Introduction to Text Analysis Integrated Language Skills 1, Winter Semester 2015/16
Sentence vs. Text • Sentence: a syntactic unit expressing a grammatical relation of predication. It also expresses a tought or an idea. • Text – language material outside a single sentence boundaries – traditionally speaking, texts consist of sentences.
What can be considered as text?
Text vs. Discourse • The basic meaning of ‘discourse’, in modern ordinary usage, is ‘talk’. • Originally the term ‘discourse’ came from Latin, discursus, meaning ‘to run’, ‘to run on’, ‘to run to and fro’. • Again traditionally, it has been applied more to rehearsed forms of spoken language—like speeches, where people ‘run on’ about a topic— than to spontaneous speech.
On and on about discourse... • The modern meaning of DISCOURSE (as encompassing all forms of ‘talk’) has evolved because conversations, like formal speeches, ‘run’. • This means that speakers make an effort to give their interactions shape and coherence – perhaps not always consciously, but as an integral part of co-operating with another speaker to create meaning.
It’s the intention that counts!
• So when people refer to talk as discourse they are drawing attention to the way talk is a crafted medium.
Conversations have texture • While it has long been understood that this was true of speeches and other aspects of formal oratory, it has only recently been recognised that casual conversation is subtly and skilfully fashioned by speakers as they go along, often at rapid speed. • This is also true if the conversation is written (texting, chatting etc.)
Izgubiti nit... • Another way of looking at talk-as-discourse is to use the metaphor of weaving. In fact, we use this metaphor very often in our own talk about talk: for example, we talk about ‘losing the thread of the conversation’, ‘cottoning on’ etc. • Teachers often close their lessons by referring to ‘tying up loose ends’. We tend to see speakers as engaged together in discourse in the way a group of weavers would be to create a pattern in some fabric.
In an academic sense... • But it’s not only spoken language that ‘runs’ or gets woven into patterns. • This is also true of written language; and the modern use of the word ‘discourse’ can also be used to refer to aspects of written texts. • This tends to be used much more within the academic world than outside it.
...text • The word text itself originally meant ‘something woven’ (Latin texere, textum —‘to weave’), and you can see a relationship between text, textile (‘capable of being woven’) and texture (‘having the quality of woven cloth’) • Written language is also often referred to as ‘material’.
Structure vs. Texture • Like speakers, then, writers manipulate different aspects of language in order to weave their texts and give their material ‘texture’. • So to talk about discourse in written texts is to focus on the way written texts are constructed.
Tracing the patterns 1 Lexical cohesion • This looks at the way aspects of vocabulary link parts of texts together. 2 Grammatical cohesion • Here you will be exploring some of the important ways that grammar holds texts together across sentence boundaries. 3 Information structure • This focuses on the role of grammatical features in the ordering and presentation of information within texts.
• Lexical Cohesion is a linguistic device which helps to create unity of text and discourse. • In contrast to grammatical cohesion, lexical cohesion “[…] is the cohesive effect achieved by the selection of vocabulary.” (Halliday 1994: 274). • Thus, a speaker or writer’s either conscious or unconscious selection of certain lexical items that are in some way connected to each other creates lexical cohesion.
Text (Textual) Linguistics • Text Linguistics is the branch of linguistics primarily concerned with the analysis of written texts. • It is concerned with understanding how texts function both as internally coherent systems, but also how certain kinds of texts function in relation to their larger sociological contexts.
• Recently, text linguistics has expanded to include many diverse systems of communication. • For example, it is closely allied with other fields such as discourse analysis and literary criticism.
Cohesion and Coherence • Text linguistics is largely concerned with cohesion, understanding how texts are put together, and coherence, which is how the construction of a text develops and affects meaning and interpretation. • In general, an analysis of cohesion will consider the kinds of phrase structures, references, tropes, and other linguistic devices that make up the "surface" elements of a text.
• An analysis for coherence will attempt to understand how various textual elements are put together to develop a text's meaning. • Together, these can largely be thought of as the internal mechanics of a text.
Intertextuality • Your reception and understanding of a particular text is largely dependent upon your experience of other texts you have encountered. • This includes making sense of analogies, identifying genres or forms, and recognizable social conventions. • This notion can be reasonably extended to include your prior experience with language itself.
