antithesis or contrast

[Mark Torrance]

On the antithesis/contrast thing:

As part of a project exploring how writers plan their texts we've
analysed twenty short student essays on topics like "what are the
pros and cons of decriminalising drugs". Looking at the stats, in a
total of about 750 relations we've used contrast 69 times, and
antithesis exactly twice (and looking again one of those is
dubious). I've been trying to work out why this might be.

I think what we've focussed on in the antithesis relation is the need
(for it to be plausible that) the reader increases her positive regard
for one of the elements as a result of reading that particular bit of
text. Thus the one strong example of antithesis we have (though
you might disagree) is

N: [drug users] need access to rehabilitation and treatment
S: rather than [exposure to] a potentially dangerous prison
environment

Prison is in contrast with treatment and it is obvious from this part
of the text that the writer has positive regard for treatment. We
have, on the other hand, lots of examples of this sort of thing:

users can be given treatment
or they can be sent to prison

We have assumed that this is a contrast relation even in cases
where elsewhere in the text the writer makes clear that she has
positive regard for one or other of the options. If we were to treat a
contrast as antithesis in situations where we knew from elsewhere
in the text that the writer had positive regard for one or other of the
sides of the relation then I guess we would end up recoding most of
our contrasts as antitheses. I'm not sure, however, that this "ah but
this is what the writer really thinks" approach would lead to a good
analysis, though.

Don't know if that sheds any light.

Mark Torrance

On 6 Mar 2002, at 15:08, William Mann wrote:

> Hi, all.
>
> Responding to the comment from Manfred Stede:
>
> I find Manfred's comment surprising.
>
> The RST Contrast relation was intended to represent cases in which the
> writer was not expressing a preference or identification with one of two
> differing alternatives. I have presumed that these cases come up eventually
> in every genre, and that a general relation of Contrast is therefore an
> efficient way to deal with them.
>
> My surprise is with the statement that such cases never come up in newspaper
> commentaries, so that Contrast can be ruled out a priori.
>
> The example that Juliano Desiderato Antonio gave sounded like Contrast to
> me. The writer does not seem to identify either with the cautious father or
> the young lover.  I have been in both of those roles, and I sympathize with
> both.  Equally. So (irrelevant to RST)  I have no automatic asymmetry
> either.  For RST, it is only the analyst's judgment about what is expressed
> by the writer that counts.
>
> Enough.  I will look forward to other comments.
>
> Bill Mann
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Manfred Stede" <stede at LING.UNI-POTSDAM.DE>
> To: <RSTLIST at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
> Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 8:39 AM
> Subject: Re: [RST-LIST] [RSTLIST] antithesis or contrast
>
>
> Hi,
>
> we've worked with newspaper commentaries for a while, and resolved the
> antithesis/contrast question -- for this particular genre, at least --
> to the effect that contrast is more or less ruled out. Reason: whenever
> these things appear in a context, one of the spans is going to be the
> more important one, the positively regarded one, or the one that's going
> to be further elaborated. Hence, we need to assign nuclearity to one of
> the spans, and hence we have antitheses all over the place. Seems to me
> you have a similar situation in your example. Judging from the English
> translation, how about an antithesis between 2 and 3, 4 consequence of
> 3, and the whole 2-4 elaborating 1?
>
> (also, I have some principal doubts about the status of CONTRAST as a
> rhetorical relation, but that's a different story..)
>
> regards,
> Manfred Stede
>
>
>
> Juliano Desiderato Antonio wrote:
> >
> > I'm in doubt about the most appropriate relation for situations like the
> > example below from a Brazilian Portuguese oral narrative. First I thought
> > that the antithesis relation could apply here between text spans 1-2 and
> 3-
> > 4, because there's some positive regard for one of the situations.
> However,
> > as the text type is a monologue narrative and the speaker is involved with
> > the subject matter, I thought that the contrast situation would be better.
> > What do you think? The corpus I'm studying is formed by 60 narratives and
> > examples like these are in all of them.
> >
> > 1 ele encontra uma moça, [he meets a girl]
> > 2 .. e se apaixona por ela, [and he falls in love with her]
> > 3 ... só que o pai dela é muito ruim, [but her father is bery mean]
> > 4 e não quer de jeito nenhum o namoro deles. [and he doesn't want them to
> > date]
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Juliano



Mark Torrance
m.torrance at staffs.ac.uk
Feb to Sept 2002: 0121 414 4911