CONTRASTIVE ACCENT AND CLEAVING AS FOCUS DEVICES (A PEDAGOGICAL ANALYSIS)

CONTRASTIVE ACCENT AND CLEAVING AS FOCUS DEVICES
(A PEDAGOGICAL ANALYSIS)

1. INTRODUCTION:
Every sentence contains a message called ‘unit of information’, which is what the producer endeavours to make readily assimilated and processed by the receiver. This unit consists of two sections. Given information (optional) and New information (obligatory). Information Focus (henceforth IF) represents the climax of the New (Halliday), 1985b:10). It is a functional, pragmatic status, which a concept may lose or acquire as discourse proceeds (Chase, 1974:123). Moreover, IF is the core or centre of the receiver’s communicative interest (Crystal, 1985:123). IF is important for the use of language in communication since it determines the ‘appropriateness’ of a sentence to a particular context (Sgall, 1987a:182). IF is responsible for discourse cohesion as well as its structure in terms of Given-New information.

Accordingly, an accurate recognition of the focal element and its ...