The paragraph as structure

A paragraph is a unit of connected discourse

made up of a cluster of sentences that center

around a key idea or a key function. Paragraphs

are distinguished by the function they serve in

more extended discourse where they are parts

of a bigger whole.

In longer stretches of discourse, then,

paragraphs may serve as introducer,

developer, extender, modulator, restater, or

terminator.

The DEVELOPER PARAGRAPH is a cluster of

sentences that center around one key idea. Each sentence,

performs its own speech act and, if well written, is

logically and grammatically cohesive with all the other

sentences. Together the cluster of sentences enlarge upon

one given idea.

The TOPIC SENTENCE expresses the central idea. It

contains not only the topic (subject matter) but the focus

of that topic, as well, i.e., what is affirmed or denied

about that topic. Thus the subject of the topic sentence is

the subject and its focus is expressed in the predicate

together with its complements or objects and/or its

adverbial modifiers.

1) The heart is no bigger than a good-sized fist. 2) It weighs less than a pound, and its shape resembles the popular Valentine image sufficiently to satisfy the sentimentalists. 3) It lies pointed downward, in the chest cavity, at about mid-center body line. 4) The wall of the heart are of thick muscle, twisted in to rings, whorls and loops. 5) Within them are four hollow chambers: a left and a right receiving chamber, or atrium, and below them a left and a right pumping chamber, or ventricle. 6) In the right atrium is the sinus node – a minute blob with a mammoth job. 7) Composed of special, nerve-like muscle tissue found nowhere else in the body, the sinus node starts the heartbeat and sets its pace, much like the coxswain of a racing shell.

-Life Editors

The topic sentence may either be explicit (expressed

and identifiable) or implied (not expressed but

suggested in the discussion of the entire paragraph.

An explicit topic sentence may occur in any of the

following positions in the paragraph: beginning, end,

middle, or distributed between the first sentence and

one or some of the succeeding sentences.

An implied topic sentence, because unexpressed, has to

be drawn from the entire paragraph. The reader has to

state it for himself.

While it expresses the key idea of the paragraph, the topic

sentence is also performing any one of the speech acts.

Thus a topic sentence could also be initiating or

terminating, directing or inferring, etc.

All the other sentences in a paragraph, besides (1)

conveying its propositional content, is also (2) performing

a speech act in itself. But, because each sentence is part of

the context of the entire paragraph, it also contributes to the

enlargement of the main idea. Sentences within a

paragraph, therefore, function in certain ways in their

relation to each other and to the meaning of the paragraph.

We shall call these their (3) contextual function.

As INTRODUCER – the sentence may bring to

the attention of the reader the topic of the

paragraph, provide an introductory background,

such as time or place setting in descriptive and

narrative paragraphs. It may even pose a

question.


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The DEVELOPER sentence expands and

develops the key idea. Developer sentences

perform the speech act appropriate to their

contextual function. Some of these are

describing details or characteristics, providing

examples, bringing in evidence, listing items,

etc. Most of the sentences of a paragraph

function contextually as developers.


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EXTENDER sentences provide elaboration of ideas that

are part of preceding developer sentences. They

contribute, not directly to the central idea, but rather

directly to the developer sentence, a detail of which may

need clarification or enlargement. It may sometimes

happen that these extenders are followed, in turn, by

other sentences that explain ideas in these extenders,

which we might designate as AMPLIFIERS. Sentences

like these, however, rarely occur.


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MODULATORS mark transitions or shifts in

the discussion underway. They may also bring

in side comments on the writer’s attitude

toward what he is saying or toward the way in

which he is communicating his idea.

Occasionally, modulator sentences perform the

act of retrieving.

1) Nothing more clearly illustrates the vast range that physics has claimed as its own than the work of two men. 2) Sanborn Brown is concerned with plasma physics, involving the so-called fourth state of matter --- a mass of super-excited, electrically charged particles at extremely high temperatures (the sun and stars are composed of plasma). 3) Stanford’s William M. Fairbank, on the other hand, is devoted to the opposite end of the temperature spectrum --- the field of cryogenics, which deals with cold in the neighborhood of absolute zero. 4) Though seemingly opposite to each other, the work of these two men is curiously intertwined. 5) In Brown’s specialty, a crucial problem is the confinement of plasmas so hot that no container yet devised can hold them. 6) Oddly, studies of cold may provide the answer. 7) Fairbank is using powerful cryogenic magnets which may be able to contain plasmas within their fields without direct contact with them. 8) “If so”, says Fairbank, “we will have reached the ultimate absurdity of science, a ‘bottle’ --- 269°C cold, to contain a process involving millions of degrees of heat.

- Life Editors

RESTATER sentences rephrase the idea

expressed in a preceding sentence for emphasis,

or reformulate earlier sentences to make the

meaning unmistakable.

