earticle

영어

The Chain Interaction (CI) analysis of texts produces an index which is a formal (in contrast to functional) measure of cohesion as well as coherence of texts (cf. Halliday & Hasan, 1989). This study is an attempt to (1) explore the local and/or micro-linguistic texture of English newspaper editorials and catalog what Halliday and Hasan (1989, p. 94) refer to as the “Cohesive Harmony Index” (CHI) of texts, and (2) examine whether there is significant micro-textual variation from one culture to another within the same text type. To this end, a total of 90 editorials electronically culled from three English newspapers (30 editorials each) published in three different socio-cultural environments by native speakers of English (The Washington Times), and non-native speakers (The Iran News, and The Pakistan Today) were text-analyzed. The results of a CI analysis of texts demonstrated that, in terms of the cohesive harmony in texts, there was statistically no significant difference (α = .05) between editorials written by (non)native editorial writers, in whatever socio-cultural and socio-political context they were produced and disseminated. In other words, the CHIs of editorial texts turned out to be analogous suggesting that the editorial texts produced by non-native speakers of English enjoy almost the same degree of linguistic cohesiveness as native texts.