Publication details
Comparing the structures of texts written in English and Czech
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2005 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Slovak Studies in English I (Conference Proceedings) |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Linguistics |
| Keywords | stylistics; informative text; lexico-grammatical structure; text organization; English and Czech |
| Description | The differences in the organizational, and the lexico-grammatical structures of academic texts written by Anglophone and Czech authors have linguistic, as well as historical and cultural roots. Czech writing, sharing features with the writing styles of other Central and East European languages, is more intellectual and less reader-friendly than the Anglo-American academic style. Anglophone authors present ideas in an easily comprehensible way: they organize texts carefully, indicating text-organization by graphical signals, and apply simpler lexical and grammatical patterns, including repetition. Czech authors, by contrast, prefer more complex grammatical structures, and in agreement with the Czech stylistic norm avoid repeating words by using synonyms. Czech texts are often less logically and less transparently organized than English texts. English academic texts are primarily oriented towards the reader, while Czech texts focus on the topic and the presentation of all its complexity. |
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