1) Just as science provides us with the clearest examples of informative discourse, so poetry furnishes us the best examples of language serving an expressive function. 2) The following lines of Burns:

O my Luve’s like a red, red roseThat’s newly spring in June:O my Luve’s like the melodieThat’s sweetly play’d in tune!

are definitely not intended to inform us of any facts or theories concerning the world. 3) The poet’s purpose is to communicate not knowledge but feelings and attributes. 4) The passage was not written to report any information but to express certain emotions that the poet felt very keenly and to evoke feelings of a similar kind in the reader. 5) Language serves the expressive function whenever it is used to vent or communicate feelings or emotions.

- Irving M. Copi

As TERMINATORS, sentences conclude the ideas in the

paragraph and bring it to a close. The terminator of a carefully

enveloped paragraph logically clenches it in a number of ways.

If the purpose of the paragraph is to present proof inductively,

the terminator is a generalization which may also function as

the topic sentence. The terminator could also be an emphatic

affirming of the key idea in the form of a restatement of the

topic sentence. It may be a narration of the last step or stage in

a process. It may be the response to an inquiry posed earlier in

the paragraph. Some paragraphs without clear-cut terminators

point out their immediate connection with the following

paragraph.

1) Although most of us can occasionally retain visual impressions of things we have seen, such impressions usually are vague and lacking in detail. 2) Some individuals, however, are able to retain visual images that are almost photographic in clarity. 3) They can glance briefly at a picture and when it is removed still “see” its image located, not in their heads, but somewhere in space before their eyes. 4) They can maintain the image for as long as several minutes, scan it as it remains stationary in space, and describe it in far more detail than would be possible from memory alone. 5) Such people are said to have a “photographic memory”, or, to use the psychologist’s term, eidetic imagery.

-Ernest R. Hilgard,

Richard C. Atkinson,

and Rita L. Atkinson

Alongside each paragraph are three columns provided for the analysis of the sentences. The analysis involves identifying the speech act (column 1), the contextual function (column 2), and the prepositional content (column 3) of each sentence.

A careful survey of the contextual functions in relation to the speech acts will yield the characterizing attributes that make up the essence of each paragraph move, like the developer sentences of the describing and defining moves would talk about attributes, aspects, or meanings; those of the narrating move would present events; those of the classifying move, categories or groupings, and so on.

1) The heart is no bigger than a good-sized fist. 2) It weighs less than a pound, and its shape resembles the popular Valentine image sufficiently to satisfy the sentimentalists. 3) It lies pointed downward, in the chest cavity, at about mid-center body line. 4) The wall of the heart are of thick muscle, twisted in to rings, whorls and loops.

Speech Act Contextual Function

Proposit-ionalContent

Describing Introducer Size, Comparison

SpecifyingDescribing

Developer(Attribute)

Weight, Shape, Comparison

Specifying Developer(Attribute)

Location

Describing Developer(Attribute)

Material

5) Within them are four hollow chambers: a left and a right receiving chamber, or atrium, and below them a left and a right pumping chamber, or ventricle. 6) In the right atrium is the sinus node – a minute blob with a mammoth job. 7) Composed of special, nerve-like muscle tissue found nowhere else in the body, the sinus node starts the heartbeat and sets its pace, much like the coxswain of a racing shell.

-Life Editors



AnalyzingNaming


PartsNames

SpecifyingDescribing


LocationCharacter-istic

Describing Extender(Attribute)(Function)

Composit-ionFunctionComparison

1) Although most of us can occasionally retain visual impressions of things we have seen, such impressions usually are vague and lacking in detail. 2) Some individuals, however, are able to retain visual images that are almost photographic in clarity. 3) They can glance briefly at a picture and when it is removed still “see” its image located, not in their heads, but somewhere in space before their eyes.



Conceding Introducer AbilityCharacter-isticContrast

Particular-izing

Extender to #1Developer(Attribute)

AbilityContrast


Ability

4) They can maintain the image for as long as several minutes, scan it as it remains stationary in space, and describe it in far more detail than would be possible from memory alone. 5) Such people are said to have a “photographic memory”, or, to use the psychologist’s term, eidetic imagery.

-Ernest R. Hilgard,

Richard C. Atkinson,

and Rita L. Atkinson




Ability

Naming -Terminator-TopicSentence

Name/Label

4) Man is gigantic in comparison with an electron, an atom, a molecule or a microbe. 5) But, when compared with the mountain, or with the earth, he is tiny. 6) More than four thousand individuals would have to stand one upon the other in order to equal the height of Mount Everest.



Inferring Re-staterComparison

Size

Describing -Developer-2nd

Comparison

SizeContrast

Hypothesiz-ing

-Extender of #5-Comparison(Implied)

LengthNecessityEquationLength

Education

The paragraph as structure