8 Other culturally popular patterns Other culturally popular patterns 143 ( Uillol til Mill.illlJII (buliliuH.ijs 1 'I) Particular Situation (sentences 5 7) Problem (The porridge was rather hot) i ' Response (the three bears went for a walk in the wood) I Implied Positive Result (it cooled) (sentence 8) Figure 8.1 Analysis of the first eight sentences of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Introduction I ended the previous chapter with a list of features associated with the Problem-Solution pattern. Almost all these characteristics also apply to the patterns I shall rover in this chapter, with only minor terminological changes. This chapter will take their applicability for granted and I will not seek to demonstrate for each new pattern that it is, for example, capable of recycling or is characteristically signalled. Where I do mention these features, it will be in order to introduce some new feature that it was not possible to bring in during the last chapter. There were several reasons for giving the Problem-Solution pattern first. One was that it is one of the most frequently occurring (if not the most frequent); another was that it has been the most thoroughly investigated of all the patterns. Many of the patterns covered in the current chapter, on the other hand, have been little described and are either not mentioned in the literature or are only mentioned in passing. A third reason was that, as will become apparent, there are grounds for regarding it as more basic than the other patterns. The limitations of Problem-Solution patterning The first thing to note is that we do need other patterns. It would be easy to infer from some of what has been written, including perhaps some of my own contributions to the field, that the Problem-Solution pattern accounts for the majority of texts. This is not so. If we look at how it applies to the telling of Goldilocks and The Three Rears that was analysed from a hierarchical perspective in Chapter 4, we will see that it accounts for only a proportion of the text. At first it looks as if the categories associated with Problem-Solution will account for this story very well. The first eight sentences form a complete, if uninteresting, pattern (Figure 8.1). The two types of Situation reflect two types of background information that can be supplied prior to the onset of a pattern. The first reports statements that have validity for a considerable time. Thus Father Bear is assumed to have been big for a indefinite period previously and, since nothing happens in the story to change his size (it isn't his porridge that gets eaten!), he is assumed to remain big throughout. Baby Bear has presumably been tiny and little as long as he has been in (fictional) existence. On the other hand, the cooking of the porridge is reported as true just for this day. Adult writing displays the same kind of division. Dickens' Barnaby Rudge begins with'statements about an inn that have validity over a long period and then offers statements about people in it on a particular night which have validity only for the occasion reported. The Problem is somewhat subtly signalled by rather x. In an examination of 78 instances of rather + adjective or adverb (excluding comparative adjectives and' adverbs), drawn from the Guardian newspaper, I found that almost 58% of the adjectives or adverbs were negative evaluations; only 24% were positive (the remainder being neutral). This means that rather has a preference for negatives (the technical term for this is that it has a negative semantic prosody). This, combined with the word so at the beginning of the next clause, means that we interpret the hotness as problematic rather than as an asset. So far so good. The analysis continues to appear to work in the next chunk of text. Indeed, it is here that it seems most natural to apply it. Sentences 9-11 are again general Situation, these statements having general validity rather than validity only on this occasion, while sentences 12—17a provide particular Situation. The Problem is identified in the second half of sentence 17; she was hungry, an Aspect of her Situation requiring a Response. There then follows a recycling pattern as shown in Figure 8.2. It would be easy to be satisfied with this analysis, but it has certain deficiencies that cannot be overlooked. In the first place, and not perhaps very importantly, lastfing] the porridge hardly counts as an adequate Response to the Problem of being hungry; only when Goldilocks eats the third bowl of porridge all up can we presume that the Problem has been adequately solved. Secondly, and more seriously, there is too much heterogeneous material lumped together under the heading of Particular Situation. It seems to go beyond preparatory material and to provide us with a substantial chunk of story, compared, for example, with the brief Particular Situation pertaining to the Bears. The third incident, with the three beds, follows a very similar path to that outlined for the porridge episode, though of course with only a brief Situation (see Figure 8.3). Here there is no excess of Situation and the unease I was expressing about the Responses does not apply. As a preliminary to going to sleep, Goldilocks'actions are appropriate. 144 Other culturally popular patterns General Situation (sentences 9-11) Particular Situation (sentences 12-17a) Problem {hungry Response 1 (tasted the porridge in the very big bowt) Negative Evaluation (too hot!) Response 2 (tasted the porridge in the medium-sized bowl) Negative Evaluation (lumpy) Response 3 (tasted the porridge in the tiny, little bowl) Positive Evaluation (just right) Positive Result (sentence 24) FiSure8.2 Analysisof the'porridge" cpi Situation (sentences 38-9) Problem (tired) sodc in Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Response 1 (climbed up onto the very big bed) Negative Evaluation (too hard) Response 2 (climbed up onto the medium-sized bed) Negative Evaluation (too soft) Response 3 (lay down on the tiny, little bed) Positive Evaluation (just right) Positive Resur (sentence 24) Other culturally popular patterns 145 However, there is a much bigger anomaly to worry about. We have :m adequate analysis ol Goldilocks' first |>ic<:e ol'anl isoc.ial behaviour and an equally adequate analysis of her third piece of antisocial behaviour. But what do we do about the second? In all sorts of ways, the incident of her trying out the chairs and finding them variously comfortable until she finds Baby Bear's chair is parallel to the porridge and bed incidents. There is the rejection of the chairs of Father Bear and Mother Bear, expressed in very similar terms [too high and too hard), there is the exploitation of Baby Bear's belongings, and at the outset there is a very similarly worded Situation. But crucially there is no Probleni. There is npjxjgger of the pattern whatsoever. We appear to move directly from Situation to Response, and this is simply not permissible within the terms laid down in the previous chapter. Clearly we will not have a satisfactory description of narrative patterning until we can account for the middle 'chair'episode. Nor do the limitations of the Problem-Solution pattern end there. If we look at the last third of the story, from the return of the Bears to the escape of Goldilocks, we find that once again Problem-Solution only accounts for a small proportion of the text. The final few sentences (sentences 66-70), relating Goldilock's escape from the bears on discovery, fit well enough, with sentence 66 serving as Situation, sentence 67 as Problem (evoked by bears for those who know their wildlife and inscribed as fright for those who don't), sentence 68 as Response and sentence 69 as Positive Result (for all concerned). The final sentence underlines this Result and tells us to expect no more patterns to open up. But what do we do with what is unquestionably the most famous part of the story - the Bears' repeated puzzlement about the mystery intruder - a part so famous that a sex comedy starring Dean Martin was once made entitled Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? It is not an adequate answer to squeeze this episode into the Problem-Solution categories. In the first place, the questions they repeatedly ask are not conveniently