2. The standards of textuality: cohesion

From the sentence to the text Traditional approach to the study of language: sentence as conventional object of study Structuralism (Bloofield, Harris, Chomsky): sentence as the largest unit with an inherent structure (cf. Bloomfield 1933: 170). Language samples were gathered and analysed according to systems of minimal units (phonemes, morphemes, syntagmemes…). Each system of minimal units constitutes a level organized by the opposition of units and their distinctive features, so that each unit was in some way distinct from all others. Whatever fell beyond the scope of the sentence was assigned to the domain of stylistics.

Up to the 70s no established methodology that would apply to texts Meaning as a secondary aspect, because it includes extra-linguistic aspects Up to the 70s no established methodology that would apply to texts ‘“text linguistics” cannot be a designation for a single theory or method. Instead, it designates any work in language science devoted to the text as the primary object of inquiry’ De Beaugrande - Dressler

Historical roots Rhetoric: Stylistics literary studies Anthropology training public orators texts evaluated in terms of their effects upon the audience of receivers; texts are vehicles of purposeful interaction. Stylistics style results from the characteristic selection of options for producing a text. literary studies Anthropology language as human activity; focus on meaning Sociology analysis of conversation as a mode of social organization and interaction

Where TL comes from Rhetoric shares several concerns with text linguistics, notably the assumptions that: (a) 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 are 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.

Both Rhetoric and TL concerned with: “How are discoverable structures built through operations of decision and selection, and what are the implications of those operations for communicative interaction?” as opposed to “What structures can analysis uncover in a language?”, (traditional linguistic)

many aspects of texts only appear systematic in view of how texts are produced, presented, and received.

«When we move beyond the sentence boundary, we enter a domain characterized by greater freedom of selection or variation and lesser conformity with established rules. For instance, we can state that an English declarative sentence must contain at least a noun phrase and an agreeing verb phrase, as in that perennial favourite of linguists: The man hit the ball. But if we ask how that might fit into a text, e.g.: [a] The man hit the ball. The crowd cheered him on. [b] The man hit the ball. He was cheered on by the crowd. [c] The man hit the ball. The crowd cheered the promising rookie on. it is much harder to decide what expression for the ‘man’ should be used in a follow-up sentence (e.g. ‘him’ vs. ‘this promising rookie’), and in what format (e.g. active vs. passive).

TEXT An extended structure of syntactic units (Werlich 1983) A communicative occurrence (deBeaugrande-Dressler 1981) Any passage, spoken or written, of whatever length, that does form a unified whole. […] A text is a unit of language in use (Halliday-Hasan 1976) The concept of texture is entirely appropriate to express the property of 'being a text'. A text has texture and this is what distinguishes it from something that is not a text (deBeaugrande-Dressler 1981). Halliday, M.A.K; and Ruqayia Hasan (1976), Cohesion in English. London: Longman. Werlich, E., (1983), A Text Grammar of English. Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer

Standards of textuality For De Beaugrande –Dressler: seven standards, which serve as constitutive principles of textual communication. Most important ones: cohesion and coherence. “A text will be defined as a communicative occurrence which meets seven standards of textuality. .... (dB-D)

standards of textuality: cohesion coherence intentionality acceptability informativity situationality intertextuality.

Text-external criteria Text-internal criteria Intentionality Acceptability Informativity Situationality Intertextuality Text-internal criteria Cohesion Coherence “pure” text linguistics It could be said that the text-internal elements constitute the text, while the text-external ones constitute the context. Discourse analysis

text linguistics and discourse analysis The difference basically lies in the emphasis the two disciplines place on the two sets of criteria of textuality: in the “purely” textlinguistic approaches texts are viewed as “more or less explicit phenomena of cognitive processes” (Tischer et al., 2000: 29), and the context plays a subordinate role, whereas discourse analysis considers both text internal and text external criteria

1. Cohesion how the components of the surface text, i.e. the actual words we hear or see, are mutually connected within a sequence. The surface components depend upon each other according to grammatical forms and conventions, such that cohesion rests upon grammatical dependencies. ...

Cohesive elements in de Beaugrande-Dressler’s model (integrated with Halliday-Hasan’s model)   use of pro-forms/reference personal / demonstrative pronouns premodifiers (such) grammar dependency network, at phrase, clause and sentence level morphology tense/aspect comparative reference text conjunctives (inter-sentence); paratactic conjunctives; hypotactic conjunctives ellipsis substitution   Lexical and textual cohesion recurrence partial recurrence Parallelism Paraphrase collocation hyponymy / meronimy synonymy / antonimy functional sentence perspective * information structure intonation

*Functional sentence perspective This designation suggests that sentence elements can “function” by setting the knowledge they activate into a “perspective” of importance or newness. In many languages, for instance, elements conveying important, new, or unexpected material are reserved for the latter part of the sentence

GIVEN= what you –listener/reader– already know about, or have access to. NEW= what I –speaker/writer– am asking you – listener/reader – to attend to.