15.3136, Review: Text/Corpus Ling/Historical Ling: Görlach (2004)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-15-3136. Mon Nov 08 2004. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 15.3136, Review: Text/Corpus Ling/Historical Ling: Görlach (2004)                                                                                                                                                       

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1)
Date: 04-Nov-2004
From: Marina Santini < Marina.Santini at itri.brighton.ac.uk >
Subject: Text Types and the History of English 
 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2004 11:41:02
From: Marina Santini < Marina.Santini at itri.brighton.ac.uk >
Subject: Text Types and the History of English 
 

AUTHOR: Görlach, Manfred
TITLE: Text Types and the History of English
SERIES: Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 139
YEAR: 2004
PUBLISHER: Mouton de Gruyter
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-2336.html


Marina Santini, PhD Student, University of Brighton, UK

SUMMARY

The volume "Text Types and the History of English" written by Manfred 
Görlach includes a Foreword by Hans-Jürgen Diller, eleven chapters plus 
tables of contents, indexes and a bibliography. Most of the chapters of 
this book are revised and/or expanded versions of papers or articles 
published by the author in different proceedings, journals or books. Only 
Chapters 6 and 7 are declared to be written for the actual book "in order 
to widen the base of text types characterized in more detail than just the 
definition" (p. 163). For Chapter 8 the author does not say whether it is 
an expansion or variation of a previous paper or whether it has been 
written for the present book. 

The book has three main foci: synchronic/diachronic genre analysis 
(Chapters 2 and 3), diachronic qualitative analysis of specific genres 
(from Chapter 4 to Chapter 8), cross-linguistic genre analysis (Chapters 9 
and 10).

The interesting Foreword by Hans-Jürgen Diller sets Görlach in his 
background and field of interest. Diller highlights what is special with 
Görlach and which are his main contributions to the field, namely the 
lexicon of text class names, the exemplary analysis of text classes, and 
the development of text classes in the context of national varieties (p. 
xv). 

Chapter 1 is a short Preface, where the author declares his intention to 
summarize his reflexions on what he sees as one of the most important and 
most neglected topics of synchronic and diachronic linguistics, i.e. the 
study of text types (p.1). The author's claim is that text typology and 
the interpretation of individual texts over time and geographical space 
yield insight into cultural history and linguistic variation. The Preface 
ends with acknowledgements.

Chapter 2, "A history of text types: A componential analysis", describes 
the development of text types within a culture, contains the componential 
analysis and includes two lists of text types. The author starts giving a 
diachronic interpretation of text type formation by pointing out that 
after 1500 the decline of international languages (Latin in Western Europe 
and French in many societies) foster many European national languages to 
elaborate, regularize and refine their structure and lexicon. As for 
English, three methods are mainly used in the process of standardization: 
1) the continuation of an earlier type 2) the transfer of features from an 
existing type to a new type 3) the borrowing of text types and their 
concomitant features from another language and culture (p. 5). 

In his componential analysis Görlach adopts a structuralist approach. He 
selects 25 semantic/encyclopaedic components -- such as field, intention, 
action, music, and illustration -- to build a grid that helps analyze text 
types according to specific traits. The author realizes that a 
classification for modern English using this grid might not be fully 
manageable, nonetheless he expresses the hope that this approach will help 
understand why certain linguistic features are preferred in individual 
text types and not in others, thus complementing the research undertaken 
by Biber (p. 21).A large part of this chapter is made up by extensive 
lists, the first one comprising 2000 text types for modern English; the 
second one containing 669 Old English text types. The author also suggests 
some explanations for the formation of labels designating text types. The 
various explanations he offers are: the labels can be totally new, they 
can be existing terms applied to the new text-specific context, they can 
be derived by metonymy, they can refer to the name of an activity, they 
can take the name of a speech act. 

In Chapter 3, "Text types and the linguistic history of modern English", 
the author presents a short survey on existing research of text types, 
explaining that the concept of text types is a "fairly recent addition to 
the instrumentarium of synchronic and historical linguistics" (p. 102), 
then gives his own definition of the term. He states that as we are now, 
we don't know how many text types are used in a particular culture, nor 
the distinctive features they bear. Only literary genres have been studied 
in depth, but their functions are different from the functions of 
instrumental texts. For Görlach a "text type is a specific linguistic 
pattern in which formal/structural characteristics have been 
conventionalized in a specific culture for certain well-defined and 
standardized uses of language" (p. 105), so that a speaker/hearer or 
writer/reader can judge the correct use of linguistic features obligatory 
or expected in a specific text type, the adequate use of formulae, the 
identification of mixed types, and the labels used to designate text 
types. He acutely points out some problems, rarely taken into 
consideration by other linguists, related to the delimitation of text 
types. For example, a text type can be bound or free, it can be a 
conglomerate including smaller types, and so on. Then he illustrates his 
approach to text type analysis with an interesting diachronic pilot study 
(carried out using non-quantificational methods) on a bound text type, the 
dedicatory epistle. 