categorisable as an aspect of Situation requiring a Response (the definition I have given for Problem), unless the term requiring in this definition is stretched. Secondly, there is no recognisable signal of Problem here nor is it easy to imagine one. Finally, a 'Response' to this 'Problem' would not answer the question 'What did they do about it?' Their enquiry does not require that anyone do anything at all. What all this means is that the Problem-Solution pattern is only part of the answer to the question of how texts are organised. Applying it to a traditional tale such as Goldilocks and the Three Bears has shown it to account for almost exactly half the story. While that is still quite a lot, it means that we need to look for other types of pattern. The Goal-Achievement pattern One pattern that is readily attested can be illustrated by reference to the fabricated 'language teaching' narrative that I repeatedly manipulated in the previous chapter. Consider the following rather less vainglorious variant of that narrative: 146 Other culturally popular patterns 8.1 (I) I am a Icacher of English r language. (2) One flay some students came to me wauling to he al>le Id write novels. (!5) I taught lliein lexl analysis. (4) Now they can't even write their names. The tale of reversal is still intact, even perhaps strengthened, but the second sentence is no longer a Problem as defined. Students wanting to write novels can. hardly be regarded as a problem even for the most jaundiced of teachers. What we have here is the trigger of a pattern that is closely related to the Problem-Solution pattern but has its own signals and operates slightly differently, namely the Goal-Achievement pattern, which can be represented by the questions: What was the situation? What goal did x want to achieve? What method did x ory use to achieve it? How successful was this in the opinion o{x,y or £?/What was the result for.v? where x,y and .-; may be the same person(s) and one or more may be the writer. The Goal-Achievement pattern is associated with narratives and the more straightforward advertisements; it is also associated with scientific writing, both popular and specialist. Its component parts are Situation, Goal, Method of Achievement and Evaluation and/or Result. The options it permits are the same as those for Problem-Solution. The major difference between this and the I'roblcm-Soluiion pattern is that Goal is defined as'an intended change in Situation'. The following authentic, if unlikely, advertisement illustrates the pattern straightforwardly; as always, I have added sentence numbering: 8.2 (1) How to rub your stomach away. (2) FREE REPORT (3) Here's a new method from China lo flat ten your stomach. (4) There are two principal components to this exercise. (5) The first part begins by... [details omitted]. (5) lb order your copy of HOW TO RUB YOUR STOMACH AWAY send your name, address and report title to Carnell pic Sentence I defines (he Coal and Sentence 2 is assumed to offer a Method rata-phorically referred to in (he phrase Ilmvlo, which also serves to trigger the script/ pattern in the reader. Sentence 3 then spells out the Method, signalled (self-cvidently) by method. The same sentence, repeats the Goal to flatten your stomach. Subsequent sentences give particulars of the Method, in a preview-detail relation, though these are omitted here. Sentence 5 invites the readers to make the Method I heir own. In some respects, I hat is all that one needs to say about the Goal-Achievement pattern. It lias its own signals (e.g. want lo, would, like lo, aim, objective, means,uoal-Acliievemciil pillLi^rus. Goal for x I Method adopted by x NegativeEvaluationbyyofx —Goalfory 1 Method Figure 8.5 A second impossible interlocking of Goal-Achievement patterns. Goal for x 1 Method adopted by x Problem fory I Response byx Figure 8.6 A possible interlocking of Cioal-Achicvemciil ;tncl I'roblcin-Solution patterns. seen either as a Goal or a Problem (font a teenager to turn down his hi-fi) and a Problem (need). Sentence 5 adds a further Goat. In all but the last case the participant concerned is you; in the final instance the participant is many Kent residents. This mixed bag of Goals and Problems find their Method and/or Response in sentence 2 (answer), the participant being the people of Kent. It is at this point that we encounter the interlocking of the Goal-Achievement and Problem-Solution patterns. The Negative Evaluations in Sentences 3 and 4 mark the Method used by the people of Kent as Problem for the police. Sentence 7 then provides their Response to their Problem. What all this demonstrates is that one text may represent the interleaving of different patterns, not simply of differently attributed patterns. Once we recognise this, we have to be alert to other ways that Goal-Achievement and Problem-Solution may combine.'Ib start with a relatively simple case, here is another child's joke, very similar in some respects to the one analysed in Chapter 4: 8.5 (1) There was once three men, Fred, Bill and Joe, who entered a competition who could stay in a pigsty with lots of pigs for the longest amount of time. (2) First of all went in Fred, and he stayed in for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, half an hour. (3) 'Pooh stinky, fresh air!' (4) He came out. (5) Then went in Bill, and he stayed in for ten minutes, 20 minutes, half an hour, 40 minutes, 50 minutes, one hour. (6) 'Pooh stinky, fresh air!' (7) He came out. (8) Then went Joe, and he was like a tramp and was rather smelly. (9) He stayed in for 10 Other culturally popular patterns 149 minutes, 20 miiiiilcs, 30 minutes. 10 minutes, fill iiiiimles, (ill minute:;,.....■ hour leu minutes, one hour 20 minutes, one hour 30 minutes, one hour 10 minutes, one hour 50 minutes, Iwo hours. (10) The pigs came mil. (11) 'Pooh slinky, fresh air!' ^Jfx ^ ^ey^fa J The dominant pattern in this joke is Goal-Achievemenl with each man selling out to achieve lite Goal of slaying in a pigsty lite longest. In marked contrast to the previously analysed joke, the first two characters have irretrievably Negative Results (the laws of thejoke denying them repeated attempts to belter their lime) and the third man has a Positive Result. Even in a narrative like this, dominated by Goal-Achievement, Problem-Solution patterns can be detected. The reader might spot that embedded within each story there is in fact a mini-Problem-Solulion pattern, which might be represented diagrammatically as in Figure 8.7. This organisation is then repeated for each of the subsequent episodes, with the important difference that in the third episode it is the pigs that have the Problem with their Response providing a Positive Result for Joe. We would want to say that the Goal-Achievement patterns dominate in the three episodes of the joke, but it is of interest thai a full analysis needs the Problem-Solution pattern as well. Another way the patterns may combine is that a Goal may have a self-evident Method of Achievement, which some Problem prevents from being used. An example is the following extract from a somewhat improbable but entirely genuine advertisement: 8.6 (1) Read the world's 100 Best Classics... in less than 2 hours (2) lake most of us, you've always wanted to read the world's great classics of literature. (3) But, because you have so much on, youjust haven't been able to find the time. (4) And right now, you cannot see when you will have the time. (5) Now you can catch up on the world's greatest books - in just 60 seconds per book, thanks to a new guide called The 100 Best Classics at a Glance. Sentence 2 describes a Goal for'you' (you've alwayswanted).The obvious Method is to read them! But sentences 3 and 4 describe a Problem (lack of time) which Goal for Fred, Bill & Joe (stay in a pigsty with lots of pigs for the longest i amount of time) Means of achieving Goal by Fred (he stayed in for half an hour) i Negative Result for Fred (He came out) ■ Figure 8.7 Analysis of first episode of 'pigsty'joke. Problem for Fred (Pooh stinky) I Response by Fred I Implied Positive Resultfor Fred 150 Other cultural 11» popular pa Herns prevent.'