References 15

1。 Introduction

Reading is a bilateral process: on the one hand, the writer presents or hints certain information through lexicons, sentences and other devices; on the other hand, the reader tries various ways to guess and verify the implied meaning which the writer intends to convey。 To comprehend a text, inference is a quite important and essential strategy for readers to adopt。 It is considered as one of the most significant cognitive processing of reading。 To infer, readers are supposed to make a comprehensive use of the background or context, thus having a better command of the textual meaning。 In this thesis, lexical inference will be the focus as lexicon makes up the major part of a text and much information is hinted。 If readers are able to well infer from the lexical perspective, they will find a shortcut to understand what writers try to express。论文网

1。1 Research Objectives & Significance

The research objectives of this thesis are to find out the functions of lexical repetition in text and further, find an effective way from the lexical perspective to improve readers’ reading efficiency。

As for the significance of this research, linguists have done many researches on the relation between lexicon and text in recent decades, among which lexical cohesion is a major part。 There are various categories of lexical cohesion。 And lexical repetition is one of the most important cohesive devices in English。 Although people once hold that too much repetition in text can be redundant, it is not difficult to find that there still appear numbers of lexical repetition in text。 It seems that the existence of lexical repetition can make certain sense in a text。 And therefore, it is significant to research on the functions of lexical repetition in text。

1。2 Research Questions & Methods

In order to explore the functions of lexical repetition in text, three questions are going to be considered: Firstly, What is the frequency of lexical repetition in text? Secondly, what are the functions of high-frequency and lower-frequency lexical repetition respectively? And thirdly, what are the functions of all kinds of lexical repetition in text?

To answer these three questions, certain methods will be adopted。 First of all, D。H。 Lawrence’s short story The Rocking-Horse Winner is read carefully to find out instances of lexical repetition in text。 The writer reads through the short story The Rocking-Horse Winner, lists the instances of lexical repetition in this text, and calculates the frequency of the repeated lexicons respectively。 Second, the writer analyzes the functions of lexical repetition in this short story。文献综述

1。3 Outline of the Thesis

All together the thesis consists of five chapters。 Chapter One gives a brief introduction about the research objectives, research significance, research questions, research methods and outline of the thesis。 Chapter  Two is an elaborate literature review of the related research and theory on the theme。 It is made up of two parts: one

is literature  review  of  lexical  cohesion;  the  other is literature  review  of lexical  repetition。  Chapter  Three

analyzes the functions of lexical repetition in a specific text The Rocking-Horse Winner。 Since there appears much lexical repetition in this short story and also in order to find out the effects of frequency made on the functions of lexical repetition in text, the writer pides all the repeated lexicons into two parts according to their frequency: high-frequency lexical repetition and lower-frequency lexical repetition。 Based on the classification, the functions of lexical repetition will be discussed in detail by analyzing The Rocking-Horse Winner。 Furthermore, Chapter Four concludes the functions of lexical repetition in text according to the above research and analysis。 And four functions are to be mainly discussed: lexical repetition helps to present the theme, to model the specific figure, to reveal the writer’s potential attitude and to confirm the lexical meaning。 As for Chapter Five, it is conclusion。 In this chapter, two parts are included: one is major findings; the other is limitations and suggestions for further research。