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4.7 The Functional Consideration of the Of -construction at the Construction Level Nominalization has often been considered together with information packaging in the academic discourse. According to Halliday and Martin (1993), two discursive effects are achieved by means of nominalization:
1. packaging a complex phenomenon into a single semiotic entity, by making it one element of clause structure, so that
2. its rhetorical function –its place in the unfolding argument –is rendered fully explicit.
(taken directly from Halliday & Martin, 1993, p.60)
In other words, information packaging of knowledge is a device for saving a writer’s effort to repeat something that has already been established, generating for a sense of things-taken-for-granted. Halliday and Martin’s insight seems to conform to our finding that when the ‘objective’ of -construction takes up the subject position, it functions to recapitulate previous statement(s) by packing the information into a noun phrase as shown in Example (4.18). This function has also been considered by Sinclair (1993) who uses the term encapsulation to describe that “there is an underlying structure to discourse where each new sentence makes reference to the previous one, and encapsulates the previous sentence in an act of reference” (p.8).
(4.18) In the case of the famine of 1921-2, a sudden alteration in the agricultural setting deeply affected, not just the local peasantry, but all the other provinces of European Russia and the very basis of the economic and political calculations that had led to the introduction of the NEP in the first place. No such claim could possibly be made for the Smolensk, Kursk, or Poltava gubernii. They deviated from central expectations and in many ways escaped from rigid control from above, but their local eccentricities did not upset Moscow’s broad calculations in the short term. Neither Belorussian nationalists nor Catholics, nor the proximity of the Tambov revolt to Kursk guberniia, set any major political fires alight. In the longer term the accumulation of social and economic deviations in all areas of Russia would indeed have profound effects on Bolshevik plans for the future. (A64-990)
As illustrated in Example (4.18), the ‘objective’ of -construction, the accumulation of social and economic deviations, is found towards the end of the paragraph. It
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further manipulation like adding evaluative comments (have profound effects) to the clause as found in this case. The textual cohesion is also achieved by working together with another sentence (shown in bold) earlier in the paragraph which serves to signal anaphorically what is to be expected later (Francis, 1986). In a similar vein, Atkas and Cortes (2008) indicate that shell nouns (or signaling nouns in Flowedew’s (2003) term) carry such an encapsulation function for maintaining textual cohesion. However, their focus is only on patterns containing shell nouns ([definite/indefinite article + Noun + of -prepositional phrase]) as exemplified in (4.19).
(4.19) a. …the process of administering the service was different for the two groups.
b. …one way to begin a process of empowerment might be to create the space for … (examples taken from Aktas and Cortes (emphasis added, 2008: 10))
The two patterns in Example (4.19), according to Atkas and Cortes, are frequently used with shell nouns like effect, result, system, process, and problem. Even though Atkas and Cortes do not consider deverbal nominalizations or nominal gerunds such as those referred to as ‘objective’ of -construction in this study, Alvarez and Rego (2001), in their study of five articles collected from the Scientific American magazine, identify several textual cohesion devices including textual nouns, nominalizations, and pronouns. They notice that not all nominalizations function in encapsulation. Some like size quantization and resonance refer to scientific process which serve as topics.
Departure from Alvarez and Rego’s finding that associates nominalizations to encapsulation, we further restricted our analysis to those nominalizations found in the of -construction and took into account of their syntactic environment. We found that the encapsulation function is most prominent when the ‘objective’ of -constructions are used at the subject position. Example 4.20 illustrates another instance found in the conclusion section of a scientific research article.
(4.20) Recent advances in methodology offer several possible solutions to this problem. Firstly, culture of some epithelial cell lines to form monolayers on semipermeable membranes has resulted in retention of cell polarity and has enabled selective study of the apical and
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basolateral membranes of renal and gastrointestinal cell monolayers.
Secondly, assay of acid base transport systems in one cell type in an intact heterogeneous epithelium can sometimes be achieved by selective loading of pH sensitive dye into that cell type, or alternatively by use of single cell fluorescence microscopy. (HU4-4477)
In Example 4.20, the academic writer uses an ‘objective’ of -construction, assay of acid base transport systems in one cell type in an intact heterogeneous epithelium, to serve as an encapsulation of the research work carried out in the study. In fact, the exact same sentence is followed by two other ‘objective’ of -constructions, selective loading of pH sensitive dye into that cell type and use of single cell fluorescence microscopy in a passive voice. The writer’s choice of the passive voice appears to conform to the scientific conventions for descriptions of methodology (Tarone, Dweyer, Gillette & Icke, 1981), but his/her use of ‘objective’ of -constructions allows the entire sentence to eschew any human involvement or what we refer to as agent demotion (e.g., Lyngfelt & Solstad, 2006) which will be discussed later in this section.
