Structuring Japanese editorials along the lines of rhetorical structure annotations: issues and discoveries

Abstract

This paper is a result of a practical experiment in annotating the rhetorical structure of three editorial articles from the leading Japanese newspapers, focused on connectors and their role in the text. Annotation work was carried out along the general lines of existing techniques, at the same time calling for substantial adjustments in both the relations’ taxonomy and orientation, and also the principles of breaking down discourse units. These methodological findings are reviewed in the conclusive part. The main difficulty in representing the overall text structure is whether it can be convincingly represented in the form of a tree (as is expected from a pragmatically organized text). Some in-depth analysis shows that apart from rhetorical relations between discourse units a complex networks of holistic structure (macrostructure), intentional structure, referential network are of not less importance in the unity of the text. Notional structure in the basis of the reader’s comprehension also comes into the bargain, as well as the author’s efforts to influence and direct it overtly or covertly. An RST tree would only be a part of this totality. Appended are tentative graphical representations of an approximated tree structure as well as graphs covering the text’s intentional structure, divided into interconnected layers. This experiment highlighted major peculiarities of a newspaper editorial as one type of text. They are seen as rooted in the pragmatical nature of this genre of language activity, whose principal aim is opinion leadership and of the audience that is highly heterogenous but at the same time capable of detecting and processing sophisticated logical and rhetorical devices. That imposes some structural conditions besides general structure specialties of the Japanese language.