Text and Sign Part One Hartmut Haberland

(3) Texts Texts within texts Text analysis and discourse analysis

The relationship of texts to signs

The Voynich manuscript The Voynich manuscript was discovered in Italy in It is assumed to have been written around We don’t know what it means: an unknown script, an unknown language. But we are sure that it is language. Why?

Because it looks like (written) language. It has a structure that we recognize. It looks like a written text. What does a written text look like?

Texts are built up from meaningful minimal elements (minimal signs). These minimal elements are often or mostly symbolic (have a arbitrary relationship to their meaning or reference). These minimal meaningful elements are built from smaller, ’empty’ elements which have no meaning in themselves

These signs occur in a sequence which corresponds to a temporal sequence when read.

Pictures mean what they show. They have no minimal elements (do not consist of minimal signs). Except for maybe pixels they do not consist of ’empty’ elements which have no meaning in themselves.

Music has no direct meaning, but can often convey meaning indirectly (often togetrher with a title or lyrics). Music has minimal elements (at least when written), but they are not signs. Music shares the combinatory system with language, but there is no double articulation.

Texts according to Malinowski (1935) A text is divorced (separated) from its context of action and situation. (Compendium p. 11) An utterance can be used in action, texts are remembered and stored.

”It is raining today.”

Utterance vs. text Every utterance has a source (a speaker), a text has an author. The author of the text is not present in the text.

But a text can represent several voices, not just that of the author.

Direct reported speech The lady said: ”One day my daddy had taken a gun to a department store.”

Indirect reported speech The lady said that one day her daddy had taken a gun into a Dallas department store

Direct speech He said, ”I have done the same thing every day of my life.”

Indirect speech He said, he had done the same thing every day of his life.

Free indirect speech He had done the same thing every day of his life.

Text analysis vs. Discourse analysis Language is reality-creating social practice (Fowler).

Directive vs. constitutive linguistic practices Directive practices: exercising power directly (by commands, wishes, etc.) cf. Jakobson’s conative (receiver-oriented) function of language

Elements of the speech act Context Addresser Message Adressee Contact Code

Functions of language Referential Emotive Poetic Conative Phatic Metalingual

Constitutive linguistic practices The vocabulary of a language can be considered a kind of lexical map of the preoccupations of a culture Vocabulary constitutes a world-view

Different cultures may be said to have different world views. Different groups can have different ideologies. These ideologies are represented in different discourses.

Discourses Immigration discourse Integration discourse Educational discourse Youth discourse Health discourse &c.

Text vs. discourse You always analyse a text. But the text can be indicative for a whole discourse and therefore for an ideology.

Fowler’s toolbox Linguistic checklist Lexicon (choice of words) Transitivity (who is the actor?) Syntax (grammar) Deletion (who is left out?) Sequencing (order in which things are presented) Complexity Modality (possibility, necessity, evidence)

Fowler’s toolbox Speech acts (orders, questions) Implicature (between the lines) Presupposition (”When did you stop beating your wife?”) Turn taking (interrupting) Adressing (De vs. du) Phonology (”Low Copenhagen” vs. ”Hellerup Danish”)

An example Establishing characteristics of a British health discourse through analysis of transitivity in a text

Participants A

Predicates A

Participants B

Predicates B

Current ideology in health discourse Patients are passive ’cases’

Discourse analysis as witch hunt? Can the text ever win?