Chapter 4, "Text types and language history: the cooking recipe", is 
mainly dedicated to the "recipe", which represents a good example of how a 
conventional text type emerges and relates to socio-historical changes. 
The author provides a diachronic (Old English period, Middle English 
period, period after 1500) and cross-cultural account (Scotland, India, 
New Guinea) of this text type. 

The main aim of Chapter 5, "A linguistic history of advertising", is to 
explore the stages through which the modern commercial advertisement has 
developed. The author concentrates on the time before 1900, and on 
specimens in which texts predominate rather than illustrations. He uses 
evidence both from social and cultural history as well as from 
linguistics. Finally, he points out that advertising has been exported 
into communities using English as a feature of newspapers and 
radio/television, thus modifying existing traditions or creating a new 
genre.

In Chapter 6, "The church hymn", the author investigates the historical 
foundations of the church hymn and its features. The peculiar trait of the 
hymn as a text type lies in "the degree of 'openness' of texts which made 
it possible to adapt to the needs of individual denominations, dioceses or 
even parishes, thus raising the difficult problem of identity of hymns 
sometimes changed almost beyond recognition" (p. 173).

In Chapter 7, "Lexical entries", the lexical entry is analysed as a text 
type. After having highlighted that lexical entries heavily depend of the 
type of book they are found in, the compiler's intentions and other 
factors, the author analyses entries in monolingual dictionaries of modern 
English. He observes that entries tend to be quite narrative in style and 
content in the early stages, while nowadays they are more formalized and 
unadorned.

In Chapter 8, "Linguistic aspects of jokes", the author states that jokes 
come in many different forms. As their effectiveness depends on many 
different factors, it is difficult both to describe and categorize them. 
The author provides a useful typology of texts that are similar to jokes. 
Then he analyses only those jokes which rely on language for their 
effectiveness. 

In Chapter 9, "Text types and the history of Scots", the author 
concentrates on text types in Scots produced after 1700. He analyzes 
formal texts (such as administrative texts), informal language (for 
instance, private letters), and literary texts (like lyrical poems). His 
conclusion is that Scots has undergone a functional reduction, and this 
destandardization has been accompanied by the shrinking of the number of 
text types in which the language is employed. 

In Chapter 10, "Text types in Indian English", the author acutely points 
out that a second language, like English in India, cannot be expected to 
exhibit the full range of styles, domains and text types. In such a 
situation, usually models and norms tend to be borrowed from outside. 
After having carried out his own analysis on a collection of Indian texts 
written in English, he reaches the conclusion that there is a need for 
further studies on a larger corpus to show how much variation there is 
within the individual text types, and how special are Indian texts written 
in English.

Chapter 11, "Facsimiles", includes 34 original reproductions of texts that 
support chapters 3, 4, 5 and 10. The source format, with original 
typefaces and illustrations, has important semiotic functions, especially 
for text types like advertisements. This section is an important 
contribution because the original formats of the texts analysed in the 
book give a better idea of the cultural context in which they have been 
produced.

CRITICAL EVALUATION

Overall, this book is a valuable contribution to the field of synchronic, 
diachronic and cross-linguistic genre analysis. It is a useful point of 
reference for all those dealing with genres and text types (the 
problematic nature of these two terms will be discussed below).

One of the main strengths of the volume is the insight that Görlach 
provides on how genres form and develop in a cultural context. Especially, 
the introductory part of Chapter 2 is enlightening in this respect, 
because it provides an overview of the development of text types over 
time. Additionally, some specific issues are of great interest for genre 
analysts, for instance the need for a label when text types become 
conventionalized (p. 9 and p. 142), vagueness and elusiveness as necessary 
conditions before a novel text type becomes formally and functionally 
established (p. 108) and so on. This insight can be helpful in 
neighbouring research fields, for instance it can help understand the 
formation of electronic genres or Web genres, so pervasive in recent 
years. The author is aware on the evolution of text types in relation to 
Information Technology, and includes an electronic genre (e-mail) in his 
extensive list of modern English text types (p. 40). 