! I In' obvious Method heitif, sui < ■essl'ul. Senlenee ,ri promises it Kespoii.se In the Problem ifiO.mantisjierhook) which simultaneously permits the Achievement ol the: Goal. (Wc will return to sentence 1 later in the chapter.) Goal-Achievement patterns are common in a wide variety of texts. They are, for obvious reasons, very common in advertisements and in certain kinds of scientific writing and specialist journalism. They also occur in narratives; in the British context, the traditional stories of Dick Whittinglon and Puss-in-Hoots use Goal-Achievement as their dominant mode oforganisation. The Opportunity-Taking pattern Goal-Achievement is an important pattern, particularly given its tendency to occur within Problem-Solution patterns. But recognition of its existence does not bring us the slightest bit closer to a fuller analysis of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. For that we need to turn to another pattern, closely related to Goal-Achievement, namely the Opportunity-Taking pattern. As a way into this pattern, it is worth reflecting for a moment on the ways we; 0nU?j)a-.-t We can offer iirftirrtMUion (inform) and request goods'and services (request); wc can also oiler goods and services (oiler) and request information (question) (Halliday 1994). These types of speech action roughly correlate with certain types of pattern. Goal-Achievement patterns begin with some proposition not unlike a request. Goals and requests share the property of being something that some participant would like to see happen. (The correlation and where Problem-Solution fits into it will be considered in the final chapter.) This partial parallelism might invite us to expect a pattern that begins with some proposition not unlike an oiler and a pattern that begins with a question or something like a question, and we indeed find both. The offer-like pattern is the Opportunity-Taking pattern and there are, in fact, two question-like patterns, one discussed later in this chapter ('The Gap in Knowledge-Filling pattern') and the other in Chapter 9. The Opportunity-Taking pattern often begins with an implicit offer which a participant reacts to. If we re-consider the Rumelhart and Ortony text with which the previous chapter began, we can see that it fits into this format: '8.7 Mary heard the ice cream man coming. She remembered her pocket money. She rushed into the house. The first sentence reports an Opportunity, and the second and third report the (beginning of) the Taking of that Opportunity with the second sentence filling a Plan function like that noted for both the Problem-Solution and Goal-Achievement patterns. Indeed the pattern for Opportunity-Taking is very similar to those we have already considered. The questions it answers are: What was the situation? What opportunity arose for x within this situation? What did \ do about if? What was the result (or.v? Other culturally jmfmlar patterns 151 It can be represented diagranmialicaliy as in figure 8.8. As with the previous patterns, Opportunity-Taking occurs in a range of types of text. It is, however, particularly common in advertisements, newspaper oilers (note the word!) and narratives. Here is a fairly straightforward advertisement example: 8.8 TURNER'S VENICE (1) A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY TO OBTAIN FOUR LIMITED LITHOGRAPHS FROM THE ARTIST'S FINAL TOUR OF VENICE (2) A Special OlTer to Collectors (3) Reply now and you will receive a free colour brochure giving you a fascinating insight to Turner's Venice. (4) The publishers will immediately reserve a complete set of pictures for you. Sentences 1 and 2 provide the Opportunity, signalled by opportunity and offer, and, indirectly, by unique, which has a strong tendency, along with words like special, once in a lifetime, outstanding and unusual, to co-occur with the Opportunity on offer; special in fact occurs in sentence 2. Sentence '.\ describes how the Opportunity may be taken and reports a Positive Result in sentence 4. The features we identified for Goal-Achievement apply here also. So patterns may nest inside each other in the ways described above. In Example 8.6, the first sentence is in fact an Opportunity. So the full patterning for that text is as in Figure 8.9. This diagram reflects an important function of Opportunity-Taking patterns. They often combine with Problem-Solution or Goal-Achievement patterns, with the Taking of the Opportunity doubling as Response to Problem Situation (optional) Opportunity Positive Result or irretrievable Negative Result Negative Result not beyond retrieval Figure 8.8 The organisation of the Opportunity-Taking pattern. \W> Oilier culturally fm/w/iir (mUcihs Problem (sentences 3&4) Means ■ Response Opportunity (sentences 1 &5) ■ (Means of) Taking (in subsequent text not quoted here) Figure 8.9 A fuller analysis of "reading the classics'advertisement. or Means of Achieving Goal. If we look again at Bad Sir Brian Botany (Example 7.19), we see that a fuller analysis would be as shown in Figure 8.10. Another instance of the interlocking of Opportunity-Taking and Problem-Solution patterns is the following story from Genesis: 8.!) Karly die next morning Abraham took some food and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar. He set them on her shoulders and sent her oil'with the boy. She went on her way and wandered in the desert of Beersheba. When the water i n the skin was gone, she put the boy under one of the bushes. Then she went off and sat down nearby, about a bow-shot away, for she thought,'I cannot watch the boy die'. And as she sat there nearby, she began to sob... Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. This has a similar structure to that of Bad Sir Brian Botany, albeit simpler (Fig. 8.11). The combination of Problem-Solution and Opportunity-Takingjust illustrated may be common enough to be treated as a stable kind of pattern-complex. Notice that an Opportunity can be attributed, as in this instance and the advertisements Problem for villagers (blipped, etc.] I Opportunity forvillagers I <= Responseby villagers =Taking Normal Situation for Sir Brian Exceptional SituationforSirBrian [couldn't lind his battleaxe, etc.) Problem for Sir Brian 1 Response by Sir Brian {Sir Brian chopped up his battleaxe) I Implied Positive Result for the former Sir Brian Figure 8.10 The combination of Problem-Solution and Opportunity-hiking patterns in Barf .SV; Brian Botany. Positive Result for villagers Rili union Problem (for Hagar) Otherculturally /w/m/ar/ml/cms l.riH Opportunity (given by God) Response (by Hagar) = Taking (by Hagar) Figure 8.11 The combination of Problem-Solution and Opportunity-Taking patterns in the story of Hagar. we have looked at, but it mayjjejmatlributed; this represents a subtle difference from the situation described for the previous two patterns. All the examples I have given so far of Opportunity-Taking patterns in narrative have been in combination with Problem-Solution. But this is not a requirement. As an example of Opportunity-Taking patterning on its own, consider (he following extract from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. 8.10 Soon her eye fell on a little glass book that was lying under the table: she opened it, and found in it a very small cake, on which the words 'EAT ME' were beautifully marked in currants. 'Well, I'll eat it,' said Alice... So she set to work, and very soon finished off the cake. Here the context does not.set the cake up as a possible Response (though Alice has her problems). Strictly speaking we have two Opportunities here. The book offers the Opportunity to be opened and the cake offers the Opportunity to be eaten. Although Opportunity-Taking is like Goal-Achievement and Problem-Solution in many ways, and although, as I sought to show in my account of the advertisements, its signals are often of exactly i he same type as those of the other patterns, the pattern is often triggered in a rather different way. Opportunity is characteristically signalled in narrative by an encounter with an object of unambiguous function. Thus we have had: 8.11 Mary heard the ice cream man coming. 8.12 Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. 8.13 Soon her eye fell on a little glass book that was lying under the table: she opened it, and found in it a very small cake. The first thing to note about this set of Opportunities is that they all include an explicit sensory encounter (heard, saw (twice), her eye fell on). The second point of I* "1 . ■ m i.i i i/ilici iiilliiiiiiir jiujiiiiiii jniliiiii.