Text Linguistics and New Applications

Abstract

In its early stages, “text linguistics” was a sufficiently compact and localized enterprise that describing it would not have seemed inordinately difficult. Today, however, text linguistics has attained such prominence that it formed the largest contingent at the last International Congress of Linguists in Berlin in 1987. This rise has been accompanied by a widening of scope, a profusion of models, theories, and terms, and a diversification of the phenomena it is intended to capture or designate. The very term “text linguistics” may seem too narrow, and wider alternatives have been proposed, such as “text studies,” “text science,” “textology,” and above all “discourse analysis.” Similarly, some scholars have proposed that text linguistics be incorporated into a broader domain, such as semiotics/semiology, ethnography/enthnomethodology, communications, cognitive science, and so forth.