This dissertation is a cognitive and discourse analytic study of organizational principles in written Japanese investigating the structure and patterns of how writers express their points in Japanese newspaper columns, particularly, the roles of seemingly "irrelevant" elements in newspaper columns. Seemingly "irrelevant" elements (SIE hereafter), which are outside the scope of the main topic, play significant roles in Japanese short written texts by helping the author define the main point, or a key element in creative, educational and cultural ways, and thus they are not irrelevant.; I demonstrate that SIE could have one of at least three possible roles; it is either (1) a cultural reference, (2) a part of a metaphorical persuasive pattern, or (3) an exemplification. All of these perform the function of supporting writer's point. The first case is dependent on stylistic differences in newspaper columns, which until now have been treated homogeneously. In the second case, an unrelated field is introduced as the first step of a three-step metaphorical persuasive pattern. This persuasive pattern has two facets which make it an effective style of communication; (1) the familiarity of cultural information, which makes the writers' points easier to grasp, and (2) the unexpectedness of the combination of familiar information and the target point, which gives the text an impact to readers and entices them to read further. This combination of familiarity and unexpectedness also has a persuasive effect on the readers. The third case is an example which is either from a different field or an unexpected content to readers.; A critical examination of extant research on Japanese rhetoric using newspaper columns and short texts reveals that the rhetorical pattern ki-shoo-ten-ketsu is not effective for explicating SIE. This examination also confirms that paying attention to stylistic differences is crucial in order to form a more accurate judgement in newspaper analyses.; Based on the discussions and the findings in this thesis, I propose three standards, which are more practical and functional than using the ki-shoo-ten-ketsu structure in order to identify what SIE actually are, from a local perspective in terms of in relation with the writer's point.
展开▼
