The Role of Pragmatic Macro-Structures in Textual Interpretation

Abstract

The paper investigates the role of pragmatic macro-structure in writing a précis. Macro-structure is a theory of pragmatic representations for global discourse structure and its function is to reduce the propositions of a text by eliminating the unnecessary propositions and organize the propositions in order to produce an effective précis. Writing a précis requires making an intelligent gist of a long text. In order to comprehend the text, the reader should follow specific strategies and macro rules such as: Deletion, Generalization and construction.