28.3388, Review: German; Discipline of Linguistics; General Linguistics; Pragmatics; Sociolinguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics: Krieg-Holz, Bülow (2016)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-28-3388. Thu Aug 10 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.3388, Review: German; Discipline of Linguistics; General Linguistics; Pragmatics; Sociolinguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics: Krieg-Holz, Bülow (2016)

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Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 14:09:00
From: Valentina Concu [vconcu at purdue.edu]
Subject: Linguistische Stil- und Textanalyse

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-5121.html

AUTHOR: Ulrike  Krieg-Holz
AUTHOR: Lars  Bülow
TITLE: Linguistische Stil- und Textanalyse
SUBTITLE: Eine Einführung
SERIES TITLE: narr STUDIENBÜCHER
PUBLISHER: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG
YEAR: 2016

REVIEWER: Valentina Concu, Purdue University

REVIEWS EDITOR: Robert A. Coté

“Linguistische Styl- und Textanalyse” by Ulrike Krieg-Holz and Lars Bülow is
an introductory textbook on Discourse Analysis in German with the aim of
fostering the acquisition of theoretical and practical tools required in
conduction textual analyses. For this reason, the text is suitable for those
willing to build a solid background or deepen their knowledge in the field of
Textlinguistik. The book’s structure guides the reader from a general
introduction to text and textuality to more detailed accounts for
understanding the parameters and tools for textual analysis and its
applications in research. Each chapter introduces a particular aspect of
textual analysis, and relevant terminology is presented in gray boxes to
facilitate the learning of such terms. Useful examples also accompany each
definition, offering additional support for understanding the main concepts
presented in the various chapters. Furthermore, the authors provide
suggestions for further readings in both German and English at the end of
every section.

SUMMARY

Chapter 1 (Text als Linguisticher Gegenstand - Text as a linguistic research
object)   introduces the reader to the formal features of a text, such as
cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativeness,
situationality, and intertextuality. The cohesion and coherence are part of
the internal properties of a given text and concern its grammatical and
semantic structure. The remaining features are external attributes and refer
to the communicative and pragmatic characteristics of a given text. Although
such criteria are widely accepted and used for textual analyses, a text can
display different degrees of conformity to such features and may largely
depart from them.

In light of such considerations, a text is defined here as a linguistic object
with visible physical limits and a particular topic which, through its
structure, indicates its affinity to a given textual prototype. To analyze a
text means to look for those specific features that define its belonging to a
thematic field and contribute to its coherence. It is also important to
distinguish those elements that make its borders easily recognizable, as well
as those that define its belonging to a specific textual group.

Chapter 2 (Ebenen der Textbeschreibung - Levels of textual description)
discusses the different levels by which textual analyses can be carried out,
outlining the specific features of German that are suitable for such purposes.
On the textual level, the organization of a text, as well as the hierarchical
relationship among the different sections, can be seen as indicative of the
textual typology. For instance, the position of the date, signature, and forms
of address can all contribute to the categorization of a given text to a
particular type. Other elements that can be analyzed are those that account
for cohesion and coherence. Grammatical and lexical elements, together with
punctuation, are responsible for the connections of words, while the sequence
of thematics makes a text coherent. The second degree of analysis addresses
the syntactic organization of the words in a sentence, which determines the
acceptability of the various sentences and how these are interrelated to each
other. The German ''Satzklammer,'' for instance, governs the order of
grammatical elements in a sentence in independent and dependent clauses and is
a valuable parameter for the evaluation of grammaticality. The last level of
analysis concerns the morphological features, and specifically, the
inflectional morphemes, which specify the relationships between the different
lexical elements and the order in which they should appear in a given
sentence. 

Chapter 3 (Parameter der Stilbeschreibung - Parameters for style description)
offers a detailed description of the parameters for the analysis of textual
style, from the most common to the most complex ones, and provides an
exhaustive account of their application with useful examples. 

The first part of Chapter 3 discusses the goals and methods of stylistics,
which focuses on the scientific description of different text styles. These
are determined by the function of a specific text and the pragmatic intentions
of the author and contribute to the effects of a given textual style. The
reception of such texts is then influenced by the social environment in which
a text is produced, since every society shares stylistic practices with
specific parameters for the exchange of information. Stylistics aims to
uncover those linguistic and communicative elements that are relevant for the
determination of the style of a given text. For this reason, stylistics
focuses its attention on those stylistic elements that possess stylistic
values. 

The second part of Chapter 3 discusses the individual stylistic phenomena on
the textual level, such as the way the text is structured, how the elements
are connected to each other, politeness, and the morphological features of the
lexemes. The length and complexity of a sentence also indicate the textual
style as well as the position of words. In fact, German, unlike French or
English, has a certain freedom concerning the position of specific elements in
a sentence, and this can also have stylistic values for scientific analyses.
The selection of a given lexeme in place of another also contributes to the
determination of textual style, and this includes the use of neologisms,
occasionalisms, foreign words, regionalisms, and dialectisms. The inclusion of
terminology from technical languages and jargon, together with the use of
colorful expression, also accounts for the stylistic features of a text.
Lastly, rhetorical figures, such as ellipses, zeugmas, anaphors, monosyndetons
and polysyndetons, antitheses, oxymorons, chiasms, parallelisms, metaphors,
and hyperboles influence the stylistic tone of a text.

