Surface structure

To sum it up, deep structures were held to be semantic by nature. Thus, two levels were considered equal: the deep structure and semantic representation, as syntax was claimed to be sensitive to semantic and contextual factors. The hypotheses of generative semanticists were based on the following assumptions:

(1) the purely syntactic level of “deep structure” cannot exist;

(2) the initial representations of derivations (the process of the formation of new sentences) are logical representations which are identical from language to language;

(3) all aspects of meaning are representable in phrase-marker form.

Generative semantics turned out both a method of grammatical description and a general methodological approach[15]. In a sense, it made the ideas and methods of transformational grammar logically complete. And from this point of view generative semantics cannot be regarded as a counterrevolution to transformational generative grammar. Generative semantics did not get the status of the dominating linguistic theory as it was ousted by pragmatically oriented speech-act theory and logical semantics, less strict linguistic theories focusing on human communication[16]. In the long run, generative semantics brought about the ideas of Cognitive Linguistics which is aimed at getting over the shortcomings and limitations of generative semantic theory[17].

v Text linguistics

Early modern linguistics, with its emphasis on discovering and describing the minimal units of each of the linguistic levels of sound, form, syntax, and semantics, made no provision for the study of long stretches of text as such; traditional grammatical analysis is context-free and thus stops at sentence length. But linguists could not help noticing that “language does not occur in stray words or sentences but in connected discourse”[18]. “Text linguistics is a very general label for that many faceted movement which professedly deals with text theory and discourse analysis. Its supporters claim that sentence grammars are incapable of describing all the relevant aspects and mechanisms of language. Many of them (Teun van Dijk, Janoš Petöfi, Hans Reiser) prefer special text grammars to grammars that merely add textual components to treatments of the sentence”[19]. “Thus genuine research into text linguistics starts where sentence grammar fails to provide adequate explanations for linguistic phenomena”[20].

Early large-scale enquiries into text organization remained essentially descriptive and structurally based (Pike 1967, Koch 1971, Harweg 1976). Text was defined as a unit “of whatever length, that does form a unified whole”[21], and the research was oriented towards discovering and classifying types of text structure; these were assumed to be something given. The descriptive method, however, tends to break down because the language is too complex with too many and diverse constituents. Thus, a new outlook on text encouraged the upsurge in text linguistics in the 70-s and facilitated the development of the so-called procedural approach. By a procedural approach linguists mean an approach in which “all the levels of language are to be described in terms of their utilization” (de Beaugrande, Dressler). Within this approach diverse problems were brought to the fore:

· feature of “mentioned” versus “non-mentioned” (Isenberg, de Beaugrande);

· treating text as a single sentence (de Beaugrande, Dressler);

· attempting to construct a grammar and lexicon of a concrete text (Hannes Rieser, Peter Hartmann, Janos Petöfi, Teun van Dijk);

· defining text categories (I. Galperin).

In brief, S.J. Schmidt summed up the achievements of this approach - divergent as the different standpoints might be – as communication-oriented for they aimed “to construct theories which allow the linguist to describe and explain, within the framework of a homogenous theory, the internal structure of sentences and texts as well as the conditions and rules underlying successful communication”[22].

Thus text was defined in terms of communication, as a communicative occurrence which meets seven standards of textuality, namely cohesion (structural unity) and coherence (meaningful unity), intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality, and intertextuality. These seven standards function as the constitutive principles which define and create communication. There are three more, regulative principles, which control textual communication: of efficiency (minimum effort), effectiveness (creating favourable conditions for attaining the result), and appropriateness (determines the correlation between the current situation and the standards of textuality) [The Linguistics Encyclopedia 1995: 469-471].

Nowadays text linguistics is represented by text analysis, on the one hand, and discourse analysis, on the other. Though some linguists use these terms interchangeably, others draw a clear line of distinction between them. The term text is usually reserved to refer to any record of a communicative event involving oral language (e.g., a shopping transaction, a casual conversation, a sermon) or written language (e.g., a poem, a poster, a novel). The term discourse usually refers to the interpretation of the communicative event in context. Thus there is a certain shift from the formal structural semantic plane of studies within text linguistics to the sign-informational aspect covered by discourse analysis.

Defining the term discourse linguists emphasize different features of this many-faceted phenomenon. Within the wider approach discourse is understood as ‘language use’ or ‘language-in-use’[23]. But there are also definitions which are more specific. Thus David Crystal defines discourse as a “continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit, such as a sermon, argument, joke or narrative”[24]. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics gives a similar definition: discourse is “any coherent succession of sentences, spoken or (in most usage) written” [Matthews 1997: 100]. Although early linguistic approaches judged the unit of discourse to be larger than the sentence, nowadays phenomena of interest can range from silence, to a single utterance (such as ok), to a novel, a set of newspaper articles or a conversation. ”The major assertions made from all these approaches to the definition of discourse are that (1) discourse is defined in terms of meaning and (2) discourse brings together language, the individual producing the language, and the context within which the language is used[25].

It is obvious that context is an important concept in discourse analysis. Context refers to the situation giving rise to the discourse, and within which the discourse is embedded. There are two different types of context. The first of these is the linguistic context – the language that surrounds or accompanies the piece of discourse under analysis. The second is non-linguistic or experiential context within which the discourse takes place. It includes the type of communicative event (e.g., a joke, a story, a lecture, etc.); the topic; the purpose of the event; the setting; the participants and the relationships between them; and the background knowledge underlying the communicative event[26]. In this light discourse “refers to the set of norms, preferences, and expectations relating language to context, which language users draw on and modify in producing and making sense out of language in context”[27].

Discourse analysis also includes a distinct area of studies which is aimed at revealing peculiarities of conversational interaction. This research area lies within the scope of conversational analysis. Questions that conversation analysis has investigated include:

ü How do topics get nominated, accepted, maintained and changed?

ü How is speaker selection and change organized?

ü How are conversational ambiguities resolved?

ü How are non-verbal and verbal aspects of conversation organized and integrated?

ü What role does intonation play in conversation management?

ü What recurring functional patterns are there in conversation, and how are these organized?

ü How is socially sanctioned behavior (politeness versus rudeness, directness versus indirectness) mediated through[28].

Discourse analysis was first employed in 1952 by Zellig Harris as the name for ‘a method for the analysis of connected speech (or writing)’, i.e., ‘for continuing descriptive linguistics beyond the limits of a single sentence at a time’, and for ‘correlating culture and language’. Hence discourse analysis, on the one hand, is a subfield of linguistics, and on the other hand, it goes beyond linguistics as discourse analysts research various aspects of language not as an end in itself, but as a means to explore ways in which language forms are shaped by and shape the contexts of their use. It is not surprising that to reach this goal discourse analysis draws upon not only linguistics, but also anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, cognitive science, and other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences concerned with human communication. Thus approaches that are commonly covered by the term 'discourse studies' (or have overlapping concerns) include critical discourse analysis, critical linguistics, text linguistics, conversation analysis, ethnomethodology, discursive psychology, stylistics, genre studies, mediated discourse analysis, discourse theory, sociolinguistics, rhetorical analysis, argumentation theory, polyphony theory. Key theorists are Mikhail Bakhtin, Teun van Dijk, Norman Fairclough, Michael Halliday, Ron Scollon, Michael Stubbs, Ruth Wodak.

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