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In:The Pragmatics of Discourse Coherence: Theories and applications
Edited by Helmut Gruber and Gisela Redeker
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 254] 2014
► pp. 267–291

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Signalling coherence in Austrian students‘ seminar papers: macro- and micro-structural cues

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Published online: 26 November 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.254.10gru
Based on a corpus of Austrian students’ texts from three disciplines (personnel management, business psychology, economic history) analysed with Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST), this paper investigates the macro-structural expectations which tables of content (ToCs) raise, the cues by which these expectations are triggered, and the “predictive quality” of ToCs. The ToCs in the personnel management group’s texts offer the best “prediction” of the actual macrostructures, whereas in the other two groups ToC and textual macro-structures diverge from each other in various ways. The analysis also shows a high degree of similarity between relation cues at the textual micro- and macro-levels. The results are discussed with respect to genre differences, student writers’ generic competence and institutional factors of students’ text production.
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