Context and Situation
• Your interpretation of a text may largely depend upon your knowledge of the text's historical or social context.
• Additionally, the way you interact with a text may differ depending upon the situation in which you experience it. • For example, you will interact differently with a satirical essay from the 18th century, which you read deeply in order to understand the speaker's use of irony, than when you interact with a web page, which you only scan to retrieve needed information.
Author and Audience • The analysis of any text will need to consider pertinent information about who wrote it, for what purpose, and for what kind of audience. • For example, a speech delivered to Parliament by the Prime Minister will have a different set of intentions and be received differently than when the same speech is delivered by an actor in a parody sketch.
Authorial Intent vs. Intentionality • For a text to exist it must be both intended and accepted as such; in other words, it must be recognizable as something which you are meant to read. • This is a text's intentionality, or its purposive "aboutness." • Some textual analysts distinguish between intentionality and an author's intentions, which is her specific intended meaning.
In Theory... • You can read and interpret a text successfully without ever being told what the author intended to mean; indeed, it may be that a text's exact meaning is radically unknowable by anyone but the author. • Some textual analysts argue that it is not necessary to consider an author's intentions at all; the text can be read in a variety of different ways regardless of how the author intended it to be read, and each of these readings will yield its own valid insights and observations.
Why do we need Textual Linguistics? • Text linguistics is utilized primarily by academics across a variety of disciplines. • For example, anthropologists may use it to help them better understand the role of texts in a given culture, such as what kinds of texts are used for rituals and what those rituals mean.
• Linguists may use it to better understand the structures of languages. Sociologists use text linguistics to understand how people relate through their language and how they make use of particular kinds of written texts in their social interactions. • Literary critics use text linguistics to understand how texts create meaning, and how those meanings can provide insights into other aspects of culture and society.
Discussing the text: 'Many of the alleged rules of writing are actually superstitions' 1. What is the text about? 2. Who is it intended for? Which type of audience? 3. What is the prevailing tone of the text? 4. How would you illustrate that tone with an example from the text? 5. How is the text structured? 6. What is the purpose of the opening sentence?
Discuss the “mistakes” below: • It's also a topic in linguistics. Is it an error to write: No citizen should be under a cloud of suspicion because of what they look like? What about 'to boldly go where no man has gone before', or 'it's you she's thinking of', or 'entering the room, it was nice to see so many old friends'? Various purists, snobs, snoots, sticklers, traditionalists, and language police will declare that all of these are unconscionable insults to standards of excellence. But when pressed to explain why these errors are errors, all they can offer is the not-so-excellent response: They just are.
Explain the following words from the text: deplorable umbrage solecism egregious ubiquitous imminent slovenly turgid
flout crabby scath proffer venerated ponderous hoary assiduous panache
Which idea from TA is highlited by this passage: • The real problem is that writing, unlike speaking, is an unnatural act. In the absence of a conversational partner who shares the writer's background and who can furrow her brows or break in and ask for clarification when he stops making sense, good writing depends on an ability to imagine a generic reader and empathise about what she already knows and how she interprets the flow of words in real time. Writing, above all, is a topic in cognitive psychology.
Exercise: Discourse Consequences • Each group should take a different line, and add a second line to it (not necessarily in the same genre). • They should then fold the paper over so that only the second line is visible, and pass it on to the next group. When all the groups have contributed a line, open up the folded page and read it aloud to the whole group. • As a whole group, assess how far the six different texts follow the patterns for the various genres .
Starter Lines 1 Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who lived in a castle high up on a mountainside. 2 Cricket is a game which involves as much psychological nerve as physical strength and dexterity. 3 This week you will need to have your wits about you, as Saturn’s influence could lead you to be off guard at a crucial moment. 4 Male, 42, home-owner, recently relocated to Bristol. 5 ‘Spacegrazer to Hyperpod, come in.’ Zhata feared the worst. The asteroid storm had passed just too close for comfort. 6 To make watercress soup, first sauté a finely chopped onion by melting a knob of butter in a saucepan over a medium heat.