Text linguistics is a branch of linguistics that deals with texts as communication systems. 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. Text linguistics takes into account the form of a 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 institutional) roles in the specific communicative context. In general it is an application of discourse analysis at the much broader level of text, rather than just a sentence or word.
Overview Definitions "A text is an extended structure of syntactic units [i. e. text as super-sentence] such as words, groups, and clauses and textual units that is marked by both coherence among the elements and completion ... [Whereas] a non-text consists of random sequences of linguistic units such as sentences, paragraphs, or sections in any temporal and/or spatial extension." (Werlich, 1976: 23)Werlich, E. (1976), A text grammar of English. Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer.
"A naturally occurring manifestation of language, i. e. as a communicative language event in a context. The surface text is the set of expressions actually used; these expressions make some knowledge explicit, while other knowledge remains implicit, though still applied during processing." (Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981: 63)De Beaugrande, R., & Dressler, W. U. (1981) Introduction to text linguistics / Robert-Alain De Beaugrande, Wolfgang Ulrich Dressler. London; New York : Longman, 1981.
"[A term] used in linguistics to refer to any passage- spoken or written, of whatever length, that does form a unified whole [….] A text is a unit of language in use. It is not a grammatical unit, like a clause or a sentence; and it is not defined by its size [….] A text is best regarded as a semantic unit; a unit not of form but of meaning." (Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 1–2)Halliday, M.A.K. and Hasan, R. (1976) Cohesion in English London: Longman, pp. 1–2
"A text is made up of sentences, but there exist separate principles of text-construction, beyond the rules for making sentences." (Fowler, 1991: 59)Roger Fowler. (1991) Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press. London/ New York: Routledge.
"[Text is] a set of mutually relevant communicative functions, structured in such a way as to achieve an overall rhetorical purpose." (Hatim and Mason, 1990)Hatim, Basil & Ian Mason. (1990) Discourse and the Translator. London: Longman.
Text linguists generally agree that text is the natural domain of language, but they still differ in their perspectives of what constitutes a text. This variance is mainly due to the different methods of observation of different linguists, and as such, the definition of text is not yet concrete.
Reasons for text linguistics Traditional linguistic analysis has often focused on the sentence as a self-contained unit, whereas text linguistics emphasizes how sentences function within larger, connected stretches of language. It approaches language as sequences of sentences that together create cohesive and coherent discourse.
Text is extremely significant in communication because people communicate not by means of individual words or fragments of sentences in languages, but by means of texts. It is also the basis of various disciplines such as law, religion, medicine, science, and politics.
Contexts Significance of contexts There is a text and there is other text that accompanies it: text that is 'with', namely the con-text. This notion of what is 'with the text', however, goes beyond what is said and written: it includes other non-verbal signs-on-the total environment in which a text unfolds. (Halliday and Hasan, 1985: 5)Halliday MAK and R Hasan. (1985) Language, Context, and Text: Aspects of Language in a Social-Semiotic Perspective. Geelong: Deakin University.
According to Halliday, text is a sign representation of a socio-cultural event embedded in a context of situation. Context of situation is the semio-socio-cultural environment in which the text unfolds. Text and context are so intimately related that neither concept can be comprehended in the absence of the other.
Three features of context of situation
The field of discourse – experiential meaning This is the meaning that the social actions and the engagements of the participants are giving to the understanding of the text.Kavcic, A. (2008) Text linguistics. Informally published manuscript, English and German Studies, Retrieved from www.englistika.info/podatki/3_letnik/besediloslovje-I-izpiski.doc
The tenor of discourse – interpersonal meaning This is the meaning that the roles of and relationships among participants give to the understanding of the text. These relationships may be permanent or temporary. The contribution to meaning by social statuses of the participants also fall within this feature.
The mode of discourse – logical meaning This is the meaning that the language, written or spoken, gives to the understanding of the text. This includes the symbolic organization of the text, as well as its intended function within the context.
