New Approaches in Text Linguistics

Book excerpt: Over the last years, research in text linguistics has yielded insights into different levels of methodological reflection and practice, resulting in new issues for investigation. On the one hand, the development of computerized corpora and "hypertextual" reading has reminded researchers that the text is a complex object, both linear and network-like, and largely shaped by its context: how can analysis grapple with such a complexity? On the other hand, the processing of computerized corpora raises new methodological questions about the textual units chosen for analysis or about the use of grammatical categories as tools for stylistic and generic characterization of texts.This volume hopes to offer some constructive reflection on these challenging issues. The selected papers either demonstrate the value of some innovative method of analysis through concrete applications, or develop strong and well-argued epistemological positions, illustrated with examples. Interdisciplinary contributions are also represented: when dealing with "regulating concepts" such as "corpus", "inter-/co-text", "speech genre", etc., various domains including stylistics, genetic criticism, contrastive research, didactic approaches, statistical linguistics and discourse analysis share a common interest with text linguistics.