\ note is I hill nil (he objects bill tin* last have iin unambiguous function. Ice cream i urn only bind ion I o sell ice cream, wells only I'll net ion m provide water, books are to be opened (and read, normally) and cakes have no other function than to he eaten - part of the weirdncss of Alice's experience is that the cake she encounters spells out iheself-evklonl in currants. With these points in mind, we can explain substantial chunks of the Goldilocks story: 8.14 (13) Soon Goldilocks came to the little house where the three bears lived. (14) The door was open and she peeped inside. (15) No-one was there so she walked in. (16) Goldilocks saw the three bowls of porridge and the three spoons on the table. (17) The porridge smelt good, and Goldilocks was hungry because she had not had her breakfast. (18) Goldilocks picked up the very big spoon and tasted the porridge ill I lie very big bowl. (19) It was too hot! Doors have unambiguous functions - letting people in or keeping them out - and therefore this open door represents an opportunity for Goldilocks which she immediately lakes. She then has a sensory encounter with porridge and spoons (!) (porridge and spoons of course admitting of no ambiguity regarding their functions) and again lakes the Opportunity. Notice that in this instance we have another case where an Opportunity oilers a Response to a Problem {hungry], though here we only learn of the Problem after the Opportunity has been encountered. further Opportunity-Taking patterns can be found in the episodes with the chairs and the beds: 8.15 (25) Then Goldilocks saw three chairs: a very big chair, a medium-sized chair and a tiny, little chair... (38) Next Goldilocks went into the bedroom. (39) There she saw three beds; a very big bed, a medium-sized bed and a tiny, little bed. Again, we have a similar structure to those cited above: Goldlilocks saw X, where X has clear functions. Now we have explained the parallelism between the three episodes; the porridge, chairs and beds all represent Opportunities for Goldilocks which she takes, with the recycling characteristic of Problem-Solution and Goal-Achievement patterns. It might be thought that the notion of signalling is being stretched when we talk of encounters with objects ofunambiguous function. But support for this extension of the notion of signalling comes from study of a corpus of examples analysed with the help of WordSmith (Scott 1999). Firstly .MO) is often used to describe someone finding an Opportunity in contexts where the 'seeing' is likely to be, or must be, metaphorical, e.g.: Olher culturally popular patterns 155 8.16 Actually, my first aspiration was to shidy law, but I saw a booklet about Standard Chartered, applied a_ud got an interview. 8.17 She suddenly siiii a career opening up ahead of her. 8.18 Being a hard-headed man of business he probably saw a chance to get some free advertising. The booklet will have been seen physically, but it could equally have been described as 'picked up' or 'read' and the physical encounter is arguably riot in the forefront of the expression. In the subsequent two cases there is no question of the seeing being literal. The fact that non-literal saw has become (part of) a signal in its own right is further evidence of the correctness of the original assumption that verbs of perception used literally, especially in conjunction with objects of unambiguous function, serve as signals of Opportunity-Taking. (However, we must be careful not to jump to the conclusion that all instances of saw are signals of Opportunity. A fortune-teller peering over a glass ball might well be signalling an Opportunity if (s)he said 'I see a tall dark stranger' but if (s)he said 'I see a dark shadow' (s)he would be understood as signalling a Problem.) Nor is saw the only signalling item to receive support from corpus study. The phrase in the Goldilocks story The door was open turns out to be a signal of Opportunity in its own right, as in the following: 8.19 But even if Mr Milosevic manages at least to leave the door slightly open to compromise, there is growing evidence that he has begun to lose control of the same Serbian forces into which he breathed deadly life. 8.20 Door is open for Graf and a German double [Newspaper headline] 8.21 ... but his barnstorming style of close support for his back row may not dovetail with Best's preference for an expansive game. The door could open forAadel Kardooni, of Leicester. In each of these cases, the'open door' is functioning as pure signal of Opportunity. The fact that it can so function supports the view that the literal'open door'can do likewise. The Desire Arousal-Fulfilment pattern There is another pattern that often occurs with Opportunity-Taking or as an alternative to it, but which can be seen as having a separate status. This can again be illustrated with a story from Genesis, this time concerning Jacob: 852 (1) Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. (2) Leah had weak eyes, but Rachel was fllu lovely in form and beautiful. (3) Jacob was in love wild Rachel and said/I'll work for you seven years in return for your younger daughter Rachel.' (i) Laban said,'lis better dial I give her lo you than lo some oilier man. (4a) Stay here with me.' (5) Sojacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her. (6) Then Jacob said to Laban,'Give me my wife. (6a) My time is completed, and 1 want to lie with her.' (7) So Laban brought together all the people of the place and gave a feast. (8) But when evening came, he took his daughter Leah and gave her to Jacob, and Jacob lay with her. (9) And Laban gave his servant girl Zilpah to his daughter as her maid servant. (10) When morning came, there was Leah! (11) Sojacob said to Laban, 'What is this you have done to me? (11a) I served you for Rachel, didn't I? (lib) Why have you deceived me?' (12) Laban replied,'It is not our custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one. (12a) Finish this daughter's bridal week; I hen we will give you I lie younger one also, in return for another seven years of work.' (13) And Jacob did so. (14) He finished the week with Leah, and then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to be his wife. (15) Laban gave his servant girl Bilhah lo his daughter Rachel as her maidservant. (16) Jacob lay with Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah. (17) And he worked for Laban another seven years. There are some parts of this story we can account for with the patterns covered so far. Sentence 3, for example, describes a Goal and Means of Achieving the Goal forjacob. Likewise sentence 10 by implication leaves Jacob with a Problem, with 12a offering a Recommended Response to his Problem. But neither of these patterns adequately describes the text. The story is a love story and love stories are not triggered by Problem statements, though these often follow; still less are they triggered by Goal statements or Opportunity statements, both of which are more suited to stories of seduction, though again they may well follow. What characterises a love story is that it starts with a Positive Evaluation, Some participant is described in terms that make it apparent that s/he is attractive to another participant. This is in marked contrast to the Problem-Solution pattern, one of whose characteristic types of triggering signal is Negative Evaluation. The presence of Negative Evaluation triggers a pattern whereby the reader expects sonic participant lo respond lo lbe problematic situation signalled in this way. What we have in Example 8.22, however, is the opposite of this, in that the evaluation is positive rather than negative. A particular kind of Positive Evaluation (lovely in form and beautiful) has been used, and the effect of it is to raise in the reader an expectation that a participant will react to this positive situation in a particular and precise way (Jacob was in love with Rachel). This, then, becomes the defining element of a pattern in much the way that Problem, Goal and Other culturally popular patterns 157 JSituation) I Object of Desire (Situation) I Desire Arousal I Attempt at Desire Fulfilment