Texture Texture is the basis for unity and semantic interdependence within text. Any text that lacks texture would simply be a bunch of isolated sentences that have no relationship to each other. (Crane, 1994) A feature of texture is "sequential implicativeness", as suggested by Schegloff and Sacks (1974). This refers to the property of language that each line in a text is linked from or linked to the previous line. As such, language contains a linear sequence, and this linear progression of text creates a context of meaning.Schegloff, E.A. and Sacks, H. (1974) "Opening up Closings", Semiotica 7(4): 289–327 (reprinted in Turner, R 1974 "'Ethnomethodology: selected readings,'" Harmondsworth: Penguin) This contextual meaning, at the paragraph level, is referred to as "coherence", while the internal properties of meaning are referred to as "cohesion". (Eggins, 1994: 85)Eggins, S. (1994) An Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics London: Pinter There are two aspects of coherence, namely, "situational" coherence and "generic" coherence. There is situational coherence when field, tenor, and mode can be identified for a certain group of clauses. On the other hand, there is generic coherence when the text can be recognized as belonging to a certain genre. Thereby, cohesion is the result of "semantic ties", which refers to the dependent links between items within a text. These ties come together to create meaning. Texture is, therefore, created within text when the properties of coherence and cohesion are present.
Text types Most linguists agree on the classification into five text-types: narrative, descriptive, argumentative, instructive, and comparison/contrast (also called expositive). Some classifications divide the types of texts according to their function. Others differ because they take into consideration the topic of the texts, the producer and the addressee, or the style. Adam and Petitjean, (1989) proposed analyzing of overlaps of different text types with text sequences. Virtanen (1992) establishes a double classification (discourse type and text type) to be used when the Identification text-text type is not straightforward.
Structure As a science of text, text linguistics describes or explains among different types of text the: Shared features Distinct features Text linguistics is the study of how texts function in human interaction. Beaugrande and Dressler define a text as a “communicative occurrence which meets seven standards of textuality” – cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality and intertextuality, without any of which the text will not be communicative. Non-communicative texts are treated as non-texts.
Cohesion Surface texts are the exact words that people see or hear. Cohesion concerns the ways in which the components of the surface text are connected within a sequence. Grammatical forms and conventions are adhered to by surface components and therefore cohesion rests upon grammatical dependencies. The grammatical dependencies in surface texts are major signals for sorting out meanings and uses. Cohesion encompasses all of the functions that can be used to signal relations among surface elements.
Such a text can be divided up into various dependencies. Someone might construe it as a notice about "slow cars" that are "held up", so that conclusions could be drawn about the need to drive fast to avoid being held up. However, it is more likely for one to divide the text into "slow" and "cars held up', so that drivers will drive slowly to avoid accidents or take alternative routes to avoid being caught in the slow traffic. A science of text should explain how ambiguities such as these are possible, as well as how they are precluded or resolved without much difficulty. For efficient communication to take place there must be interaction between cohesion and other standards of textuality because the surface alone is not decisive.
Coherence Coherence concerns the ways in which concepts, cognitive contents that can be retrieved or triggered with a high degree of consistency in the mind, and relations, the links between concepts within a text, with each link identified with the concept that it connects to, which underlie the surface text, are linked, relevant, and used to achieve efficient communication.
Surface texts may not always express relations explicitly therefore people supply as many relations as are needed to make sense out of any particular text. Types of relations include:
1. Causality The event of "raining" causes the event of "washing the spider out" because it creates the necessary conditions for the latter; without the rain, the spider will not be washed out.
2. Enablement The action of sitting on the wall created the necessary but not sufficient conditions for the action of falling down. Sitting on a wall makes it possible but not obligatory for falling down to occur.
3. Reason In contrast to the rain which causes Itsy Bitsy spider to be washed out, the slow working does not actually cause or enable the low wage. Instead, the low wage is a reasonable outcome; "reason" is used to term actions that occur as a rational response to a previous event.
4. Purpose In contrast to Humpty Dumpty's action of sitting on the wall which enables the action of falling down, there is a plan involved here; Humpty Dumpty did not sit on the wall so that it could fall down but Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard so that she could get a bone. "Purpose" is used to term events that are planned to be made possible via a previous event.
5. Time "Cause", "enablement" and "reason" have forward directionality with the earlier event causing, enabling or providing reason for the later event. "Purpose', however, has a backward directionality as the later event provides the purpose for the earlier event.
More than just a feature of texts, coherence is also the outcome of cognitive processes among text users. The nearness and proximity of events in a text will trigger operations which recover or create coherence relations.