Introduction to text linguistics. Учебное пособие

the Barque ofothe Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King!’” [1].

In creating and perceiving a text an important role is played by background knowledge that include several types of information.

Firstly, there is something called cultural competence, – knowledge of the world that every living person (unlike a computer, for example) has. When writing about everyday life in a country of different culture, especially if the difference is considerable, the author mentions realia that may require a lot of explanations for the readers, and this changes the narration and text composition considerably. Moreover, the same word, i.e. “furniture”, will have different associations for English and Mongolian or Japanese people.

Secondly, most authors have specialist knowledge both as representative of a certain professional group (professional knowledge, professional competence) or amateurs with a hobby (gardening, collecting certain items, going in for sports). This knowledge may not be expressly evident in a text, but necessary for its comprehension. This problem was pinpointed by researchers studying computer text processing.

Thirdly, text creation depends on the author’s linguistic competence – active vocabulary, syntactic constructions and stylistic devices, speech skills. It is also well known, that it is much more difficult to create a text in a foreign language.

If the text has more than one author it becomes less subjective, more neutral, with authors’individual peculiarities and biases ironed out.

It is very important that addressees’ characteristics should be taken into consideration, most importantly, their number. The wider the circle of the text receivers, the more attention should be paid by the author to the text quality, the choice of subject and object of the text (the theme and what it is about), as eachaddresseeshouldbeabletocomprehendthetextandgetinterestedinit.

There is no doubt that it is essential to consider the social status, situational role, background knowledge and some other addressee features, like age and gender. For example, there are publications intended specifically for men, women, young people or children.

Other important features are the intended purpose of (use for) the information obtained from the source, its potential value for the addressee and text interpretation by the addressee. Foreign language texts may be

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too difficult for students’ comprehension, thus they should be adapted for different language proficiency levels.

As we see, most features are similar both for the addresser and addressee, but there are two important differences between the parties in an act of communication.

A lot depends on the Text Goal (objective aim of communication) and Intention which is the author’s subjective aim – the kind of impression he wants to produce – which is manifested through the choice of Style (Official, Colloquial, Scientific, etc). The Goal and Intention may not coincide which may be illustrated by a parody of a certain Text kind, the famous example being Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (though it didn’t quite work out the way the author planned).

The participants in communication have many common characteristics. The main difference lies in the fact that the addressee’s features determine his understanding and interpretation of the text. The addressee also has a definite social status and situative role; to produce an effective text the author should also take into account age, gender, number, and background knowledge of the potential readers. The particular property of the reader is Inference, which is the ability of the reader to restore the omitted parts of the text and to understand the meaning of the text on the basis of their own experience [2]. This ability may be illustrated by the following examples. The sentence “There was terrible frost and the pipes burst” presupposes knowledge of a number of things, (partially knowledge of the world and partly special knowledge) [3]:

1.Pipes were part of the heating system;

2.Heating is achieved by hot water running in the heating pipes;

3.When freezing water turns to ice?

4.When water turns to ice its volume expands?

5.When the volume of water in the pipes expands, the pipes burst? Another interesting example [4]:

Her: That’s the telephone Him: I’m in the bath Her: OK

There are seemingly no connections between the phrases here, but the

Inference (based mostly on cultural knowledge) makes it possible for us to understand easily that she tells that telephone is ringing and asks him to answer it; he replies that he can not do it and she agrees to answer it herself.

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The corpus of background knowledge necessary to comprehend Text in a certain Speech Context is called Presupposition. The larger the volume of Presupposition, the easier it is for the addressee to fill in the gaps and understand the author’s intention. It is not surprising that we understand our nearest and dearest almost without words, whereas with strangers we have to pay attention to each word as well as body language element.

In Scientific Communication the addressee may be a focused specialist or a multy-skilled expert, while Popular Scientific texts are fit for general reader. The highest grade of communicative adequacy is achieved in special-purpose communication thanks to maximum proximity of background knowledge and adequacy of presupposition [5].

Table 1

2.3. Text Intentionality (sometimes called Purpose)

It is a very important property including two aspects: Text Function and Text Genre.

Text Function is its purpose, based on potential reader reaction. Texts are generally divided into two large categories: those that inform/instruct and persuade/urge/warn. The former are called Factographic, and the latter may be termedActivating.

Factographic texts have the single purpose of passing information to the reader and may be further subdivided into Factual Texts carrying

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information that has not been intended for any specific use (all kinds of reference books, encyclopedias, telephone directories, timetables) and Normative (Prescriptive) texts that include some kind of norms the reader has to take into consideration and consequently follow – law codes, traffic rules, instructions, standards, etc. Belle-lettres texts that illustrate moral norms and worldly wisdom may also be ascribed to this category.