The ‘objective’ of -constructions that occupy the object position appear to be less likely to carry an encapsulation function as illustrated in the above instances. Two functions are identified based on our preliminary observation of the corpus data. First, some of them appear to be a one-timer, i.e., without any association with preceding or succeeding textual links, as shown in Example 4.21.
(4.21) The cells were incubated in antigen coated, flat bottomed microtitre plates (Immunoplate RI, a/s Nunc, Roskilde, Denmark). The antibodies were visualised by application of enzyme labelled antisera followed by a substrate agarose overlay. The counting of coloured spots, each representing one cell, was done with a stereo microscope after various periods of storage at 4°C. (HU2-2347)
Example 4.21 illustrates that the ‘objective’ of -construction, application of enzyme labelled antisera, only appears once in the text. In contrast, Example 4.22 is an extract from the method section of a scientific research article. The ‘objective’ of -construction, appears to contain both old and new information as exemplified in Example 4.22 which is the introduction section of a research article.
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Practitioners and the Royal College of Radiologists recommended that direct access to radiological services is essential to family doctors; it shortens the investigation time and improves the quality of service offered by general practitioners. These recommendations are supported by the results of several studies showing that practitioners generally use unrestricted access to diagnostic radiology responsibly and with discrimination. A study by Stoddart and Holl, however, suggested that if practitioners adopted patient selection guidelines governing the appropriate choice of radiological examination the level of referral could be reduced by around 30%. Keogan et al studied 2017 patients referred for chest radiography and recommended more selective use of chest radiography through the application of selection guidelines. An experimental study from Plymouth reported a 23%
reduction in general practitioner referrals after local guidelines were distributed.
This paper describes an audit of generalpractitioner referrals for radiography in one health district in England before and after the introduction of the Royal College of Radiologists’ booklet Making the Best Use of a Department of Radiology. An audit of the effect of these guidelines on hospital referral practice has been described. (EA0-920)
The example in 4.22 illustrates a mixed effect where N1, an audit, is new to the discourse and N2, general practitioner referrals, has already been mentioned in the preceding text as shown in bold. This textual function is referred by Schonthal (2016: 155) as linking where N1 links to the succeeding text and N2 links to the preceding text.
Another consideration of the functions of the of -construction is contingent on agent demotion. This observation can be attested by comparing examples of inanimate of -constructions as the subject of an evaluative verb ignore in (4.23a) and a quasi-modal verb need to in (4.23b).
(4.23) a. Acceptance of such a community philosophy ignores the fact:… (GVX-149)
b. For this reason,programmes of teacher education need to recognise and respect individual teachers’ responsibility for their own growth. (FAM-518)
Example (4.23a) represents an extreme case of inanimate subject acting with a mental verb. When this sentence is read, we would automatically take up the agent by assuming the writer is saying “If you accept such a community philosophy, you would ignore the fact:…”. This type of construction appears to be quasi-imperative. In the same vein,
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the use of a quasi-modal verb need to in (4.23b) performs a similar function. The modal verb need to evokes a sense of recommendation or exhortation by imposing an obligation from within the speaker (Collins, 2009). Smith (2003: 260) writes that “the writer or speaker can claim than the required action is merely being recommended for the doer’s own sake”. Collins also points out that the modal strength of need to correlates with the person of the subject: “Strong subjectivity is most likely when need to occurs with a 2nd person subject” (p.73). Placing an of -construction as the subject eschews the choice between using a personal pronoun as a subject or constructing an imperative. We suspect that such a combination of an ‘objective’ of -construction (without any preceding premodifier or determiner) with verbs that inherently impose actions to be carried out or expectations to be followed function to demonstrate impersonality by avoiding the use of an agent. This combination seems to have a similar function as the passives as demonstrate earlier in the extreme case of Example (ex9.1b).