Positive or Negative Result Figure 8.12 The Desire Arousal-Fulfilment pattern. Opportunity serve as defining elements for their patterns. The questions being answered in texts of this kind are the following: What was the situation? Who or what within this situation was particularly attractive? What effect did this have on jr? What did .vdo about it? What was the result? The pattern can be represented diagrammatically as shown in figure 8.12. In Example 8.22, then, sentence 1 describes the general Situation. Sentence 2 triggers the pattern by positively evaluating the appearance of Rachel (lovely in form and beautiful); in this Situation element Rachel is described as an Object of Desire. Sentence 3 describes the immediate effect - the Arousal of Desire (Jacob was in love with Rachel) - and a Plan for Desire Fulfilment. Sentence 5 describes the carrying out of the Plan with initially Negative Results. Recycling then occurs, with the agreement to serve another seven years (sentences 12,13 and 17) as the new Attempt at Desire Fulfilment and sentence 16 as the Positive Result. In two respects the Desire Arousal-Desire Fulfilment pattern differs slightly from the patterns we have considered previously. In the first place, the second element of Situation is compulsory and must contain certain, quite specific, features. Indeed in many respects it is more like Problem or Goal or Opportunity. Second, the rules of recycling are lc>s clear. On the one hand, a Negative Result sometimes leads to the abandonment of the Attempt; on the other, in erotic writing (which covers everything from Mills & Boon to altogether raunchier material), Positive Result may also lead to recycling! If the first kiss is described as exciting, the participant will characteristically seek to kiss the Object of Desire again. The label "Object of Desire' is chosen for two reasons. First, the person desired is the Object of someone else's observations not the Subject of his/her own actions, and the existence of the pattern appears to assert that being an Object of Desire licenses the action of another in seeking to fulfil his or her desire at the Object's expense. A second ideological implication of the pattern, connected with the first, arises from the fact that love stories and erotic narratives are not the only kind of text that are organised in this way. Consider the following example: ■ ■■■■■ 15b Uliizi uuiiuialky popular patterns 8.23 (1) Lexmark Printers. (2) So good, you'll want to stay together forever. (3) It's definitely a love thing. (4) 'Nice curves,' said Business Week and promptly gave the Lexmark Colorjctprinter 2030 a Gold Medal in its prestigious Annual Design Awards. (5) The top of the range Color Jetprintcr 7000 boasts 1200 x 1200 dpi, laser quality print clarity and amazing 8ppm speed, (6) PC Pro awarded it six out of six for value for money. (7) Try any printer in the Lexmark inkjet range yourself and you'll soon appreciate the features that inspire such adoration. (8) Every model is easy to use, totally reliable and delivers unsurpassed standards of print quality, brightness and contrast. (9) The 2030 and 2050 can also be. expanded to six-colours, producing brilliant photo-realistic pictures. (10) Amazingly, these objects of desire start at only £119. (11) That means you can invest in one and still easily afford to buy it flowers or treat it to a holiday. (12) If you're ready lor a little romance, call 01628 481500, e-mail us at inkjet («'lexmark.com or ask for a demonstration at any leading retailer. This advertisement is more self-conscious about using the pattern than most, but it is like many advertisements in describing the products in terms that are appropriate for Objects of Desire (nice curves, amazing speed, Malty reliable) (even exceptionally reletting to litem in sentence 10 as objects of desire) and then inviting the reader to attempt Fulfilment of their Desire (sentence 12). What this advertisement draws our attention to is that Object of Desire need not be a person. The ideological implications are that the Desire Arousal pattern treats people like objects and gives to objects a value, above their station. Advertisements are not the only type of text that makes use of the pattern to describe desire for objects; narratives routinely do so too. There is more to the story of Adam and Eve than 1 am about to describe, but a part of the narrative is organised around the Desire Arousal-Fulfilment pattern: 8.24 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. First, we have signals of positive evaluation (good/orfood, pleasing, desirable), the last of which specifically alerts us to the pattern being used. We also have reference to perception, a signal that overlaps with Opportunity-Faking but which occurs regularly in conjunction with Desire Arousal when the thing perceived is evaluated positively rather than simply presented as something of unmistakable function. Two types of signal characterise the Desire Arousal-Fulfilment pattern. The first of these arc the items of positive evaluation already mentioned. Not arty positive evaluations will d<#, though, and tin- conditions under which they operate as signals are not entirely clear. If what is being described is already possessed by Other culturally popular patterns 159 the participant or is an object that no one could, or would want to, possess, then the signalling properties of the positive evaluation are overruled. Thus it was a beautiful night and These eyes were looking at us. It was two beautiful polar foxes both describe objects beyond possession. Some signals of Object of Desire are shared with other situations, e.g. beautiful, lovely. Others are more specialised, e.g. sexy, attractive, tasty, and overwhelmingly function as signals of Object of Desire. While attractive seems to be the most common adjective in Lonely Hearts Columns (Marley, 2000), in a corpus comprising newspaper text its most common use is in business - an attractive offer, an attractive investment. These texts are, however, still often organised in terms of the Desire Arousal-Fulfilment pattern. Interestingly sexy is now often used in contexts outside the love story (or erotic narrative) (e.g. astronomy is really sexy these days) though it remains to be investigated whether these instances are occurring in patterns of Desire Arousal-Fulfilment. These specialised positive signals contrast with the negative evaluations that signal Problem-Solution, yet they seem to function like opposites which meet in the middle, because both patterns characteristically result in difficult situations for the participant. The Desire Arousal statement can indeed be regarded as a specialised type of Problem, in that it can be defined as an Aspect of the participant's Situation that Requires a Response. On the other hand, Attempt at Desire Fulfilment can be defined in terms very similar to those used to define Goal an intended change in situation. Often the positive evaluations either imply or explicitly refer to the use of some sense. Thus the apple in Example 8.24 is described as pleasing to the eye; in Example 8.23, nice curves implies a viewer (or a feeler). In the following aborted Desire-Arousal pattern (aborted in that the word envy tells us to have low expectations of Fulfilment) the use of taste leads directly to the Desire Arousal: 8.25 Not long ago I prepared Ruth a lunch of microwaved baked potatoes, fish fingers and a grating of cheddar. Potatoes and fish got mashed together while still hot, then mixed with the cheese before cooling and serving. I tasted it to check the temperature, and was stricken with pangs of envy. The second kind of signal of Desire Arousal is one that particularly applies when the pattern is used to report narratives of love or lust, namely the description of parts of a person's body that are not functional in terms of recognition e.g. bum, breasts. Thus we have sentences such as the following: 8.26 Ushering them into the kitchen, 1 cannot help noticing that Sabrina's bum sticks out in the satisfactory pneumatic style. This is, of course, a further instance of Jim Martin's distinction between 'inscribed'evaluations and 'evoked'evaluations. Given certain stereotypical views of what makes people attractive to each other, such as the tallness of