Activating texts presuppose immediate reader’s reaction and may also be divided into Mobilizing (orders, requests, proposals) and Persuasive, that try to make the reader/listener change their point of view or form a new one. Among persuasive texts advertising, election campaign and scientific texts may be typically mentioned. In the latter case the purpose of the text will have been proving the scientific fact on the basis of a theorem and confirmed by experiment [2].

At present there is no generally accepted classification of texts according to their genre, though there are lots of inventories of the main types of Texts – scientific, technical, normative, educational, reference, business, fiction, etc.

In most cases they are further subdivided into different text genres.

Table 2

Text classification according to their Intentionality

Intentionality

Text Function

2.4. Communication Referent

A text peculiarity is also influenced by the Referent, which includes Topical, Chronological, Areal and Type reference – music, a technical device or relativity theory will be described in a different manner. Aspect of reference will have different degree of elaboration in different kind of text.

For Belle-lettre texts the scope may be enormous in aspects of time (from ancient past to distant future), historic importance (from epic

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events to daily life of an average person) or areal (a small village to several continents or even outer space). For dictionaries the range may be Topical (general, polytechnic, professional); Chronological (etymology, neologisms, historic and archaic lexis); Areal (may feature a local dialect or world language); they may be two-language, single-language or multilanguage.

Another difference is in the character (type) – abstract or concrete.

Table 3

Referent

Referent

2.5.Conditions of Communication, Communicative situation

Text Properties may be influenced by time and place of Communication Act (sending and\or receiving) and peculiarities of the situation: whether the communication is formal or informal, if it is a lecture, a discussion, an argument, etc. The form is also peculiar for a particular historic period [6]:

in which my “Dictionary” is recommended to the public, were written by your Lordship. To be so distinguished is an honour, which, being very little accustomed to favours from the great, I know not well how to receive or in what terms to acknowledge.

When, with some slight encouragement, I first visited your Lordship, I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself “Le vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre”, – that I might obtain that regard for which I saw the world contending; but I found my attendance so little encouraged that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to continue it. When I had once addressed your Lordship in public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that I could; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.

My Lord

Your Lordship’s most humble, most obedient Servant

Sam Jonson.

You will hardly write this kind of letter today.

Certain traditions and norms of behavior and communicating in different situations differ in different countries, sometimes considerably. For example, if you make a mistake at your job in the USA, they will never criticize you harshly, but be quite understanding and explain what

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you did wrong very nicely, so that you correct your mistake and continue working with these people without any hard feelings.

As to linguistic characteristics of the Text communicative situation, they are its Volume, Code (natural and artificial languages) and Text Composition.

Discussion and tasks

1.Name CommunicationAct components.

2.What influences Text characteristics at the moment of its creation?

3.At the moment ofText perception, what influences its characteristics?

4.What is presupposition?

5.Name kinds of texts by their function.

References

1.Terry Pratchett. Pyramids. ROC, 1989, P. 151.

2.Brown G.,Yule G. Discourse analysis. Cambridge, 1983. 234 р.

3.Kameskaja O.L. Tekst i kommunikacija (Text and communication). M., 1990, P. 82.

4.GeorgeY.The Study of Language, Cambridge University Press. 1985.

5.Азнаурова Э.С. Прагматика текстов различных функциональных стилей // Общественно-политический и научный текст как предмет обучения иностранным языкам. М., 1987, C. 3–20.

6.Kukharenko V.A.ABook of Practice in Stylistics. Flinta, 2009.

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3.TEXT COMPOSITION

3.1.The concept of Text Composition and its levels

By Text Composition we usually mean text arrangement that integrates its parts into a single entity. We single out three main levels of analysing text to which three types of composition correspond: Content Composition, Linguistic Composition and Formal Composition (or TextArchitectonics).

Content Composition includes the aspects of content structure (characteristics of the main parts of the text – Introduction, Body and Conclusion) and content distribution (accentuation of subordinate points of the central thought and the topic framework; lexical stratification of the text: choice and prevalence of terminology, clichés and emphatic devices).

Linguistic composition also has two aspects: Linguistic Structure, meaning hierarchy of the text units where every unit of a higher level consists of units of a lower level, and means of Text Cohesion.

The concept of Text Linguistic Structure presupposes that every large text comes apart into smaller texts and thus Text may be viewed as macrotext consisting of microtexts. Elaborating the concept of Text hierarchy we may work out a hypertext – macrotext – mezotext (Gk mezo – middle) – microtext string. The level of complexity of Linguistic Structure usually depends on the size of the text – the larger the text, the more number of levels it consists of. A specific type of texts with explicit (quite evident) multilayer composition are dictionaries, where every entry is an independent microtext. Analysing large novels we can see that in reality they fall apart into small texts concerned with particular episodes, which at the early stages of literature development were rather loosely connected. The smallest unit of Text that is a microtext is the supraphrasal unity. In some cases a sentence may be the smallest text unit. Another important part of linguistic composition is the means of Text Cohesion1.

