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Bilgewater: Context and Cohesion
Task C - Our answer
Basically, apart from the occasional speech of the other characters (which
are bound to be anchored in their viewpoints), more or less the whole
passage is related to the candidate's viewpoint. In addition to the deictic
items, there are a number of other consistent ways in which her viewpoint
is expressed:
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The verbs of cognition, perception and attitude in the narration
have the candidate as their Subject.
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There is a lot of textually unanchored definite reference, in addition
to that we saw at the beginning of the passage when we did task A.
The items referred to via definite reference are consistently things
we can assume the candidate already knows about (even though we may
not). The fewer indefinite references (e.g. (9) There was a cigarette
box beside her) are references to things which are new for her.
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The candidate is the only character whose thoughts are presented
(we will examine this area in detail in the Bilgewater:
Speech and thought presentation section).
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The candidate is not portrayed externally at all (we are not told
what she looks like), but the other characters are all portrayed externally,
as are other things the candidate sees. This suggests schematically
that we must be seeing the world from her viewing position.
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Evaluative adjectives and other evaluative expressions express the
candidate's attitude.
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