The book has also other strengths. I will focus on two of them. First, the 
author provides two comprehensive lists, one of old English text types 
(669 items) and one of modern English text types (2000 items). They are 
useful repertoires, valuable in themselves and as starting points for 
further studies. Second, the grid of 25 categories used for the 
componential analysis helps the genre analyst reduce the individual text 
types into clusters of semantic components and is a good conceptual tool. 

An interesting point of reflexion the author makes is about German text 
linguistics from the 1970s, which has not made its way into the Anglo-
Saxon tradition (p. 7). It would be great if English translations from 
this branch of linguistics were published. Unfortunately, only few of 
these linguists wrote in English, and most of them remain untranslated. 

Despite of the many merits of the book, some points remain doubtful. 

Although it is good that many different conference papers have been 
brought together in one single volume, the book sometimes appears not to 
be an organic whole. This becomes clear when it comes to the definition 
of "text type", which is given as late as Chapter 3, p. 105. Such a 
disputed term, instead, should be defined in the very first pages, in 
order for the reader to understand the author's claims and stance. 

Another perplexity arises from the fact that the author does not give the 
definition of the term "genre" and its relation to the term "text type". 
Some authors (such as Stubbs 1998: 11) state explicitly that they use the 
two terms interchangeably. But Görlach does not specify his use of these 
two terms. The reader tends to assume that the author makes no distinction 
between them, because he refers to concepts that are usually related to 
the definition of genre when he talks about text types, for example 
writers' intentions, readers' expectations (p. 8) and conventions (p. 9). 
But then on p. 102 there is a surprising differentiation between text 
types and genres, when the author states that only literary genres have 
been extensively studied, while text types have been neglected. The use of 
Görlach's terminology becomes clear only if the reader knows that some 
German-speaking text typologists have the tendency to attach a literary 
connotation to the word "genre" and they prefer a different label to refer 
to other types of texts (Diller 2001). Görlach's definition of text type, 
however, does not explicitly mention any non-literary specialization of 
the term "text type", and it remains hard to work out this distinction, 
also because the term "genre" is used as synonym of "text type" in several 
places in the book.

An additional source of confusion stems from Görlach's use of text type in 
relation to other scholars' use of this term. Görlach states that his 
research is going to complement the relevant research undertaken by Biber 
who analyses "the patterning of a large set of linguistic features, their 
frequencies and combinability in various text types (p. 21)". From this 
sentence, the reader assumes that Biber and Görlach share the definition 
of the term "text type". This is, however, not the case. While Görlach 
lists 2000 text types for modern English, Biber 1989 suggests only eight 
text types for English (Intimate personal interaction, Informational 
interaction, Scientific exposition, Learned exposition, Imaginative 
narrative, General narrative exposition, Situated reportage, Involved 
persuasion), which are very different from Görlach's ones. Diller tries to 
remedy this confusion in a footnote in the Foreword (p. xv, Note 1), but 
it remains difficult to understand the analogy or the complementarity 
between Görlach's text types and Biber's. 

The relation with other text typologists remains unclear also when we move 
from the Anglo-Saxon tradition to the German tradition. For example, 
Werlich's text types (Werlich is one of the German linguists of the 70s 
mentioned by Görlach on p. 7) are "idealized norm of distinctive text 
structuring" (Werlich 1976: 39). In Werlich's view, the encoder has a 
choice among five text types: description, narration, exposition, 
argumentation, and instruction. Again, this text typology differs from 
Görlach's text typology. 

As Görlach himself points out, the study of text types is relatively new, 
and probably text typologists must make the additional effort to describe 
their position unambiguously within this novel discipline.

All these objections and points of discussion do not diminish the value of 
the book, which remains an important work in genre analysis of English 
texts. 

Proofreading is nearly flawless. An erroneous reference is on p. 5 (the 
history of Scots is in Chapter 9, not in Chapter 7). Figure 10 would need 
additional explanation.

REFERENCES

Biber, Douglas (1989) A typology of English texts, in Linguistics 27, 3-43.

Diller, Hans-Jürgen (2001) Genre in linguistic and related discourses, in 
Diller, Hans-Jürgen and Görlach, Manfred (eds.), Towards a History of 
English of English as a History of Genres, 2001, Winter, Heidelberg, pp. 3-
43.

Stubbs M. (1998) Text and Corpus Analysis, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford 
(first published in 1996).

Werlich E. (1976), A Text Grammar of English, Quelle & Meyer, Heidelberg 
(Germany). 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Marina Santini is a PhD candidate in Computational Linguistics at ITRI 
(Information Technology Research Institute), University of Brighton, UK. 
Her general research interests include computational analysis of text 
types and genres, and her specific research project focuses on automated 
identification of Web genres.




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