Text Logic Essay

An hypothesis claims that (while mathematical logic may be universal) the logic expressed through the organization of written text is culture-specific; that is, “it posits that speakers of two different languages will organize the same reality in different ways” (Kaplan, 1988; 1987). That they should do so seems self-evident, because different languages provide different resources for organizing text. However, this filtering of text logic through language is largely unconscious; that is, learners of an L2:

• are not aware of the way in which their L1 influences the way they organize text logic

• are not aware of the way in which an L2 organizes text logic

• are not aware that there is a difference.

As Kellerman notes, "Coping with new ways of 'thinking for speaking [or writing an L2]...' means attending to features of context that are either not relevant or are defined differently in the native language..." (1995: 141).Initially, the idea underlying contrastive rhetoric arose from practical daily experiences of L2 writing teachers, who can, with astonishing accuracy, identify the first language of students writing in the L2 on the basis of the way in which they structure their texts. Christensen (1967) devised an outline-like methodology for examining

Framing refers to how the content of a text is presented, what sort of perspective (angle, slant) the writer is taking. To be coherent, a text cannot simply be a collection of details; rather, it must try to pull these details together into some sort of unified whole. There can be frames within frames, as in Geoffrey Chaucer’s THE CANTERBURY TALES. For example, a news report might be framed as a narrative, or story; and within that frame it might set up a Good Guys vs. Bad Guys frame with one group of participants being given favourable treatment over the other. One particularly powerful way of framing a text is through the use of visual