Modes of Co-reference as an Indicator of Genre

The Author: Wendy Swanson (born in 1961 in Aurora, Illinois, USA) earned a B.A. in German from Wheaton College, Illinois and holds a Lic. phil. degree in English and German from the University of Basel. She completed her doctoral studies in English linguistics in April 2002 and is currently teaching at the Bezirksschule Zofingen and lecturing at the Schule für Angewandte Linguistik in Zurich.

• Contents: Study of one aspect of text cohesion: co-reference – Definition of co-reference – Study of the modes of co-reference – Co-reference as a text-distinguishing language feature – Genre characteristics – Co-reference linked to language use – Language variation – Use of anaphora versus cataphora – Definition and identification of referent types – Systemic-functional linguistic approach as applied to co-reference – Influence of register variables (field, mode, and tenor) on co-reference – Quantitative and qualitative similarities and differences concerning use of co-reference in different text types.