What makes a text a text? (PDF)

Essay from the year 2020 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1.3, AKAD University of Applied Sciences Stuttgart, language: English, abstract: In this essay, the question of what makes a text a text will be discussed. The seven key criteria of textuality defined by Beaugrande and Dressler will be explained using an example of a classic American drama.

The question at what point a text is a text or whether a text can be called a text at all is one of the core questions of linguistics and goes all the way back to the ancient Greek language theory of Plato and Aristotle, which dealt with this topic at the most basic level. In the 1960s, the expression "text" became a focus of linguists with the development several definitions of what a text is. Since then, numerous definitions have been formed and there is no consensus about which one is the best, but one can find many similarities among them.

The 1981 work of the Austrian linguists Robert-Alain de Beaugrande and Wolfgang U. Dressler has been used as the basis for many discussions and definitions of text ever since. Their work is often seen as a good framework for agreement which is based on seven criteria of textuality.