a man, the size of a woman's bosom, the squareness of a man's jaw and the size of a woman's eyes (to name only a few), it is possible for a writer to evoke the idea that a person KiO Oilier culturally popular patterns upi cmciiIs all ( >l »j < i i iď I )csiii' liy judicious i i:.r iiľ I liese stereotypical all I'll H lies. (Tills, ol course, has or should have nothing lo do with what actually makes a person desirable.) Sometimes (lie Desire Aioiisal-I'iillilnienl pattern interlocks with a Problent-Solution pattern, as in the following instance from the Joseph narrative in Genesis: 8.27 (1) Nowjoseph was well-built and handsome, and after a while his master's wife took notice of Joseph and said,'Come to bed with me!' (2) But he refused ... (3) And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even to be with her. (4) One day he went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants was inside. (5) She caught him by the cloak and said,'Come to bed with me!' (6) But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house ... (7) She kept his cloak beside her until his master came home ... (8) When his master heard the story his wife told him, saying,'This is how your slave treated me,' he burned with anger. (9) Joseph's master took him and put him in prison, I he place where the kings prisoners were confined. We can notice in this passage a number of the features already noted. Firstly, well-built is strictly not a Positive evaluation (unless the residual Positive evaluation in well is attended to), but it nevertheless evokes a Positive evaluation. On the other hand, handsome directly inscribes the evaluation. The verb phrase took notice of, in addition to triggering the Desire Arousal-Fulfilment pattern, also alerts us to the act of perception that underlay the triggering. However, a full analysis of this story requires reference to the Problem-Solution pattern as well. A diagrammatic representation of the interlocking of the two patterns is shown in Figure 8.13, If we now return to the extract from Goldilocks and the Three Bears given as Example 8.14, we can now add a small modification to our original analysis of the 'porridge'episode. The first clause of sentence 17 contains the positive evaluation good along with a verb of perception smelt; it is therefore clearly marking the porridge as an Object of Desire and reporting Desire Arousal in Goldilocks. This means that sentences 16 and 17 must now be seen as having triggers of three separate patterns. 8.28 (16) Goldilocks saw the three bowls ofporridge and the three spoons on the table [OPPORTUNITY]. (17) The porridge smelt good [DESIRE AROUSAL], and Goldilocks was hungry because she had not had her breakfast [PROBLEM], The actions described in sentence 18 of Example 8.14 represent the beginning of the attempt simultaneously to Take the Opportunity, Fulfil the Desire and Respond to the. Problem. It is perhaps an indication that the description has become over-complicated that this can be so. Yet it is also the case that all the following three versions of the text are acceptable: Other culturally popular patterns 161 8.29 (l(>) Goldilocks saw i he I line I mivvIs of pi n ridge am I the I luce spoons on the table. (I8J Goldilocks pickciiup the very big spoon and tasted the porridge in the very big bowl. (19) It was too hoi! 8.30 (17) The porridge [that the Bears had left to cool] smelt good. (18) Goldilocks picked up the very big spoon and tasted the porridge in the very big bowl. (19) It was too hot! 8.31 (17) Goldilocks was hungry because she had not had her breakfast. (18) Goldilocks picked up the very big spoon and tasted the porridge [that Father Bear had left to cool] in the very big bowl. (19) It was too hot! All three tellings are acceptable; therefore it is not the case that any of the descriptive approaches we have adopted arc redundant. The Gap in Knowledge-Filling pattern We can now account for everything in the Goldilocks story until the three Bears come home. From that point, though, the description remains inadequate. I now Object of Desire for Potiphar [handsome) I Desire Arousal (for Potiphar) (tooknotice of him) i Attempt at Desire Fulfilment by Potiphar =*■ Problem for Joseph (Come to bed with me) (implicit) Negative Result for Potiphar i Further Attempts by Poti phar (she spoke to Joseph day after day) Negative Result for Potiphar I Final Attempt by Potiphar (Come to bed with me) Negative Result for Potiphar = Problem for Potiphar Response by Potiphar (kept his cloak, told story) I Implied Positive Resultfor Potiphar I Response by Joseph (he refused) =*• Negative Result for Joseph = Problem for Joseph (implicit) I <= Response by Joseph (he refused to go to bed with her) =>• Negative Result for Joseph = Problem for Joseph ■<= Response by Joseph (ran out of the house) I => New Negative Result for Joseph (put him in prison) AST' - »—— P— in ■ ■ ■ need U> introduce another pallcrn ol organisation I lie (Jap in Knowledge-Filling pal tern.This is a hard pattern lo illustrate in a short space because it rarely occurs in brief lexis, ll can be found in great numbers of hi lidcmii papers, however, as well as [ivc stories*'of a particular kind. I shall illustrate it first with extracts from an article on applied linguistics and from a theoretical linguistics textbook and I hen with a complete popular science article. The following extracts are taken from an article by Alastair Sharp published in the English for Special Purposes journal The ESPecialist. 8.32 (1) In a study by Weir (1988), college and university subject teachers indicated that clarity of expression was (not surprisingly) an essential feature of academic writing... (2) A number of researchers have suggested that although academics may recognise such leal u res of good writing and demand it from their students, they do not necessarily praise il in their colleagues... (3) The ELT profession endeavours, theoretically, to offer examples ofgood practice and clarity in writing. (4) Are ELT professionals, however, impressed by impenetrable prose from their colleagues, even if they criticise il when it is produced by their students? [There then follows an account of the choosing of a suitable readability formula and of a questionnaire designed to elicit from ELT professionals ihcir views 3 equally hinder definitions of other fields, but at least in this way, by assaults from all Hanks, a good sketch of (he general topography can be obtained. (5) Let us start with some definitions that are in fact less than satisfactory. (6) One possible definition might go as follows: pragmatics is the study of those principles thai will account for why a certain set of sentences are anomalous, or not possible utterances... (7) Although an approach of this sort may be quite a good way of illustrating the kind of principles that pragmatics is concerned with, it will hardly do as an explicit definition of the field - for the simple reason that the set of pragmatic (as opposed to semantic, syntactic or sociolinguistic) anomalies are presupposed, rather than explained. (8) Another kind of definition lhal might be offered would be that pragmatics is the study of language from & Junctional perspective; that is, that it attempts to explain facets of linguistic structure by reference to non-linguistic pressures and causes. (9) But such a definition, or scope, for pragmatics would fail to distinguish linguistic pragmatics from many other disciplines interested in functional approaches to language, including psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. Sentence 1 of Example 8.33 provides a Gap in Knowledge, and sentences 2 and 3 represent a'plan' lor filling (he Gup of the kind wc have observed with (he other patterns. Sentence 4 negatively evaluates the attempts to fill the gap in advance as docs sentence 5. Sentence 6 represents the first actual attempt to fill the Gap. Having already been negatively evaluated in advance in sentence 5 it is then negatively evaluated again in sentence 7, and a basis for that evaluation is provided. This forces the pattern to recycle and a second attempt at filling the Gap is offered at sentence 8, which is in turn rejected in sentence 9. And so the pattern continues for many pages. The Gap in Knowledge-Filling pattern is used in narratives as well as scientific and academic writing. The traditional folk-tale of the Elves and the Shoemaker tells the story of a poor shoemaker who is about to go out of business but is mysteriously rescued by an unseen agent who converts the pieces of leather he leaves out every night into perfectly made pairs of shoes. Having started as a Problem-Solution text, the text now turns into a Gap in Knowledge text, with the shoemaker taking steps to discover who his mysterious benefactors are. Closer to hand, metaphorically speaking, we have our Goldilocks story as another illustration. In the final episode the Bears repeatedly articulate Gaps in Knowledge. Father Bear's reiterated gaps will serve as representative of all the stated 8.34 (49) Father Bear looked at his very big porridge bowl and said in a very loud voice,'Who has been eating my porridge?'