Discourse Structures of English Exposition

摘要

Van Kuppevelt's approach to discourse structure emphasizes that topicality is the general organizing principle. His discourse structure consisting of MAIN STRUCTURE and SIDE STRUCTURE has been applied to conversations and discourse segmentations rather than expository essays. In this paper two discourse structures of expository essays are proposed in Van Kuppevelt's framework. The proposed structure can test the soundness of the ways of developing expository essays.