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PUBLISHED ANALYSES
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Published Analyses
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Analyses by Mann, Matthiessen and/or Thompson

These are all texts for which there is a published RST analysis by the development team. These analyses, along with many others not shown here, span a range of dates and choices of detail. We have applied a common set of conventions, including the relations that have been added since the 1988 paper. This has led to some renumbering, but the substantive details of the published analyses have generally been retained.

Where they are available, scanned images of the published analyses and the original texts have been included.

The right hand column shows counts of the signaled relations of each of these texts, along with the total relation count. Signals here include conjunctions, phrases, open class words and syntactic patterns. Methods of counting signals have not been formalized, and there may not be a need to do so.

Click on the text name in the table to get a more detailed description of the text (below the table). Click on the detailed description for a pdf version of the analysis, including an RST diagram created with Mick O'Donnell's RST Tool. The image file (gif) was also created with the tool, and it is, in some cases, a large file. Both pdf and gif files open in a new window.

Text analyses Signaled relations /
All Relations
Common Cause Advocacy Letter - from a political newsletter 4 / 15
ZPG Fund Raising Letter - posted to a U.S. household 5 / 23
Syncom Floppy Disk Advertisment - from a software magazine 4 / 14
Bouquets - a newspaper article 1 / 7
Thumbs Text - from a personal letter 4 / 6
It's not laziness - a newspaper editorial 2 / 6
Sums 20 / 69 (29%)

 

PDF Common Cause Advocacy Letter -- PDF
PDF Common Cause Analysis -- GIF
The Common Cause Text is an advocacy letter that appeared as a letter to the editors of a magazine for members of California Common Cause, a political organization. It was used in several publications on RST. One notable features is the diversity of arguments and themes in the letter that do not follow the RST structure, themes such as emotional waste of money, the effects of spending by others and appeals to organizational tradition. These themes serve as arguments or evidence for the suitability of what the author advocates, but they are largely embodied in choice of words and phrases. They are barely propositional, and often presented without support.

PDF ZPG Fund Raising Letter -- PDF
PDF ZPG Fund Raising Letter -- GIF
This is the text that was analyzed by 12 different methods in the Discourse Description: diverse linguistic analyses of a fund raising text book.

PDF Syncom Floppy Disk Advertisement -- PDF
PDF Syncom Floppy Disk Advertisement -- GIF
The analysis of this advertisement appeared in several publications about RST. It combines orientation to action with orientation to providing information.

PDF Bouquets -- PDF
PDF Bouquets -- GIF
This is a short newspaper article on the border between exposition and entertainment.

PDF Thumbs Text -- PDF
PDF Thumbs Text -- GIF
This text is distinctive in that it has a known, personal addressee. It is an excerpt from a handwritten personal letter from a friend. (The letter goes on to talk about relearning the typewriter.)

It is unusual in the way that it raises a small problem as a means of raising a moderate sized problem, leading to the entire excerpt as statement of a large problem. This strategy perhaps indicates something about the personal self representation intended by the writer.
The text was included in the published set as part of the effort to establish the breadth of coverage of RST.


PDF It's not laziness -- PDF
PDF It's not laziness -- GIF
This is a short newspaper editorial with a political purpose. It illustrates argumentation technique for persuading the reader of something that is, for some readers, controversial and possibly part of conventional wisdom.

Although both this text and the "bouquets" text are short expository newspaper articles, analysis shows a sharp difference in their strategies.

 
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