Considering the current domination of the field of text and discourse analyses by Halliday (Reference Halliday and Webster2002), Wodak (Reference Wodak, Ostoman and Ver Schueren2006), van Dijk (Reference Van Dijk2008) and Fairclough & Fairclough (Reference Fairclough and Fairclough2012), in this new collection, Ablali and Achard-Bayle choose to focus on the contemporary trends in French text and discourse studies. On the one hand, text linguistics, often considered a branch of discourse analysis, actually has a strong distinction from and an explicit complementarity with discourse analysis. On the other hand, the French school of discourse analysis, integrated with argumentation and rhetoric, has no preconceived ideological programme, unlike Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), as proposed by Fairclough & Fairclough in particular. Organized into three parts, this collection gathers contributions that aim to reconsider the dichotomy of text and discourse.
The first part addresses the connection between text and discourse. Highlighting the complementarity of text linguistics and discourse analysis, Jean-Michel Adam offers a comprehensive model that integrates the features of textual structures at the micro-level, meso-level and macro-level. Based on these stages of textualization, he proposes the decisive role of discourse genres in textual effect. Michel Charolles pays close attention to texts in his chapter on tools that guarantee cohesion and coherence in continuous association, such as connectors, anaphora and “framing adverbials”; by contrast, Guy Achard-Bayle takes account of discourse as the contextual, situational and generic framework in which the text appears. He develops T-D (text-discourse) articulation to explain how cognitive linguistics can be part of the research into text linguistics. His example of the conjunction if in narrative and literary texts illustrates the relationship between mental operations and semiotic forms. The next two contributions do not focus on the boundaries and specific natures between models and schools of texts and discourses but rather subsume the text-discourse dichotomy. Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni, through her examination of oral conversations, confirms a coincidence with Adam’s point of view: “analysis of discourses” is more suitable than “analysis of discourse”. Finally, Alain Rabatel, with his discussion of the enunciator’s role and the co-construction of viewpoints, emphasizes the consideration of subject in and through discourse. Overall, the first part aims to reconcile various theories and methodologies to offer a comprehensive understanding of this field of linguistics and its applications.
The second part is dedicated to the epistemology of text and various approaches to the study of textual complexity and meaning. François Rastier challenges the weaknesses of sign theory and proposes new heuristics that consider the norms of discourse and genre, as well as the conjectural character of interpretation in both text and intertext. Relying on approaches developed by Rastier, Driss Ablali and Bernard Combettes provide interesting perspectives in the following two chapters. The former focuses on semiotics in Greimas’ Structural Semantics, revealing that text collection has an impact on text analysis. This statement opened up a discussion on textual genres and levels of textual complexity. Combettes suggests a diachronic dimension when studying discursive coherence in textuality, along with the textual competence and linguistic consciousness of speakers. These two authors both agree to consider various aspects of texts as a unified whole in studies across texts, an area of study in which sign theory has previously demonstrated analytical weakness. Lita Lundquist, in the last chapter in this section, traces the application of text linguistics in French language teaching and shows how different languages and cultures shape thinking and text creation. These four contributions provide a varied overview of approaches to text linguistics, including the study of form, genre, and corpus and the historical development of textual coherence and competence.
In the last part, four authors go even beyond the text-discourse links and text epistemologies, questioning different aspects of discourse analysis and its relationship with other fields, such as argumentation, society and literature. Patrick Charaudeau demonstrates the types of communication models which allow us to analyse the discursive strategies and the relationship between the speech act and its exteriority. His distinction between situational genre and discursive genre, innovative and original, creates new space for studies of texts and discourses. However, this issue has not been adequately explored in this volume. When Dominique Maingueneau questions the internet and aphorizing utterances that do not fall under traditional textuality, he implies the existence of a diversity of discourses. Through a web post on the wearing of the burqa in France, Ruth Amossy argues that discursive argumentation in French is considerably different from CDA, because it is not its mission to expose the manipulative practices and political ideologies in discourse. Finally, André Petitjean examines the links that exist between style, literature and linguistics, proposing a linguistic “overhaul” of literary stylistics that entails literary experts reconstructing the context of literary works in intertextual and interdiscursive dimensions.
As a continuation of the editors’ previous book (Ablali et al., Reference Ablali, Achard-Bayle, Reboul-Touré and Temmar2018) dedicated to confronting the European and Anglo-Saxon models, this collection focuses more on latest French perspectives in text and discourse linguistics, such as the evaluation of corpus texts and the impact of enunciator position on otherness and praxis in discourse. However, the differences in concrete practices between text linguistics and the analysis of discourses remain to be further investigated. Moreover, it might have been more advantageous for the editors to respond to the question posed at the beginning of the book, i.e., how text linguistics provides discourse analysis with the textual theory that it needs.
By virtue of its ability to bridge theoretical gaps between different approaches to the analysis of text and discourse and to challenge established paradigms with innovative perspectives, this work provides a novel French point of view for scholars interested in this field of Sciences du langage and its many complexities.
