Textual meaning and its place in a theory of language

• Authors: Lesley Jeffries
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Following the development of a framework for critical stylistics (Jeffries 2010) and the explication of some of the theoretical assumptions behind this framework (Jeffries 2014a, 2014b, 2015a, 2015b), the present article attempts to put this framework into a larger theoretical context as a way to approach textual meaning. Using examples from the popular U.S. television show, The Big Bang Theory, I examine the evidence that there is a kind of textual meaning which can be distinguished from the core propositional meaning on the one hand and from contextual, interpersonal meaning on the other. The specific aim, to demonstrate a layer of meaning belonging to text specifically, is set within an argument which claims that progress in linguistics can better be served by adherence to a rigorous scientific discipline.

Keywords

EN

Critical stylistics; rigour; textual meaning; textual conceptual functions; linguistic theory

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Topics in Linguistics
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 15
• Issue: 1

Dates

published

2015-06-01

online

2015-09-19

Contributors

author

Lesley Jeffries

• University of Huddersfield, UK

References

• CHOMSKY, N., 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, Mass: M.I.T. Press.
• COULTHARD, M., 1992. Advances in spoken discourse analysis. London and New York: Routledge.
• FAIRCLOUGH, N., 2001. Critical discourse analysis as a method in social scientific research. In R. Wodak, R. and M. Meyer, eds. Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage, pp. 121 – 138.
• GOFFMAN, E., 1981. Forms of talk. Oxford: Blackwell.
• HALLIDAY, M.A.K. and MATTHIESSEN, C.M.I.M., 2004. An introduction to functional grammar. London: Arnold.
• HARRIS, R., 1999. Integrational linguistics and the structuralist legacy. Language and Communication, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 45-68.
• JEFFRIES, L., 2000. Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater: in defence of theoretical eclecticism in stylistics. Working Paper 12. Poetics and Linguistics Association.
• JEFFRIES, L., 2001. Schema theory and White Asparagus: readers of literature as culturally multilingual. Language and Literature, vol 10, no 4, pp. 325-43.
• JEFFRIES, L., 2010a. Opposition in Discourse. London: Continuum Books.
• JEFFRIES, L., 2010b. Critical Stylistics: The Power of English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
• JEFFRIES, L., 2014a. Interpretation. In The Handbook of Stylistics. P. Stockwell and S. Whiteley, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 469 – 486.
• JEFFRIES, L., 2014b. Critical Stylistics. In The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics. M. Burke, ed. London: Routledge. pp. 408 – 420.
• JEFFRIES, L., 2015a. Critical and Cultural Stylistics. In The Continuum Companion to Stylistics. V. Sotirova, ed. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 157 – 175.
• JEFFRIES, L., 2015b. Language and Ideology. In Introducing Language and Linguistics. N. Braber, L. Cummings and Morrish, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 379 – 405.
• NAHAJEC, L. 2009, “Negation and the creation of implicit meaning in poetry”, Language and Literature, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 109-127.
• PETRUS, K., 2010 ed. Meaning and Analysis: New Essays on Grice. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
• SAUSSURE, F., 1916. Cours de Linguistique Générale. Paris: Payot Seidenberg.
• SPERBER, D. and WILSON, D., 2004. The handbook of pragmatics. Oxford: Blackwell.
• TOOLAN, M., 1996. Total speech: an integrational linguistic approach to language, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
• WERTH, P., 1999. Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. London: Longman.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/topling-2015-0006