Referring Expressions in A Number of Social Science Articles in Vietnam

Abstract

Referring expressions have long been studied in the fields of pragmatics and discourse analysis. From the pragmatic perspective, linguistic expressions themselves do not refer to any specific objects as it is only people who create a connection between language and the existing world to help readers realise the relationship between a language expression and an individual object of the outside world. The referring expressions accurately represent the purpose of a statement and the speech situation to decode the referring action. Through the study of referring expressions used in Tạp chí Khoa học xã hội Việt Nam and some other journals during 2018-2020, the author of this paper shows that anaphora and cataphora referring to different subjects highlight the elements of objectivity and the scientific style to serve readers harmoniously. The choice of using certain referring expressions depends on the authors, and they are being paid more attention to make readers easily to follow the main course of the article.