The aim of this book is 'to provide students with the means to appreciate the potential of the written language and to explore the links between the structures of discourse and the interrelationship between social institutions' (p. xi). In other words, the authors are building up an 'eclectic' model with tools belonging, on the one hand, to the linguistic tradition (the study of the potential of written language), and, on the other hand, to the general field of Discourse Analysis.The book is divided into three parts. The first part ('Style, rhetoric and critical discourse analysis') presents the theoretical background behind the authors' methodology. The authors specify their own approach ('Style, discourse and choice') in relation to prominent linguistic and literary theories (starting from Greek rhetoric, and working through to Jakobson, Halliday, Foucault and Fairclough).One of their main ideas is to call into question the boundaries between Stylistics and Critical Discourse Analysis. In the authors' view, there is a way of taking advantage of both theories by creating a specific framework which could be used profitably to analyse a wide range of texts. This framework is summarized over three pages (pp. 60-2), in which the authors explain the three levels of text analysis:1. 'How to situate the text': first, by studying how the text is linked to its context, then by focusing on 'subject matter, relationship and structure'. 2. 'How to analyse the text': first, by 'positioning writer, reader and character'; second, by 'positioning [it] in time and space'; and then by studying the 'words, images and meaning' as well as the 'sentence structure, rhythm and sound'. 3. 'How to relate the text to culture': this part, which ought to be one of the 221 Book reviews
Im folgenden geht es um zwei Funktionsbereiche der Partikeln aber, auch, doch und ja, die gemeinhin der Pragmatik zugerechnet werden. Zurn einen werden wir die diskursive Funktion, also die verschiedenen Aufgaben dieser Partikeln bei der Organisation und Strukturierung des Gesprächsablaufs, untersuchen. Die Strukturierungseigenschaften der Diskurspartikeln betreffen die Argumentsteuerung und den Dialogablauf, ebenso wie die Regulation der Beziehungsebene zwischen den Kommunikationspartnem und die Organisation der Rede. Zum anderen geht es um die Funktion dieser Lexeme als Modalpartikeln (auch Abtönungspartikeln genannt, z.B. Burkhart 1994). Diese Funktion definieren wir als Indizierung des pragmatischen Prätextes, d.h. als Verweis auf eine vom Sprecher als relevant vorausgesetzte Proposition, an die durch die partikelhaltige Äußerung angeknüpft und die gleichzeitig modifiziert wird.
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