. (52) Next Either Bear looked at his very big chair. (53) 'Who has been sitting in my chair?' he asked in a very loud voice (58) Next the three bears went into the bedroom. (59) Father Bear looked at 16' 1 Oilier culturally popular pal/cms his vci y I * i i • I mm I. ((ill) 'Wlin lias lii'i'ii lyiiiy, mi mi' bed:'' lie asked ill a very loud voiee. Then, finally, baby Bear lills lhe (lap by looking at his bed: 8.35 (63) baby bear looked at his liny, lit lie bed. (64) 'Here she is!' he cried, making his tiny, little voice as loud as he could. (65) 'Here is the naughty girl who has eaten my porridge and broken my chair! (65a) Here she is!' And we now have a complete analysis of Goldilocks, at least in terms of culturally popular patterns. A final return to Death and the Compass In Death and the Compass Borgcs uses three of the patterns we have been considering in this chapter: the Gap in Knowledge-Filling pattern, the Goal-Achievement pattern, and the Opportunity-Taking pattern. Only Desire Arousal-Fulfilment is unused of the patterns I have been describing. The dominant pattern on first reading is that of Gap in Knowledge-Filling. The first murder presents a Gap, and I,onnrot attempts to lb! the. Gap by investigating the religious aspects of the case: 8.36 'No need to look for a three-legged cat here,' Treviranus was saying as he brandished an imperious cigar.'We all know that theletrarch of Galilee owns the finest sapphires in the world. Someone, intending to steal them, must have broken in here by mistake. Yarmolinsky got up; the robber had to kill him. How does it sound to you?' 'Possible, but not interesting,' Lonnrot answered.'You'll reply that reality hasn't the least obligation to be interesting. And I'll answer you that reality may avoid that obligation but that hypotheses may not. In the hypothesis you propose, chance intervenes copiously. Here we have a dead rabbi; I would prefer a purely rabbinical explanation, not the imaginary mischances of an imaginary robber.' Here we have an example of the recycling noted as a possibility for all the patterns. The murder represents a Gap, in response to which Treviranus offers a possible Filling, which is negatively evaluated by Lonnrot ('chance intervenes copiously') as having left the Gap unfilled; the latter detective then identities what will count as an adequate Filling, in so doing signalling the pattern with the word explanation ('I would prefer a purely rabbinical explanation'). Subsequent murders, because of their symmetry, are seen as comprising a single Gap rather than accumulation of Gaps. When the map with the equilateral triangle is sent to Lonnrot, he is able-apparently - to (ill the Gap: Other culturally popular patterns 165 11.37 I lie three locutions were in lad equidistant, Symmetry in lime (the ihiiil of December, the third oljanuary, the third of February); symmetry in space as well... Suddenly he felt as if he were on the point of solving the mystery. The word mystery confirms the pattern, and solving shows that the Gap is being filled. The use oisolving as a signal for the pattern is evidence, if it were needed, of the essential kinship of the patterns I have been describing. Interestingly just as a Gap in Knowledge-Filling pattern may 'borrow'a Problem-Solution signal, so Problem-Solution patterns often 'borrow' the characteristic Gap in Knowledge-Filling signal answer. Once Red Scharlach starts his re-telling of the story, the Gap in Knowledge-Filling pattern is at one and the same time completed - all the mysteries are explained - and shown to be false. Treviranus' original explanation of the first murder is revealed to have been correct and the Gap thereafter to have been of Lonnrol's own making. The 'real' patterns are a Goal-Achievement pattern: 8.38 'On those nights I swore by the God who sees with two faces and by all the gods of fever and of the mirrors to weave a labyrinth around the man who had imprisoned my brother. 1 have woven it and it is firm: the ingredients are a dead heresiologist, a compass, an eighteenth-century sect, a Greek word, a dagger, the diamonds of a paint shop.' and an Opportunity-Taking pattern: 8.39 'The first term of the sequence was given me by chance ... Ten days later I learned through the Tidische Zpilung that you were seeking in Yarmolinsky's writing the key to his death ... I knew that you would conjecture that the Hasidim had sacrificed the rabbi; I set myself the task of justifying that conjecture.' We can represent the patterning of the text as in Figure 8.14. The question mark against the Negative Evaluation for Lonnrot may look odd, given that the effect of his mistaken Filling of the Gap is that he dies, but, as Borges himself points out in the introduction to the story quoted in Chapter 3,'he did succeed in divining the secret morphology behind the fiendish series'. Seen from the perspective of a second reading, the Gap in Knowledge-Filling pattern is not inherent to the text. The pattern only exists because Lonnrot - and we - create it. In Chapter 6 we looked at the way Death and the Compass might be analysed using a matrix and saw that each path through the matrix produced a radically diiferent effect - detective story, mystery, thriller, revenge story could all be produced. On the basis of this, I argued that the differences amongst alternative tellings of the same 'happening' were so considerable that it makes no sense to talk of them all sharing the same story. Such a conclusion might be supported after analysing Death and the Compass in terms of culturally popular ion inner i■iii/iii/iiír Jmjmm) finffeim Gap in Knowledge (lor L&T) Goal (for RS) Filling (by T) proposed R||jng (by L) = Opportunity (for RS) Negative Evaluation (by L) Taking = Means (for RS) Negative Result (?) (for L) = Positive Result (for RS) Figure 8.14 A simplified representation of the patterning in Death and the Compass. patterns; Borges seems to be alerting readers to the evanescent nature of the patterns wc have been describing: one moment the pattern is there, the next it no longer applies, and the ell'cct is to make one unsure what story one is actually analysing. Depending on which pattern wc attend to, the story looks different. Horges is in effect questioning the stability ol any analysis one might provide of any text and reminding us of how important the reader's participation is in the creation of meaning and structure in text. Indeed Lonnrot and the reader are alike in making a pattern mil of what they receive. Lonnrot takes the information he is given by Red Scharlach and finds symmetries and culturally popular patterns within it, but the patterns and symmetries have come in part from within him and the information is capable ofa quite different reading such as that which his fellow detective,Treviranus, supplies. Likewise the reader receives text from Borges (or his translator) and finds patterns and symmetries within it only to have those symmetries and patterns destabilised as s/he reads. In short Borges reminds us that text is the site of an unreliable and variable interaction between reader and writer and it is to that textual interaction that we again turn in the final chapter of this book, looking at two patterns that seek to replicate the interactivity of face-to-face talk. One pattern or many? Clearly all the patterns we have been considering have much in common and there may be many circumstances in which