The Pragmatics of Reading: Sense Groups in a Second Language Written Discourse

Abstract

Two principles--one, cognitive and the other, linguistic--form the foundation of this paper. Human activities are structured in clusters—in meaningful or logical combinations of fragments. Our cognitive perception of human activities, experience, and the world by itself is shaped in clusters. The reality in terms of objects, actions, and phenomena is also perceived in clusters of fragments. Consequently, when it comes to language, which is a mode of representing reality, words cannot exist independently or in isolation, words exist only in collocation, in meaningful combination. Since reading is a mode of perceiving and representing reality, naturally the act of reading too must be structured in logically constructed sense groups. Mastery of many skills and competence is an essential prerequisite for good comprehension of a written text, especially in a second language. This awareness of sense groups at the intra-sentence and inter-sentence level and the ability to identify sense groups make the process of reading comprehension easier and more productive. Therefore, second language learners are to me trained meaningfully (not mechanically) in identifying sense groups within sentences, as a result, the construction of meaning out of reading becomes a joint activity of cognition and language faculty.