A t ex t needs to be approached in terms ofits Situation (physical setting or social/intellectual milieu) in which it is composed, in terms ofthe addresseeinterpreter's contribution to the understanding of the text (Schemata, scripts, and referential frames), and in terms of the text itself. The latter complex of considerations certainly includes a t least the macrostructure (germind idea or overall conception), constituency (embedded discourses, paragraphs, and sentences), and texture. This paper develops the thirdconcern under the twin rubrics Spectrum and Profile. Until these terms are given more meaning in the body of this paper, suffice it to say here that both spectrum and profile have to do with the complementary concerns ofcohesion and prominence in discourse structure; that spectrum has to do largely with continuing Strands of Information which at once unite a discourse and distinguish hierarchically the types of Information within it; and that profile has to do with the linguistic reflexes of mountinganddeclining tension (orexcitement) within a discourse. l. Spectrum 1.1. Foliowing an early clue from Gleason, Grimes (1978) categorized types of Information in narrative discourse. He pointed out that such a text not only contains Information concerning events and participants, but also further sorts of Information which he variously labeled setting (spatial-temporal, circumstantial, and introductory material especially appropriate to the onset of a story or of a section of a story), background (similar, but less bunched and hence more scattered through the narrative), comment (evaluation by the
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