distinguishing them is unnecessary. We may choose to talk of the SPRE pattern, and sec S as Situation in all the pal terns, including Object of Desire in the Desire Arousal pattern, P as Problem, Goal, Gap in Knowledge, Opportunity or Desire Arousal, and R as Response, Means of Achievement, Filling of Gap, Taking of Opportunity or Attempt to fulfil the Desire. It would be Evaluation for all these patterns. Doing so brings a greater degree of abstraction to the analysis, which lor some purposes may be good, but it also lakes us further from the text, and from the detail of the lexical realisation, and in the end that could be self-defeating. The route of greater abstraction/ Other culturally popular patterns 167 (Situation) Problem Goal Opportunity Desire Arousal Gap in Knowledge Negative Evaluation and/or Result, but not irretrievable PATTERN RECYCLES Positive Evaluation and/or Result, or irretrievable Negative Evaluation/Result END OF PATTERN Figure 8.15 The options available in a SPRE pattern. generality should therefore only be taken when the minutiae of the text under examination are not relevant to the matter being investigated. It can be recognised, though, that it is in the trigger that the various patterns differ and there may be no great benefit in distinguishing the different kinds of R; it would not affect the description much therefore to posit a set of patterning options that looked like Figure 8.15. Some implications for language learning The implication of the schema/script perspective for reading and in particular for pre-reading activities is that if a reader does not share a schema/script with the writer, s/he will not find it easy to read the text. One of the defects of statistical measures of readability is that they compute difficulty in terms of sentence length and word length but cannot take account of the possible presence or absence of shared schemata/scripts. A newspaper text may be simply worded in short sentences and still be largely unintelligible because a precise and detailed schema that the reader lacks is being accessed. An important font lion of pre-reading activities1 is to supply a missing schema or missing knowledge from an existing schema. The reading and writing implications of the range of SPRE patterns are various. In the first place, conformity to the pattern when writing is likely to make organising the text easier and will almost certainly make the text easier to read. Experience with teaching communications skills in the early years of my career showed that quite often highly intelligent students found it hard to organise their thoughts when they settled down to write and at the very least would lose valuable time trying to find a way into their subject. The various SPRE patterns serve as ready-made templates and, while it is emphatically not the case that all good writing has In conform lo llicin, il can beiiclil a learner writer lo have a pattern to slick in. More generally, if a learner comes from a cultural tradition with dillerenl rhetorical expectations they may need lo he shown how the various patterns operate. I Ton the other hand they come from traditions containing a similar or the same pattern, they need to be encouraged to transfer their expectations from one tradition lo another. All students need lo be able to recognise pal tern triggerf1 " and key signals elsewhere in the pattern. Use of the pattern can encourage better prediction skills in reading. A particular strategy that can be used is for the learner to be encouraged to hunt for signals of the patterns. This strategy works a little like that described at the end of Chapter 3. The learner, armed with a set of characteristic signals, scans the text looking for the first sentence that contains a trigger of Problem, Goal, Opportunity, Desire Arousal or Gap in Knowledge and then reads that sentence. Then s/hc scans down until a Response signal is found; this sentence is also read. An Evaluation is then sought; il it is posilive the reader checks that a negative evaluation does not immediately follow. Of course if it does, then the process continues; otherwise the learner stops at that point. This strategy allows the learner to make principled selections from the text, and teaches a valuable vocabulary in the process, but it is, of course, dependent on the text having one of the patterns in question. From the writing perspective the various patterns may help learners shape their texts. Sometimes even quite experienced writers plunge into the middle of their scientific or business reports, jumping straight to the Response before spelling out the Problem, Gap in Knowledge or Goal; while this can sometimes be effective, as in Example 7.17, unless it is handled with skill such an ordering is likely to result in the text being hard to follow or even incomprehensible. I know of one pharmaceuticals company who had to repeat vital tests because the reports of those tests neglected to tell the reader what was being tested for. Learner writers can usefully be encouraged to step back from their texts and consider what their readers are likely lo need in order to appreciate fully the importance of the Responses or Recommended Responses they wish to report. Some writing suffers from undersignalling or mis-signalling. Undersignalling occurs when a reader is unable to identify a clear trigger of a pattern and so is uncertain whether the pattern is being used or not. A good writer does not use signals heavily but does give clear indications of the different stages of the pattern to his or her readers. The signalling vocabulary is valuable vocabulary and deserves to be given some priority in language teachingvMis-signalling occurs when the signalling ileni I riggers expectations that are not met.This is a common fault in learner writing. From a practical teaching point of view, several of the specific patterns are of special importance. The Goal-Achievement pattern and the Gap in Knowledge-Filling pattern just described are particularly valuable for people learning to read and/or write in English in an academic context, since both patterns are widely .''■) used in academic writing. Goal-Achievement and Opportunity-Taking are both 'A Oilier culturally popular patterns 169 widely used in business English, Only I In- I )csi re-Arousal patient has relatively little functional importance from a writing perspective, though it occurs widely in the kinds ofleisure text that learners of English might read and, of course, slightly indirectly, account for many advertisements. Bibliographical end-notes The advertisement for the book'How to Rub Your Stomach Away' (8.2) appeared in national newspapers at the beginning of 1997. The extract from a news story (8.4) is by Jason Bennetto and appeared in The Independent on 10 September 1997, p. 1. The joke (8.5) was told by my daughter, Alice, and transcribed by me. The advertisement for 100 Classics at a Glance (8.6) appeared in national newspapers during 1997. The advertisement for Turner's lithographs (8.8) was current in the summer of 1997. The extracts from the. book of Genesis (8.9; 8.22; 8.24) are Genesis 21.14-16,19, Genesis 29.16- 30 and Genesis 3.6, respectively. Example 8.10 is drawn from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. The advertisement for Lexmark (8.23) was current in national newspapers mid-1997. Examples 8.27 and 8.27 were drawn from the British National Corpus. The Borges'quotations are, as before, from Donald A. Yales' translation. Most of the patterns listed in this chapter have been little discussed. The Goal-Achievement pattern has its basis in Winter (1971,1974)'s instrument-achievement relation. Some of Jordan (1984)'s discussion of Problem-Solution patterns contains within it an assumption of the possibility of Goal-Achievement patterns. The Opportunity-Taking and Desire Arousal-Fulfilment patterns were both proposed in Hoey (1997b) as a result of a study of erotic writing for a volume on Language and Desire. The Gap in Knowledge-Filling pattern was first recognised by Diana Adams-Smith (1986); it has obvious affinities with the first stage of Swales! model of moves for article introductions (1981,1990). There is now a need to relate and integrate these two distinct but clearly related ways of talking about text.