De Beaugrande and Dressler (1981) view their own procedural approach to text linguistics as evolved out of other views, and most text linguists make some reference to both micro- and macrostructural features of the text, and to speakers’ world knowledge. By a procedural approach, de Beaugrande and Dressler (1981: 31) mean an approach in which ‘all the levels of language are to be described in terms of their utilization’. They (1931: 3) define text as a communicative occurrence which meets seven standards of textuality – namely cohesion and coherence, which are both text-centred, and intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality and intertextuality, which are all user-centred. These seven standards function as the constitutive principles which define and create communication. In addition, at least three regulative principles control textual communication. These are efficiency, effectiveness and appropriateness.
Intentionality concerns the text producer’s intention to produce a cohesive and coherent text that will attain whatever goal s/he has planned that it should attain. Text producers and receivers both rely on Grice’s Co-operative Principle in managing discourse, but in text linguistics the notion of conversational implicature is supplemented with the notion that language users plan towards a goal (de Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 132–3).
Acceptability concerns the receiver’s wish that the text should be cohesive and coherent and be of relevance to her/him (de Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 7): ‘This attitude is responsive to such factors as text type, social or cultural setting, and the desirability of goals.’ The receiver will be tolerant of things, such as false starts, which interfere with coherence and cohesion and will use inferencing, based on her/his own general knowledge, to bring the textual world together.
Informativity ‘concerns the extent to which the occurrences of the presented text are expected vs unexpected or known vs unknown/certain’ (de Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 8–9). When something very unexpected occurs the text receiver performs a motivation search (problem-solving) to find out what these occurrences signify, why they were selected, and how they can be integrated back into the continuity that is the basis of communication. If no solution is found, the text will appear as nonsensical.
A receiver’s expectations of what will appear in a text are powerfully affected by her/his perception of what text type s/he is currently encountering. What is unexpected in a technical report may be less unexpected in a poem, and it is interesting to observe how people faced with apparent nonsense will normally be able to give it a meaning if they are told that the text is a poem.
Most cognitive approaches to text analysis emphasize what readers bring to the text: the text is not a file full of meaning which the reader simply downloads. How sentences relate to one another and how the units of meaning combine to create a coherent extended text is the result of interaction between the reader’s world and the text, with the reader making plausible interpretations.
Situationality ‘concerns the factors which make a text relevant to a situation of occurrence’ (de Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 9). Again, a text-receiver will typically try hard to solve any problem arising from the occurrence of apparently irrelevant items in text; that is, s/he will engage in problem–solution in order to make such items appear relevant.
Intertextuality concerns the way in which the use of a certain text depends on knowledge of other texts. For instance, a traffic sign saying ‘resume speed’ only makes sense on the basis of a previous sign telling a driver to slow down. The interdependence of texts covered by the notion of intertextuality is responsible for the evolution of text types, which are groups of texts displaying characteristic features and patterns. Parodies, critical reviews, reports and responses to the arguments of others are highly and obviously reliant on intertextuality. In other cases, we are less aware of intertextuality. For instance, a novel we are reading may appear as an independent text; however, it relies on the tradition of novel-writing, and we bring our knowledge of what a novel is to the reading of it.
Regulative principles of textual communication
Efficiency depends on the text being used in communicating with minimum effort by the participants.
Effectiveness depends on the text leaving a strong impression and creating favourable conditions for attaining a goal.
Appropriateness is the agreement between the setting of a text and the ways in which the standards of textuality are upheld. It mediates between efficiency and effectiveness which tend to work against each other. Plain language and trite content [efficiency] are very easy to produce and receive, but cause boredom and leave little impression behind. In contrast, creative language and bizarre content [effectiveness] can elicit a powerful effect, but may become unduly difficult to produce and receive.
Naturalness
In text linguistics, then, the links between clauses are observed across sentence boundaries, and these links can be seen to form larger patterns of text organization. In addition, however, reference to the text surrounding a given sentence may be seen to cast light on the naturalness of the sentence in question.
Naturalness is Sinclair’s term for ‘the concept of well-formedness of sentences in text’ (1984: 203), and it is contrasted with what is normally thought of as sentence well-formedness, which is a property sentences may or may not have when seen in isolation.
The Linguistics Encyclopedia, Second Edition, Kirsten Malmkjaer, New York, Routledge, 2002.
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