Centering Theory in contrast to the demonstrative description's capability of ensuring referential continuity by 'breaking' it

Essay from the year 2016 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Grammar, Style, Working Technique, grade: 1.0, University of Tubingen, language: English, abstract: Comparing the apparent contrasting statements of Centering Theory and Fossard, Garnham and Cowles (2012) in regards to demonstrative descriptions, I particularly examined reference resolution as an influencing factor of text coherence. According to the results of Fossard et al. (2012), the reference resolution of demonstrative descriptions was only facilitated when the predicative information referred to the subordinate character in a gender-ambiguous condition. As demonstrative descriptions have an exceptional discourse function due to their anadeictic dimension, they are capable of ensuring unexpected referential continuity by marking a discontinuity with the previous context. In regards to Centering Theory, however, a discourse is more coherent if utterances preserve the same topic and keep it as the highest-focused entity without diminishing its relative ranking. This continue transition state is considered most preferable. While demonstrative descriptions serve in an unexpected and unique way, their exceptionality seems to be beyond the Centering Theory's stated preferences for text coherence and hence not against it.