Page 139 - Literacy in the New Media Age

128 LITERACY IN THE NEW MEDIA AGE

completion of the preceding element, in this case, a sentence. That makes it
possible to refer to a segment of the preceding unit and import it anaphorically into
the next sentence. This is a matter, straightforwardly, of framing. If I have a
clearly framed element, then writing – and speech also, if in different ways –
makes it possible to refer to (segments of) that element, and bring it into the next
one.
If this writer had wanted to have these two clauses as one conceptually unified
element, a sentence, rather than as two clauses uneasily together, then a more
writing-like solution would have been to use a semicolon instead of the comma,
making a sufficiently clear frame. That would have left the clauses as two units of
syntactically equal status with the first clause semantically somewhat more
weighted. Or he could have used a subordinating conjunction such as ‘which’
between the two clauses. That would have subordinated one to the other,
syntactically and conceptually. Similarly with the second sentence. As they stand,
both sentences have two main clauses – and from the perspective of writing that
is felt as awkward, or worse. The ‘worse’ is the judgement which is invited by
the syntax of a sentence with two main clauses, namely ‘not conceptually
ordered’. The conceptual ordering would be achieved by making one clause
subordinate. From here it is a very short step, usually elided in teachers’
comments, to the judgement ‘not capable of complex conceptual ordering’.
A third example is,

Rejection casts us out to sea on the question of what might that relationship
be?
Relatively weak incorporation of clauses (an example of type 2)

My attention was caught by the manner in which the second clause was handled
textually/syntactically within that sentence. This clause, ‘what might that
relationship be’, reports a thought on the author’s part, perhaps a thought that
was linguistically ‘prepared’, even if silently, and thus had a real existence: it
was ready to be uttered, though in the event it is treated as though it was not
actually spoken or written. It is also somewhat awkwardly integrated ‘… on the
question of what might …’. In reading it I felt that I would have written ‘… casts
us out to sea on the question “what might that relationship be”’. I might even
have used a question mark because this partial utterance actually has a syntactic
question-form ‘what might that relationship be?’ In the author’s version there is
no punctuation mark other than the question mark; in my version there are
punctuation marks, the inverted commas, and the question mark.
Let me trace these steps again. The author formulates a complex point, which
includes a question: ‘That rejection casts us out to sea on the question of what
might that relationship be?’ He produces a linguistic formulation for the question,
in the syntactic form of an indirectly quoted WH question, even though it is not
used as such ‘on the question of what might that relationship be?’ The form I