In the third part of Chapter 3, the authors describe more complex stylistic
phenomena that are used to categorize a given text and to determine its
affiliation to a specific textual typology. Depending on the content, a text
can be of a different genre: a story, a description, an explanation, a
reasoning, or indications. The grammatical and lexical choices indicate the
membership of one of these categories. The structural features of texts are
part of the complex phenomena for the determination of the stylistic tone. The
shortening of sentences through the omission of the subject or the predicate,
the use of sentence fragments, and associative or affective aesthetic
language, together with pragmatics related strategies, are also responsible
for the stylistic categorization of textual production. 

Chapter 4 (Textsorten und Textklassifikation - Text types and Text
classification) focuses on the classification of text types. In the first
part, the authors provide a brief review of the literature describing the
different approaches for text categorization and the parameters used in their
definitions, such as the stylistic means used, the structure of the text, and
the function carried out through the writing. Different scholars describe text
types using a theoretical framework based on specific categories: class,
order, family, genre, and art. The class refers to texts that are part of a
specific communicative field, which is determined by its external feature. An
example of text class is texts produced by the press, such as pieces of
journalism of variable length used to express opinions on a given topic. The
description of text types also relies today on a complex system of
extra-textual parameters, which refer to the situational, functional,
thematic, structural, and stylistic aspects. The first one goes beyond the
simple dichotomy of spoken vs. written, includes the newest channels of
communication, and takes into account the roles of the writer and the
recipient. The functional aspect emphasizes the communicative value of a text,
which is closely bound to the intention of the writer and the interest of the
reader. The thematic aspect considers the subject of the writing, which can be
a static, dynamic, or cognitive object. The structural organization is also a
valuable instrument to determine the text typology and refers, for instance,
to the page and text length. The last aspect used to describe textual types is
the linguistic style, which is of high relevance for the categorization of a
given text. The pragmatic nuance is determined by the language and the way of
thinking, which are strongly intertwined with each other and serve as
parameters for textual analyses.

Chapter 5 (Anwendungen - Applications) focuses on the application of textual
and stylistic analyses in different fields, such as forensic linguistics,
Kiezdeutsch, and the writing didactic. Indeed, the parameters described
throughout the four chapters can be applied for the identification of the
perpetrator of a crime in a legal case, for the description of the
German-Turkish spoken variety in the youth population, or to study the
learnability of the written language in the first years of primary education. 

EVALUATION

“Linguistische Still- und Textanalyse” is, first of all, a valuable tool for
the understanding and acquisition of the specific linguistic devices for
textual analysis. The authors present a particular aspect of this discipline
in every chapter, combining detailed depictions of the most relevant
parameters to carry out accurate analyses with numerous and elucidative
examples, which facilitate the comprehension of the features that account for
textual style and typology. 

However, this volume is not merely a descriptive textbook about stylistics and
a collection of useful examples taken from modern German. On several
occasions, the authors remind the reader of the questionable character of the
categorization of texts. They also point out how a comprehensive understanding
of this matter must also consider the fact that it is in the nature of
categories that they are limiting and not able to account for the complexity
and diversity of text production. As the authors mention, text classifications
are not only the result of the theoretical and scientific analyses carried out
by different scholars but also involve the various ideas and conceptions of
the text in the minds of the participants of the communicative exchange in
modern society (p. 27). With this in mind, and throughout the volume, the
authors successfully attempt to bridge the gap between the scientific
discourse on textual analysis and the relevance of the social environment in
which texts are conceived and produced. This volume highlights the relevance
of both the writers and the recipients of a text, both with specific cognitive
configuration about textual categories. For this reason, I believe this volume
offers not only a valid instrument for the scientific understanding of textual
analysis but also an excellent opportunity to reflect on the current status of
the discipline, fostering interesting debates around the challenges and
difficulties of textual typologies. 

Worthy of special mention is the last chapter, in which the authors discuss
the practical applications of textual analysis in various fields. In line with
the other sections, Chapter 5 also successfully links scientific discourse to
society, providing an accurate and contemporary  spectrum of some of the
career-related possibilities for students and scholars interested in textual
analysis.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

I'm an international Ph.D. student from Italy in the Department of German and
Russian at Purdue University. After spending several years in Germany, I am
pursuing my degree in the USA.<br />My research interests include, but are not
limited to Historical Linguistics, Cognitive Linguistics, Pragmatics, and
Second Languages Acquisition.<br />After graduation, I would like to get a
post-doctoral position in Linguistics, with a focus on the emergence of
language and language change.





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