The Role of Micro and Macro Elements in Understanding a Text: An ‎Analytical Study of G. De Maupassant's (The Necklace)

The Role of Micro and Macro Elements in Understanding a Text: An ‎Analytical Study of G. De Maupassant's (The Necklace)

Ahmad Awad*, Khalaf Al-Makhzoumi**‎

ahmedm@najah.edu

‎*Teaching Methods Department. Faculty of Educational Science. An-‎Najah National University. Nablus. Palestine. **Yarmouk University

Received : 27-11-2004 , Accepted : 13-11-2005

Language: English

Abstract

This study aims at studying the role of micro elements in understanding the macro elements which both help in understanding and deciding the story line and determining the function of a text. In compliance with this aim, the researchers used content analysis of G. De Maupassant's “The Necklace ”. The bases of the content analysis were embodied in the following major hypotheses: (1) Satisfactory understanding of a text depends on two related dimentions: the decontextualized knowledge and the contextualized knowledge of how to use a language appropriately in context. (2) Relying only on one language component, e.g. grammar rules, in order to create a communicative sentence, and overlooking other language components, will result in a communication breakdown, because both linguistic and the paralinguistic components of a language are interdependent and overlapping. The basic tools used for analysis were two fold (1) quantitative statistical analysis in which the micro elements were tabulated and analyzed. (2) qualitative analysis in which the micro elements were used systematically to investigate the level of appropriatness of a given item to the text as a whole. Thus one can say that the tools of analysis were both quantitative and qualitative. The aims of the study were achieved by indicating the role of micro elements and macro elements in re-building and understanding a text.

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