LTI 1 2016-17

What is a text?

A text is a sequence of paragraphs that represents an extended unit of speech.

“A text has texture, and this is what distinguishes it from something that is not a text” (Halliday and Hasan, 1976:2)

According to De Beaugrande and Dressler

(1981), a text will be defined as a

communicative occurrence which meets seven

standards of textuality.

Text-centered notions:

• Cohesion

• Coherence

User-centered notions:

• Intentionality

• Acceptability

• Informativity

• Situationality

• Intertextuality

Text-centered notions: cohesion • Cohesion concerns the way in which the components

of the surface text, i.e. the actual words we hear or see, are mutually connected within a sequence. Halliday and Hasan (1976) investigated how sentences are linked in a text. Cohesion is created to establish the structure of meaning, accordingly it concerns “how the text is constructed as a semantic edifice” (1976:26), although it “does not concern what a text means” (1976:26).

• Cohesion rests upon grammatical forms and conventions.

Text-centered notions: coherence Coherence concerns the ways in which the meanings within a text

(concepts, relations among them and their relations to the external world) are established and developed.

To comprehend discourse, we interpret it assuming that if one thing is said after another, then the two things are related in some way.

Some of the major relations of coherence are logical sequences:

cause-consequence (and so), condition-consequence (if), contrast (however), compatibility (and), etc.

Micro-coherence represents the sequential relation between propositions, whereas macro-coherence is the global coherence of a discourse in terms of hierarchical topic progression.

Cohesion and coherence are text-centered notions, designating operations directed at the text materials.

User-centered notions

• Intentionality: refers to the text writer’s attitude, and is reflected in his/her manipulation of rhetorical devices

• Acceptability: refers to the receiver’s attitude to the text, and involves his/her recognition of the text cohesion and coherence.

Informativity refers to the extent to which the

message of the text is expected or

unexpected, known or unknown. At any event,

it positively affects the reader by giving new

information.

Situationality concerns the factors which make

a text relevant to a situation, while

recognizing that a given text appearing at a

given time or in a given context will influence

the readers in their interpretation.

Intertextuality refers to the factors which make the utilization of one text dependent upon knowledge of one or more texts. In a word, it recognizes that all texts contain traces of other texts. For example, if you are on a diet, your question may be:

To eat or not to eat

If you are ready to any compromise, you can borrow Henry IV’s statement Paris is worth a mass.