A ‣ Text-referring words

Text-referring words take their meaning from the surrounding text. For example, this sentence in isolation does not mean much:

‘We decided to look at the problem again and try to find a solution.’

What problem? The words problem and solution help organise the argument of the text, but they do not tell us the topic of the text. They refer to something somewhere else.

Here are some examples. The word in bold refers to the underlined words.

Pollution is increasing. The problem is getting worse each day.

Should taxes be raised or lowered? This was the biggest issue in the election. [topic causing great argument and controversy]

Whether the war could have been avoided is a question that interests historians.

Let's discuss crime. That's always an interesting topic. [subject to argue about or discuss, e.g. in a debate or in an essay]

Punishment is only one aspect of crime. [part of the topic]

B ‣ Problem-solution words

Text-referring words are often used with, 'problem-solution' types of text, where a problem is presented and ways of solving it are discussed. In the following example, the words in bold concern a problem or a solution. Try to learn these words as a family.

The situation in our cities with regard to traffic is going from bad to worse. Congestion is a daily feature of urban life. The problem is now beginning to affect our national economies. Unless a new approach is found to control traffic, we will never find a solution to the dilemma.

In the dialogue below, two politicians are arguing. Note how the words in bold refer to parts of the argument. 

A: Your claim that we're doing nothing to invest in industry is false. We invested £10 billion last year. You've ignored this fact.

B: But the investment has all gone to service industries. The real point is that we need to invest in our manufacturing industries.

A: That argument is out-of-date in a modern technological society. Our position has always been that we should encourage technology.

B: But that view won't help to reduce unemployment.

The following problem-solution words are grouped in families associated with the underlined key words. The prepositions normally used with them are given in brackets.

situation: state of affairs, position (with regard to)
problem: difficulty (more formal), crisis, matter
response (to): reaction (to), attitude (to), approach (to)
solution: answer (to), resolution (to), key (to), way out (of)
evaluation (of the solution): assessment, judgment

Economically, the government is in a critical position. This state of affairs is partly a result of the financial difficulties currently being experienced globally. Our government's initial response to the situation was to impose higher taxes. This approach has not proved to be the solution to the problem. Economists' current assessment is that this may in fact be making matters worse.