Problem Solution Pattern in Text Analysis

This paper, largely motivated by Hoey (2001), revisits the issue of Written Discourse Analysis and, in particular, the Problem-Solution Pattern. Much discussion embarrasses the way in which texts are pro-duced and understood. The different functional approaches include Halliday and Hasan’s approach, van Dijk’s process-oriented approach, the procedural approach of de Beaugrande and Dressler, and the Problem Solution approach of Michael Hoey. These approaches attempt to answer the question: what is a text? How is it constructed and how can it be interpreted? According to Hoey, the processes of reading and writing in any discourse are based on culturally popular patterns of organisation between the writer and the reader. The text may be seen as an interaction between the writer and the reader in which the reader seeks to anticipate the questions that the writer is going to answer. In conclusion, analysing some texts indicates that the problem solution method is a comprehensive and easy method for producing narrative and non-narrative texts.