Chapter 3: Signposts

Keywords:
• External evaluative devices
• Internal evaluation devices
• Order
• Duration
• Frequency
Abstract
Schemata are cognitive structures representing generic knowledge. Genre is comparable to
schema: ir draws on our previous knowledge and experience and offers a framework for
interpretation. A competent reader constructs an adequate model with regard to plot, figures,
space and motif. A Temporal ordering is a property relating to time, a following of one thing
after another in time. Intertextuality is the shaping of a text's meaning by another text.
 Introduction:
This chapter considers the way narratives are structured, and methods of analysis. The
structure and organisation of a narrative offers vital clues to interpretation. The theories of
Labov (on textual organisation) and Genette (on temporal organisation) are considered in
detail, in the context of a pragmatic assumption that all the devices considered here function in
some way as macro-implicatures which help us to interpret a text.

Schemata:
Schemata are cognitive structures representing generic knowledge, i.e. structures which do not
contain information about particular entities, instances or events, but rather about their general
form. Readers use schemata to make sense of events and descriptions by providing default
background information for comprehension, as it is rare and often unnecessary for texts to
contain all the detail required for them to be fully understood.
Ex. “Schema” is also used as a synonym for “frame” (Minsky 1975) to refer to mental
representations of objects, settings or situations. A restaurant schema/frame, for example,
would contain information about types of restaurants, what objects are to be found inside a
restaurant, and so on.

Genre:
Genre (from French genre 'kind, sort') is any form or type of communication in any mode
(written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over
time.[1] In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other forms
of art or entertainment, whether written or spoken, audio or visual, based on some set of
stylistic criteria, yet genres can be aesthetic, rhetorical, communicative, or functional.
Ex. Action and adventure, Music, Film, Literature, Rhetoric, History.
The competent reader:
The competent reader is briefly characterized as being able to read between the lines, seeing
meaning that isn’t stated directly and to deploy a wide range of active strategies to find and
read texts for different purposes.
Ex. Comprehensive, Capacity Building, Flexible, Effective.
Labov's narrative theory:
William Labov’s model of narrative analysis differs from some of the earlier approaches in
that his method focuses on oral narrative instead of written text. Earlier linguists, such as
Ferdinand de Saussure, believed in a structural approach. This meant that language had to be
approached as a fixed, clearly defined set of symbols, which furthermore had to be studied in
isolation.
Ex. Practice with the model, Ends, act sequence, key, Genre.
 • External evaluative devices:
Within the realm of discourse modes, narration, the telling or writing of a story consisting of a
sequentially ordered set of events, is an efficient way to convey the subjective human
experience. A narrative is not to be interpreted as factual, it is not a reproduction of reality, but
rather a representation of reality the narrator deems suitable to contextual circumstances. In its
subjectivity, a narrative can even be seen as not only representing, but also constructing
reality.
Ex. "I was terrified".
• Internal evaluation devices:
Internal evaluation is a process of quality review undertaken within an institution for its own
ends, Internal review is something an institution does for its own purposes, internal review is
seen as the part of the external process that an institution undertakes in preparation for an
external event.
Ex. Approval, monitoring and periodic review of programmers and awards, Assessment of
students, Quality assurance of teaching staff.

Temporal ordering:
A property relating to time, a following of one thing after another in time.
Ex. "the doctor saw a sequence of patients".
• Order:
The way in which people or things are arranged, either in relation to one another or according
to a particular characteristic.
Ex. The children lined up in order of age/height.
• Duration:
Duration is a measure of the sensitivity of the price of a bond or other debt instrument to a
change in interest rates. A bond's duration is easily confused with its term or time to maturity
because certain types of duration measurements are also calculated in years. However, a
bond's term is a linear measure of the years until repayment of principal is due; it does not
change with the interest rate environment. Duration, on the other hand, is non-linear and
accelerates as the time to maturity lessens.
Ex. Macaulay duration estimates how many years it will take for an investor to be repaid the
bond’s price by its total cash flows.
• Frequency:
Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time. It is also
referred to as temporal frequency, which emphasizes the contrast to spatial frequency and
angular frequency.
Ex. such as mechanical vibrations, audio signals (sound), radio waves, and light.
Evaluation and temporal organization:
Beyond the surface and spatial experiences of pictures, abstract color painters learned to
stimulate a temporal organization in painting as well. This can occur even though a painting is
physically a single fixed image, since the visual organization of that image might change over
the duration that a viewer looks at the painting.
Ex. by necessity requires duration since it is impossible for the viewer to see both figure–
field organizations simultaneously – rather they can only be seen sequentially.

Intertextuality:
Intertextuality is the shaping of a text's meaning by another text. It is the interconnection
between similar or related works of literature that reflect and influence an audience's
interpretation of the text. Intertextuality is the relation between texts that are inflicted by
means of quotations and allusion.
Ex. Intertextual figures include allusion, quotation, calque, plagiarism, translation, pastiche
and parody.

Conclusion:
This chapter has been concerned with aspects of text which guide the reader in interpretation,
hence the reference to signposts. Labov defines evaluation in terms of the relations between
teller and audience. These devices reassure the audience that the story is worth listening to. In
literary texts, the guarantee of interest is in a sense there already: the publisher, editor and
author's name all assure the reader of some sort of quality control. So the devices considered
here are not necessarily designed primarily to reassure us, but rather to show us how to read
the text and suggest the general cultural context in which it is placed.