By Formal Composition or Architectonics we mean formal division of Text into parts – volumes, parts, chapters, and, finally, paragraphs.

3.2. Peculiarities of content structure

When we speak of the Content Structure we should pay attention to the fact that in many cases the logical and psychological understanding of

1 See also 1.2.

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the text do not coincide, are not the same. The Body of the text is usually considered to be the most important part of Text. But psychological analysis of Text Perception (and common experience) show that in every case Introduction plays an important role in conditioning the attitude (and subsequent understanding) of the recipient of the message. The first minutes of a lecture enable the listeners to form their attitude to the subject and their behaviour (trying to write down everything, just listening, acquiring critical attitude, paying no attention, etc.) and the same refers to the first pages of the book. The enormous amount of information contained in the body of a lecture (or a text) goes to the memory in a very generalised form, while the concluding part stays clear in memory for the longest period of time.

Every part of Text has a certain function. The main purpose of Introduction is to give the necessary situative context awareness, to bring the main subject and prepare the listeners for the following information, but it also may be used to attract the audience and present the subject in the best possible way. There are means of doing it that are studied in Applied Text Linguistics. The Body of Text contains the elaboration of the main idea presented in Introduction and holds the main amount of information: in informative texts – supplies the supporting data, various facts or descriptions, in persuading texts – the pro and contra arguments. Conclusion usually contains the summing up and often the implications and the applications of the presented ideas.

The Content Structure may be viewed in terms of the functional perspective as divided into the main Theme and Rheme (the object of the message) and also as a string of Rhemes presented in a certain sequence. This is supported by lexical means – by accentuation of the themes using the so-called key-words (sometimes call buzz-words) that play the key role in the text, marking its main ideas and applying terms in scientific and technical texts, clichés in official and business documentation or expressive words in fiction or publicist texts. In accordance with the latter the three main types of style are recognised – the Scientific and Technical Style, the Formal Style and the Unofficial Style.

Besides the three-part traditional division, there is а more detailed compositional division in both Belle-lettre and Scientific texts. It has also been noticed, that certain parallels may be drawn between them. Literature review in a research paper roughly coincides with exposition in a book

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of fiction, the setting in a research paper is like a set-up of a story, then follows the study background similar to rising action or narrative. Climax and falling action are very much like results and their analysis in a scientific paper, and resolution and conclusion are also very similar.

The structure of a scientific publication is determined by its size and place of publication, with each publishing house or journal having their peculiar requirements, but most of them share the following principles: the text should be written in a manner that

a)makes it possible to repeat the sequence of research activities and get similar results;

b)get an unbiased assessment of its results;

c)check the accuracy of the research and validity of its conclusions. The following structure is generally recommended:

1.Beginning section – The following elements are required, in order:

– title page: List title, authors, and affiliations as first page of manuscript;

– abstract;

– introduction.

2.Middle section – The following elements can be renamed as needed and presented in any order:

– materials and methods;

– results;

– discussion;

– conclusions (optional).

3.Ending section – The following elements are required, in order:

–acknowledgments;

–references.

These elements should follow certain requirements:

Title – include a full title and a short title for the manuscript, preferably no longer than 12 words:

–full title (Length: 250–350 characters) – specific, descriptive, concise, and comprehensible to readers outside the field;

–short title (Length: 50–100 characters) – state the topic of the study. Title page – the title, authors, and affiliations should all be included on

a title page as the first page of the manuscript file.

Abstract – theAbstract comes after the title page in the manuscript file. The abstract text is also entered in a separate field in the submission system.

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TheAbstract should:

–describe the main objective(s) of the study;

–explain how the study was done, including any model organisms used, without methodological detail;

–summarize the most important results and their significance;

–not exceed 250–350 words.

Abstracts should not include:

–citations;

–abbreviations, if possible.

The introduction should:

–provide background that puts the manuscript into context and allows readers outside the field to understand the purpose and significance of the study;

–define the problem addressed and why it is important;

–include a brief review of the key literature;

–note any relevant controversies or disagreements in the field;

–conclude with a brief statement of the overall aim of the work and a comment about whether that aim was achieved.

Materials and Methods

The Materials and Methods section should provide enough detail to allow suitably skilled investigators to fully replicate your study. Specific information and/or protocols for new methods should be included in detail. If materials, methods, and protocols are well established, authors may cite articles where those protocols are described in detail, but the submission should include sufficient information to be understood independent of these references. We encourage authors to submit detailed protocols for newer or less well-established methods as Supporting Information.

Results, Discussion, Conclusions

These sections may all be separate, or may be combined to create a mixed Results/Discussion section (commonly labeled “Results and Discussion”) or a mixed Discussion/Conclusions section (commonly labeled “Discussion”). These sections may be further divided into subsections, each with a concise subheading, as appropriate. These

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