text |
Working Definition:
a string of symbols with a begining and an end
Disciplinary Definitions:
The text may coincide with a sentence, as well as with an entire book; it is defined by its autonomy and by its closure . . . it constitutes a system . . . (Ducrot & Todorov, Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Sciences of Language, 294)
Comments:
Notes
In his A Theory of Semiotics, Umberto Eco puts this issue into a sharp focus. In his first chapter he describes a very simple communication situation in which a engineer receives signals from a transmitter about the water level of a dam to inform him whether the watergate needs to be opened or can remain closed.
Since there are at least three codes, a denotative one and two connotative ones, if all three are ferred to when interpreting the sign-vehicle, the engineer has got three messages, namely: (i) «the water has reached danger level»; (ii) «you must activate the evacuation lever»; (iii) «there is a flood ».
Thus, a single sign-vehicle, insofar as several codes make it become the functive of several sign -functions (although connotatively linked), can become the expression of several contents, and produce a complex discourse such as: «Since water has reached the danger lvel, you must evacuate it, otherwise there will be a flood.» I am not saying that a single code can produce many messages, one after the other, for this is a mere truism: I am saying that usually a single sign-vehicle conveys many intertwined contents and therefore what is commonly called a 'message' is in fact a text whose content is a multilevelled discourse. (57, emphasis mine, italics Eco's).
The distinction Eco makes between a text and a discourse hinges on the notion that texts contain discourses. This is a useful distinction, though not necessarily a widely shared one. If we consider Tuen van Dijk's work on "text grammars," we would take a text to be a distinctive combination of sentences and their functions. For example, a narrative has a different functional sentence structure than a proposal or a formal argument.
In "Discourse and Relevance Theory," Diane Blakemore that during the heyday of structuralism, the serarch for rules and conventions that constitute a "well-formed text" dominated linguistics. She distinguishes this approach from one that views discourse as a communicative behavior and seeks to discover the social "acceptability" of discourse. So discourse is situated in a context of communication.
In this sense, texts (the way sentences are combined to form a unit) contains discourses (the way the sentences are used in a communication).
Check:
jjs
TO RETURN TO READING, CLICK "BACK" ON YOUR BROWSER MENU.
last revised:
June 13, 2007
Send comments to jjs.
copyright © jjs, 2007