Text and Discourse free essay sample

You recognize a piece of language as a text, because of its location in a particular context. And if you are familiar with the text in that context, you know what the message is intended to be. Now if you see the same sign dissociated from its ordinary context, you are no longer ablet to act on its original intention. From this example we can conclude that, for the expression of its meaning, a text is dependent on its use in a appropriate context. The nature of discourse Meaning of a text does not come into being until it is actively employed in a context of use. This process of activation of a text by relating it to a context of use is what we call discourse. This contextualization of text is actually the reader’s reconstruction of the writer’s intended message, that is, his or her communicative act or discourse. We will write a custom essay sample on Text and Discourse or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page In these terms, the text is the observable product of the writer’s or speaker’s discourse, which in turn must be seen as the process that has created it. However, just because he or she is engaged in a process of reconstruction, it is always possible that the reader infers a different discourse from the text than the one the writer has intended. Therefore, one might also say that the inference of discourse meaning is largely a matter of negotiation between writer and reader in contextualized social interaction. So a text can be realized by any piece of language as long as it is found to record a meaningful discourse when it is related to a suitable context of use. Textual and Contextual Meaning In order to derive a discourse from a text we have to explore two different sites of meaning: on the one hand, the text’s intrinsic linguistic or formal roperties (its sounds, typography, vocabulary, grammar and so on) and on the other hand, the extrinsic contextual factors which are taken to affect its linguistic meaning. These two interacting site of meaning are the concern of two fields of study: semantics is the study of formal meaning as they are encoded in the language of texts (independently from a context), while pragmatics is concerned with the meaning of language in discourse, that is, when it is used in an appropriat e context to achieve particular aims. Pragmatic meaning is complementary to semantic meaning, because it is inferred from the interplay of semantic meaning with context. We distinguished two kinds of contexts: an internal context built up by the language patterns inside the texts, and an external non-linguistic context drawing us to ideas and experiences in the world outside the text. The latter is a very complex notion because it may include any number of text external features influencing the interpretation of a discourse. Some of the components are: -the text type or genre (election poster, a recipe, a sermon) -its topic, purpose and function -the immediate temporary and physical setting of the text -the text’s wider social, cultural and historical setting -the identities, knowledge, emotions, abilities, belief and assumptions of the writer and reader -the relationships holding between the writer and reader -the association with other similar or related text types (intertextuality) The context of literary discourse In principle, the process of discourse inferencing is the same for non-literary and literary texts, for in either case we have to bring about an interaction between the semantic meanings of the linguistic items take on in a context of use. However, the nature of context of literary discourse is quite different from that of non-literary discourse in that it is dissociated from the immediacy of social contact. In very broad terms, whereas the non-literary text makes a connection with the context of our everyday social practice, the literary text does not: it is self-enclosed. Now the discourse of daily social life, is of necessity, constantly aimed at the control, categorization and abstraction of an endless variety of social institutions, relationships, and processes. But we also hold the desire to be an individual to be distinct from others, though realizing at the same time that we are indivisible members of society. It is literature, and in a broad sense all art, which can be said to potentially provide an outlet from these individualizing tendencies. In the case of literature, this escape exists because its discourse is divorced from the context of the social practice we have just described. It is essential to recognize, however, that the alternative realities represented by literary discourse do not offer a neat and tidy substitute for the realities which we are in the habit of constructing as members of a society. The meanings of literary discourses are indefinite, undetermined, unstable, an indeed often unsettling. So, every time we try to infer a discourse from the same literary text, we are sure to find other meanings. This does not mean that literary texts bear no relation to the real world. Of course they do, otherwise we would not be able to identify with them and construe some meaningful discourse The Communicative situation in Literary Discourse A discourse is a context-bound act of communication verbalized in a text, and waiting to be inferred from it. Such a communicative act is inherently an interpersonal activity between two parties: the first-person party at the addresser end of the process, and the second-person party at the addressee end. These parties may share a physical context, as in face-to-face conversation, or may not, as in written discourse. Because context is not simply a matter of physical circumstances but of the ideas, values, beliefs, and so on inside people’s heads. In this sense all communication is a meeting of minds, and meaning is achieved to the extent that the contexts of the two parties come together. But in literature the communicative situation is not so straightforward. Since literary texts are disconnected from ordinary social practices, there is disruption in the direct line of communication between the parties. Thus the first-person pronoun does not represent the person who produced the text but a persona within it, and so we cannot as readers converge on the writer’s context but only on that which is internally created in text itself. And this context may represent not one perspective or point of view, but several. Conclusion We have attempted to delineate what might be called a communicative triangle, encompassing a first person party (an addresser), a text as the material manifestation of a discourse, and a second-person party (an addressee). We talk about text when our analysis is focused on the intrinsic linguistic properties of the text, without considering its contextual factors. We use the term discourse when our analysis is not only concerned with linguistic features, but also with non-linguistic aspects. In this sense the term discourse takes text and context together because they are seen as interacting generators of meaning. Literature is distinctive, I have suggested, because its texts are closed off from normal external contextual connection and this means that we need to infer possible contextual implications, including perspective or point of view, from the textual features themselves.