Rhetorical Structure Theory

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The Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) ( English ; German: Theory of rhetorical structures ) is a theory for the representation of the rhetorical structure in texts . She was founded by William C. Mann (* December 14, 1934 - August 13, 2004), Sandra A. Thompson a . a. Developed as part of studies on automatic text generation at the Information Science Institute of the University of Southern California in 1983.

Assumptions

The RST is a descriptive theory, through which the hierarchical structure of a text can be described. This happens less with regard to the processes of production and perception, but more with regard to the coherence of a text and the question of what function the individual units have in the text. Because one of the basic assumptions of the RST is that every part of a coherent text has a function and that plausible reasons can be found for its existence in the text (cf.William C. Mann in the literature section; see the RST website in the web links) .

coherence

The coherence of a text is attributed to the existence of so-called rhetorical relations, which exist between two non-overlapping units of a text and are functionally defined. They refer to the effect that the producer of a text wanted to achieve by placing the units in question next to one another; the existing rhetorical relation is therefore dependent on the intention of the producer and less on existing syntactic forms.

Components

units

The length of the text units is not specified, but the division of a text into units should be chosen so that they have an independent function. In their analyzes, the authors choose sentences or parts of sentences and their combinations - for example in the case of restrictive relative clauses - as the smallest units of a text.

Relations

In addition to the respective relationship between two units, the rhetorical relations also clarify which of the two units plays a more central role in relation to the producer's intention. In this concept of nuclearity there are the possible units nucleus (core) and satellite. The nucleus is the text unit that transports the main message, i.e. is more important; while the satellite contains information related to the nucleus or has a function and is dependent on the nucleus, but not vice versa. William C. Mann and Sandra A. Thompson assume that the majority of natural language texts are structured by nucleus-satellite relations.

The rhetorical relations are defined by four fields:

  1. the conditions for the nucleus
  2. the conditions for the satellite
  3. the conditions for the combination of nucleus and satellite
  4. the effect of the relation

In addition, there is the locus of effect , which makes it clear whether the effect relates to the nucleus or the satellite.

Each of these fields defines special decisions that have to be made while setting up the RST structure (cf. Mann / Thompson 1988, p. 245). These decisions relate more to the plausibility of a relation, since the intention of a producer is mostly not known, but can only be assumed. The effect defined for each relation represents the basis for decision-making, as it can counteract the inappropriate or incorrect use of relations. (see Mann / Thompson 1988, p. 258).

The RST in its form published in 1988 contains 23 rhetorical relations which - based on two aspects of the text structure - are divided into two classes

  • subject matter
  • presentational

be divided.

Mann and Thompson define them as:

“Subject matter relations are those whose intended effect is that the reader recognizes the relation in question; presentational relations are those whose intended effect is to increase inclination in the reader ... ”

- Mann / Thompson 1988, p. 257 (emphasis in the original).

Schemes

The relations are not applied directly to the texts, but first presented in the form of schemas, which are combined into schema applications , which in turn form the structure tree in a hierarchical arrangement. In the RST there are five types of schemes which - based on the relations - specify in which combinations the text units can occur.

Repeated application of the schemes creates more complex units until all units are connected into a single complex unit, which then represents the structure tree. This also means - and is one of the central assumptions of the RST - that almost every coherent text can be described by a single RST structure tree, which has only one root that includes all units - whether complex or simple. This is because coherent texts are typically hierarchically structured and functionally organized (cf. Mann / Thompson 1988, p. 259). However, the analyzes of the authors and others have also shown that for certain types of text, such as legal texts, contracts, poetry, etc. Ä., no RST structures can be created (cf. Mann / Thompson 1988, p. 259).

literature

English:

  • William C. Mann, Sandra A. Thompson: Rhetorical Structure Theory: A theory of text organization. In: Technical Reports, Issue ISI / RS-87-190, Information Sciences Institute, Marina del Rey ( CA ) 1987.
  • William C. Mann, Sandra A. Thompson: Rhetorical Structure Theory: Toward a Functional Theory of text Organization. In: Text, Volume 8, No. 3, 1988, pp. 243–281 ( full text of the article, PDF; 3.07 MB).
  • William C. Mann, Sandra A. Thompson (Eds.): Discourse Description. Various Linguistic Analysis of a Fund-Raising Text. John Benjamin, Amsterdam / Philadelphia 1992.
    • therein: William C. Mann, Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen, Sandra A. Thompson: Rhetorical Structure Theory an Text Analysis, pp. 39-78.
  • Maite Taboada, William C. Mann: Rhetorical Structure Theory: looking back and moving ahead. In: Discourse Studies , Volume 8, No. 3, 1988, pp. 423–459, doi : 10.1177 / 1461445606061881 ( full text of the article, PDF; 241 kB).
  • Maite Taboada, William C. Mann: Applications of Rhetorical Structure Theory. In: Discourse Studies , Volume 8, No. 4, 1988, pp. 567-588, doi : 10.1177 / 1461445606064836 ( full text of the article, PDF; 159 kB).

German:

  • Monika Putzinger: Analysis and typing of rhetorical relations in selected standard German texts with special consideration of discourse connectors. Diploma thesis at the University of Vienna , Vienna 2011 ( full text of the article, PDF; 3.84 MB).
  • Jakob Wüest: What holds texts together. To a pragmatics of text understanding. European Studies on Text Linguistics, Vol. 12, Narr, Tübingen 2011, pp. 82f., ISBN 3-8233-6642-4 ( full text in the Google book search).
  • D. Rösner: Document processing. Introduction to RST. Handout , Institute for Knowledge and Language Processing, Faculty of Computer Science, University of Magdeburg , winter semester 2011/12 ( full text, PDF; 219 kB).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ William C Mann.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Entry in the Social Security Death Master File. Retrieved September 21, 2012.@1@ 2Template: dead link / ssdmf.info  
  2. ↑ a b c Obituary by Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen: Remembering Bill Mann. (Eng.) In: Computational Linguistics, Volume 31, No. 2, 2005, pp. 161–171, doi : 10.1162 / 0891201054224002 ( full text of the article,  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. PDF; 74.9 kB. Accessed on September 21, 2012.).@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / acl.ldc.upenn.edu  
  3. ↑ A detailed list of references can be found on the RST website: Bibliographies on RST. Retrieved September 21, 2012.