How to Do Things With Words

Coherence in discourse One of the pervasive illusions which persists in the analysis of language is that we understand the meaning of a linguistic message solely on the basis of the words and structure of the sentence(s) used to convey that message. We certainly rely on the syntactic structure and lexical items used in a linguistic message to arrive at an interpretation, but it is a mistake to think that we operate only with this literal input to our understanding. We can recognise, for example, when a writer has produced a perfectly grammatical sentence from which we can derive a literal interpretation, but which we would not claim to have understood, simply because we need more information. Extract (1), the first sentence of a novel, may provide an illustration of this point. (1) Within five minutes, or ten minutes, no more than that, three of the others had called her on the telephone to ask her if she had heard that something had happened out there. (Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff , Bantam Books, 1981) The novelist is, of course, leading his reader to read on and find out just what the first sentence, though literally complete, has only partially described. At the opposite extreme, we can point to linguistic messages which are not presented in sentences and consequently can't be discussed in terms of syntactic well-formedness, but which are readily interpreted.

Discourse Analysis: Coherence in the interpretation of discourse

Critical linguistics, belonging to instrumental linguistics initiated by Halliday, uses linguistics theories, mainly utilizing Halliday' s systematic functional grammar, to analyzepublic text, to reveal the hidden ideology or power relationship, and to expound philosophy and linguistic foundation of critical linguistics, its view on language, text and context.

On Critical Linguistics

An introduction to language [Fromkin, 1998]

Human communication. I. Introduction

This paper explores the concept of language and communication. It gives an exposition to the study of meaning as it diachronically investigates the theories and approaches to meaning. The crux of the study is that language is central to linguistic communication. It explains concept of meaning in language with the various theories of meaning, such as the traditional referential, ideational, behavioural, and contextual theories of meaning. It also examines some modern theoretical developments on meaning. It carries out the pragmatics and critical discourse analysis of some selected texts to demonstrate the application of some of the approaches to meaning in Language. It concludes on the ground that an understanding of approaches to meaning in language would enhance the development of knowledge and promote successful communication in various situations.

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B. Adetunji

Papers

Language and communication: an introduction to approaches to meaning and text analysis