Text Linguistics Flashcards
What’s the difference between “text” and “discourse”?
The text refers to a written or spoken piece of language, while discourse refers to language in use, including the context and purpose of the communication as well as the relationships between speakers or writers and their audience.
What is cohesion?
It is a set of rules that can be either lexical or grammatical, it makes a text a text. If we look for cohesion we can see specific elements (patterns) that we can identify. It is not visible, it has to do with reflection.
Where kind of cohesions exist?
Grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion.
The first one includes reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction.
The second one: repetition and collocation
What is reference?
It It is about the elements in the text that do not have their own meaning but derive their meaning by sth else. Children take a while to understand how reference works. Deixis is a term used for words whose meaning arises by referring to some aspects of the context in which they are spoken. The Speaker is the deictic centre, and the unmarked situation is Me, Now, Here. An error a child could make is by saying “your name is x” instead of “my name is x” because the question was “what is YOUR name”.
What types of deixis exist?
There are three types of deixis: person, time, place. We could have ambiguity for the person, proximal/distal for the time and proximal distal for the place, for instance when using passive speeches. Ambiguity could come from the word “you” as it could refer to different people and advertising and politics could use this to feel closer to their audience. In Italian we don’t have the same issue, but we use “tu” instead of “voi” because it feels closer.
What’s the difference between endophoric and exophoric reference?
Endophora is the use of a word or phrase in a text to refer to something within the immediate text. Endophora is the opposite of exophora (a word/phrase referring to something outside of the text).
How can an endophoric reference be?
It can be an anaphoric reference or a cataphoric one
When do we have an anaphoric reference?
Anaphoric reference arises when a hearer understands a word by referring back to sth previously said. The majority of endophoric reference are also anaphoric.
When is a cataphoric reference used?
Cataphoric reference is rarer, it is mostly used to set a suspense, a certain curiosity to the text. It arises when a word refers forward to sth that will follow in the text.
What are substitution and ellipsis?
Substitution and ellipsis are strategies that involve the replacement of one textual element by another. They work in the same way but with one important change.
Substitution requires that the element be replaced by a more generic one, whereas in the case of the ellipsis there is a substitution by zero.
Examples:
- My computer is very old. I should get a new one. (sub to create unity in a text);
- My aunt brought a cake and my grandma her famous lasagna. (ellipsis, the verb is not there in the second part of the sentence)
What are conjunctions?
Conjunctions are words that connect various sentences, they are visible trays of cohesion.
What are the strategies to lexical cohesion?
Repetition and collocation
What is the strategy of repetition?
It is the occurrence of the same word or expression more than once. It appears mostly in text uttered orally because it is not considered impolite. In political speeches it occurs pretty often in order to persuade the listeners such as repetition of slogans and expressions which aim to avoid misunderstandings.
What is collocation?
It is a bond created between words by speakers, a phenomenon strictly linked to language use where right or wrong depends on if a native speaker would say it or not.
What is De Beaugrande & Dessler’s definition of text?
Text is a communicative event that must satisfy seven criteria: two internal and four external
