Linguistics Encyclopedia.pdf

The most typical discourse pattern is, however, the Problem-Solution pattern. Many
texts can be treated as conforming to the pattern Situation—Problem—Response—
Evaluation/ Result with recursion on Response—that is, a Response may itself cause a
new problem, requiring a new Response, etc. Hoey gives the example shown in Figure 1
(from Hoey, 1983, p. 53). The pattern can be revealed by questioning. After each of the
sentences in Figure 1, a reader might ask a question like, e.g., ‘What happened then?’,
‘What did you do then?’. Or the pattern may be revealed by paraphrase using lexical
signals (ibid.):
Figure 1
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The means whereby I beat off the attack was by opening fire. The cause
of my opening fire was that I saw the enemy approaching. The
circumstances of my seeing the enemy approaching was that I was on
sentry duty.
The lexical signals used in the paraphrase may be the terms used in the pattern itself
(ibid.): ‘My situation was that I was on sentry duty. I saw the enemy approaching. I
solved this problem by opening fire. This achieved the desired result of beating off the
attack.’
Hoey (ibid., pp. 57–8) draws up four sets of mapping conditions which show the
relationship between the Problem-Solution pattern and the relations between clauses:
(1) We will assume two parts of a discourse, a and b, in a Cause-Consequence relation. If
(i) a has been independently established as Problem and (ii) b contains the role of
agent, then b is Response.
(2) We will assume three parts of a discourse, a, b and c, of which a and b are in an
Instrument-Achievement or Instrument-Purpose relation (Purpose being more or less
equivalent to hoped-for achievement), and of which a has not been independently
established as a Problem.