Introduction to Text Linguistics by Robert de Beaugrande and Wolfgang Dressier (review)

Book Reviews103 given credit for Grimm's Law (p. 33), the phonetic alphabet presented is called IPA (p. 44), it is claimed that there are seven ablaut classes (p. 72), the date of Verner's famous article is given as 1875 (p. 73), the [g] in egg and in give are put in the same basket (p. 89), the Old English plural ending is given as -en (p. 117), shall and will are characterized as becoming auxiliaries only in Middle English (p. 178), German and Dutch are characterized as deriving from a single proto-language (p. 208), Norwegian and Danish are called mutually unintelligible (p. 208), the [Iu] in duke, news, etc. is termed a dipthongization from original [u] (pp. 222-223), etc. It is also unfortunate that the author twice (pp. 71, 186) discusses the common "error" ofusing objective whom in constructions like "... the man whom I thought he was," since Jesperson has long since shown usage to be superior to logic in this case (The Philosophy of Grammar: appendix [1924]). Analogy is treated, rather unfortunately, as the tool of reformers — and not as a natural phenomenon — when the tendency among nonstandard speakers to say hisself, theirselves on the pattern of myself, etc. is characterized as "curious" (p. 175). The strength which offsets these details is the ability of the author to give example after example from the great literary monuments of English literature in support of his historical points. The textis richly providedwith most relevantquotes, a feature which should make the text work with students ofliterature where a more purely linguistic work would fail. For the right kind of student, then, this book can be recommended, as long as care is taken with linguistic detail. DANIEL BRINK Arizona State University Robert de Beaugrande and Wolfgang Dressier. Introduction to Text Linguistics. London and New York: Longman, 1981. 27Op. Semiotics can be divided into three areas of study: syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. The last of these focuses on language as a social act, seeking to formulate the rules according to which a speech act is appropriate relative to a context. Modern linguistics formerly investigated the framework of the sentence as the largest unit with an inherent structure, and the structures that might exist beyond the sentence became the domain of rhetoric or stylistics. When such structures were first studied, it was in terms of classification, with no clear picture provided as to how texts are utilized in social activity and no criteria offered that would distinguish texts from nontexts. This excellent and compact study by Beaugrande and Dressier offers an approach that seeks to discover regularities, strategies, motivations, preferences, and defaults rather than rules and laws, with emphasis on dominances, acceptability, appropriateness, and human reasoning processes. It explains the important work carried out in Europe by János Petöfi, Teun A. van Dijk, and Igor Mel'cuk, relating it to the Chomskyan grammar so prevalent in the United States during the previous decade and presenting a new synthesis of the most recent findings. It suggests that all texts meet standards of cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality, and intertextuality. Following speech-act theorist John Searle, these standards are defined as constitutive principles — those that "constitute (and also regulate) an activity the existence of which is logically dependent on the rules." Efficiency, effectiveness, and 104ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW appropriateness are given as the regulative rules of textuality. Following one chapter on the evolution of text linguistics and another on the assumptions inherent in a procedural approach to the study of the text (operationality and human plausibility are decisive criteria, with motivation and strategies of text users important topics of investigation), each of the seven standards of textuality is explained and illustrated. Literary texts are thoroughly integrated into the discussion, with a knowledgeable treatment of some of their special distinctions. The book is especially readable for its wide-ranging selection of sample texts, many of which are literary. The authors have provided analyses of many of these to illustrate how the theory they set forth may be applied. Another outstanding feature is the extensive thirtypage bibliography. Careful indexing makes the book easy to use. Scholars who have found recent titles by Jonathan...