Text as an Object of Linguistic Research

The text is a unit of language in use. It applies to any passage, spoken or

written, of whatever length, that does form a unified whole – a semantic unit. The

text is the object of studies of the branch of linguistics called text linguistics. Text

lingustics is a relatively new branch of language studies that deals with texts as

communication systems. At the early stage of its development in the 60s of the 20th

century, text linguistics dealt mainly with ways of expressing cohesion and

coherence and distribution of the theme and the rheme of an utterance according to

the rules of the functional sentence perspective. Its original aims lay in uncovering

and describing text grammars. The application of text linguistics has, however,

evolved from this approach to a point in which text is viewed in much broader

terms that go beyond a mere extension of traditional grammar towards an entire

text. Contemporary text linguistics studies the text and its structure, its categories

and components as well as ways of constructing texts. Text linguistics takes into

account the form of the text, but also its setting, i.e. the way in which it is situated

in an interactional, communicative context. Both the author of a (written or

spoken) text as well as its addressee are taken into consideration in their respective

(social and/or institutonal) roles in the specific communicative context. In general

it is an application of linguistic analysis at the much broader level of text, rather

than just a sentence or word.

Despite the fact that there are many publications devoted to problems of text

linguistics, there does not exist an adequate definition of the text that would find

satisfaction with all researchers. The difficulties that arise when trying to work out

a universally acceptable definition of the text can be explained by the fact that

scholars study the text in its various aspects: grammatical, stylistic, semantic,

functional and so on.

The text can be studied as a product (text grammar) or as a process (theory

of text). The text-as-a-product approach is focused on the text cohesion, coherence,

topical organization, illocutionary structure and communicative functions; the textas-

a-process perspective studies the text production, reception and interpretation.

Textcan be understood as an instance of (spoken or written) language use

(an act of parole), a relatively self-contained unit of communication. As a

‘communicative occurrence’ it meets seven criteria of textuality(the constitutive

principles of textual communication): cohesion, coherence, intentionality,

acceptability, informativity, situationality and intertextuality, and three regulative

principles of textual communication: efficiency, effectiveness and appropriateness

(cf. de Beaugrande and Dressler 1981, Malmjaer 1991)

Regulative Principles of Textual Communication

The principle of efficiencyrequires that a text should be used with a

minimum effort - hence the use of plain (stereotyped and unimaginative) language

which, however boring and unimpressive, is easy to produce and comprehend.

In contrast, effectivenesspresumes leaving a strong impression and the

creation of favourable conditions for attaining a communicative goal; this

presupposes the use of creative (original, imaginative) language which, however

effective, may lead to communicative breakdown.

The principle of appropriatenessattempts to balance off the two above

principles by seeking an accord between the text setting and standards of textuality.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 3990