The place of text linguistics among other scientific disciplines

Texts can be object of study of: Rhetorics, Stylistics, Sociology, Literary Studies, Anthropology, Discourse Analysis, Philology, Linguistics, etc.

1)Rhetoric shares several concerns with the kind of text linguistics we are speaking, notably the assumptions that: a) the assessing and arranging of ideas is open to systematic control, b) the transition between ideas and expressions can be subjected to conscious training c) among the various texts which express a given configuration of ideas, some one of higher quality than others d) judgements of texts can be made in terms of their effects upon the audience of receivers e) texts are vehicles of purposeful interaction.

The traditional outlook of rhetoricians was influenced by their major task of training public orators. The main areas were usually the following: invention, the discovery of ideas; disposition, the arrangement of ideas; elocution, the discovery of appropriate expressions for ideas; memorization, prior to delivery on the actual occasion of speaking.

2) Stylistics. An early theoretician century named 4 qualities of style: correctness, clarity, elegance, appropriateness. Selection of options for producing a text or set of texts; statistical tabulation of occurrences.

3) Literary studies. Describing the text production processes of an author, or a group of authors in some time period or setting; discovering some problematic or contestable senses for texts; assigning values to texts, how and why texts are built and utilized.

4) Anthropology. Systematic recognition of relationships between language and the setting of communication; distinction between the discovery or analysis of the structures and the procedures which select and build structures; linguistic method known as tagmemics, gathering and analyzing data in terms of “slots” and “fillers”, i.e. according to the positions open within a stretch of text and to the units that can occupy those positions.

5) Sociology. It has developed an interest in the analysis of conversation as a mode of social organization and interaction, studies have been conducted on how people take turns in speaking; the field entitled ethnomethodology inquires into correlations between patterns of speaking and social roles or groups; how people adopt their language behavior in certain group encounters; how speaking intentions are established or changed; how social dominances emerge in speaking.

6) Discourse analysis. The study of conversation according to 7 textuality. Cohesion is affected when surface structures are shared or borrowed among separate texts; coherence of a single text may be evident only in view of the overall discourse; intentionality is shown in the goal-directed use of conversation; acceptability in the immediate feedback; situationality is particularly direct and the whole organization illustrates intertextuality in operation; the selection of contributions to conversation can be controlled by the demands of informativity.

7) Phonology. Evaluation of language sounds, forms, word order, grammar, the redations of thoughts, functional study.

8) Linguistics. Descriptive and structuralist method, systems of minimal units (phonemes, morphemes, syntagmemes (word order), semes or sememes); function of distinctiveness.

Linguistic literature abounds in different points of view on the nature of a text as well as different approaches to its description.

The author of оne of the existing points of view on the place of linguistic text analysis among other scientific disciplines, a Dutch (Holland) scholar Teun van Dijk prefers the term “science about texts” (textwissenschaft), though he uses the term “TL” as well. In T. van Dijk’s opinion, “the science about texts” is an interdisciplinary science that integrates independent scientific schools trends) such as theology, history, law etc., that also deal with text. Не suggests the following scheme of such interdisciplinary science.

Naturally, in all these scientific disciplines text is analyzed differently (under different angles and with different angles and with different aims):

- History deals with social, political and cultural circumstances under which the texts and their variants appeared.
- Theology is concerned with interpretation of mainly religious texts.
- Law studies judicial texts and their application for the solution of conflict situations.
- Social Science investigates the relations between certain textual structures and their influence on knowledge, views, positions and actions of individuals, groups of people or societies.
- Cognitive psychology also studies the processes that underlie production and perception of certain speech forms.
- Literary Studies are mainly preoccupied with literary texts.
- Linguistics comprises 3 directions of text analysis: syntax, semantics and pragmatics (what is felt here is the semiotic approach of T. van Dijk to the description of a text).

In his later works T. van Dijk prefers to speak not about text analysis but about analysis of ‘discourse’ as a notion that includes *text* as well. “The study of discourse is not limited to an explicit description of structures proper. The results of discourse investigations in the field of such disciplines as Theory of Speech Communication, Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology, Microsociology and Ethnography showed that “discourse” is not just an isolated textual or dialogue structure. Discourse is a complex communicative phenomenon that includes social constant which represents both the participants of communication (and their characteristics) and the processes of utterances production and perception. And another quote “Breaking intuitive or linguistic approaches to its definition, discourse does not confine itself to the limits of a concrete language utterance, i.e. the limits of a text or of a dialogue”.

Henrich Plett suggests a somewhat different view on the place of TL “Science about texts”. His “Science about texts” includes three large areas theory of a text, applied science about texts and text analysis. In this turn, the theory of a text includes: theoretical linguistics, theory of literature, theory of styles; applied science – applied science, methodology and stylistics; text analysis – TL literature interpretation, style analysis. In TL, the following areas of analysis are singled out: functional syntax, text connectedness, text micro-, medio- and macro-structure, reference, regional peculiarities of a text.

Modern TL, in which speech production is viewed under different angles, has an explicit interdisciplinary character. According to a German scholar Klaus Brinker, TL today occupies the central place in linguistics both in theoretical and in practical plane.

To reiterate, TL is a relatively new branch of linguistic science. Its object is a coherent text, on the material of which the essence and the organization of the conditions of human verbal communication is elucidated. In the process of translation, both communicative orientation (maxim) and pragmatic functions of ST and TT should be taken into account. Manner of presentation, text type and other logical characteristics of a text help to work out the translator’s strategy and to reach the necessary result in the TT.

Text linguistics is an area of study within the linguistics field that focuses on the meaning and interpretation of written texts. This type of linguistics looks at ways in which the written word produces meaning, both on a small and large scale. Text linguistics is generally used by academics and is related to literary criticism. It grew out of structuralism in the 1960s.

Text Linguistics

Lecture 2 (2 hours)