant to account for the fact that action and interaction can be interpretedat several levels in terms of global actions. Finally, in cognitivepsychology and artificial intelligence, it has appeared that processing ofdiscourse and interaction ( , in production, comprehension, and storagein memory) cannot properly be accounted for without the globalorganization of complex this book these various global structures are accounted for in terms ofmacrostructures. MACROSTRUCTURES are higher-level semantic or conceptualstr uctures that organize the local microstructures of discourse, interaction,and their cognitive processing. They are distinguished from other globalstructures of a more schematic nature, which we call superstructures.

4 Theseare, so to speak, the global form of the macrostructural content. The theory of MACROSTRUCTURES sketched in this book is the result ofresearch carried out during the last 10 years in the domains of literary theory,text grammar, the general theory of discourse, pragmatics, and thecognitivepsychology of discourse processing. This research has been reported in manypapers and books in which the theory of MACROSTRUCTURES , first of discourseand later also of speech act sequences and interaction,was ,the topics of these studies prevented us fromstudyingthenotionofmacrostructureina moresystematic,interdisciplinary, and detailed way. Therefore we decided to resume andfurther develop the various ideas about MACROSTRUCTURES in a separatemonograph. It should be stressed, however, that the theory is still in itsinfancy, and we do not pretend to give more than a rather rough outline; onsome points we are able to be more explicit, whereas on other points wecan only formulate rather speculative remarks.

5 Both in sociology and incognitive psychology, more empirical work is necessary to assess thenature and the role of global structures. In this book we have presented thegeneral but informal outline of the theory and the various concepts andproblems involved rather than give a more detailed analysis ofmacrostructures in a particular type of discourse. In this way we hope to beable to show that the notion of macrostructure is relevant in severaldisciplines concerned with the account of complex information processingand higher-level interpretation. Moreover, it appears that the basicprinciples involved in the structures and processing of discourse and (inter-)action at the level of global meanings are essentially the same. Althoughmacrostructures can be abstractly studied, for discourse and interaction, inlinguistics and sociology alone, their fundamental interpretative or conceptual nature also requires extensive cognitive analysis.

6 It is at thispoint where the empirical necessity of MACROSTRUCTURES is most clearlyexhibited, viz., as structures that are required in the understanding,organization, and reduction of complex information. Without them, theplanning and execution of complex interaction sequences and discourses,as well as their comprehension, memory representation, retrieval, andrecall, would not be the term macrostructure is rather recent, 2 similar notions havebeen used in the various disciplines mentioned previously. Notions such as topic or plot (of a story or drama) occur already in classical poetics andrhetorics, and the study of themes has always been a main concern ofliteraryscholarship. In modern linguistics the notion could only be accounted for assoon as more attention was paid to thesemantic structures of discourse, , inso-calledtext same holds for cognitive psychology and_____Fragments of a theory of MACROSTRUCTURES have been worked out by me especially in thefollowing books and papers: 1972, 1973b, 1976b, 1977a, b, e, f, g, 1978e.

7 It should be notedthat on many points my original views on MACROSTRUCTURES have been modified in the last fewyears. One of the major differences has been the distinction between semantic and syntacticmacrostructures. The latter are studied in this book under the concept of superstructures. The first use of the term I know, and which was at the origin of my development of the notionin literary theory, has been made by the German linguist Manfred Bierwisch (Bierwisch, 1965).He thereby referred, though, to global structures of narrative that are called superstructures inthis book. The first published uses of the term macrostructure in psychology Iam aware of havebeen made by Bower (1974) and Kintsch (1974), although similar notions have been discussedearlier under different terms (see Chapter 6, footnote 2, p. 203).PREFACEVII artificial intelligence, where models, computer programs, and experimentsare now being developed that have macrostructural notions.

8 Of course, in thehi story of psychology similar concepts have been used, especially in theGestalt tradition. In a certain sense, this book aims at a theoreticalreformulation of some of the ideas of Gestalt psychology, viz., the idea ofholistic structures and their specificproperties. The limits of one book,however, make it impossible to give a historical analysis of the notion of global structure. Such a study, in several disciplines, would require a bookof its own. We shall therefore only refer to more recent uses ofthe in cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence, a numberof different but related concepts have been discussed in the recent literature( , schema, frame, script, and scenario). These concepts, which may beapplied both in social and in cognitive theories, are taken to be specific,often conventionally determined, organizations of knowledge.

9 It appearsthat they are important in the formation or comprehension ofmacrostructures, but it should be emphasized here that they should not beconfused with macro structures, which are higher-level structures inprocessing and representation. Although knowledge is of fundamentalimportance in all cognitive processes, we have argued that there are alsocrucial other cognitive factors that determine the production andcomprehension of discourse and action (viz., various motivationalstructures, opinions, attitudes, values, norms, tasks, and interests). Thecomplex mental state which in a certain context determines the actualprocesses of production or comprehension and which consists ofknowledge and these other factors is studied briefly under the termcognitive set. Another notion which is accounted for in terms ofmacrostructures and which is particularly relevant in the production ofac tion and the comprehension of action discourse in general and stories inparticular is the notion of plan.

10 Most of the notions mentioned in thisparagraph have received extensive attention in artificial intelligence and incognitive or social psychology. It has not been possible, however, todiscuss the various uses and applications of these notions nor to reviewcritically the respective theories in which they function. Except from shortdefinitions and distinctions formulated in the perspective of our framework,the reader is referred to the studies mentioned in the footnotes for moredetailed analyses of these presentation of the theory is systematic but informal. Except for a briefdiscussionofthe formalproperties of macrorules and MACROSTRUCTURES in_____0ther work on MACROSTRUCTURES will not be extensively discussed and referred to in the text;names and works of relevant authors will be mentioned only in the footnotes. Since this bookis not a survey, we have decided (also for esthetic reasons) not to interrupt the text with stringsof names and years.