Seven Standards of Textuality

For a moment, think about the last novel which you read. Now, consider
the latest newspaper article you read. Both of these pieces of texts involved similar
comprehension tasks the reader wanted to understand what ideas the author of the
text was communicating. So it is somewhat unusual that the way in which you read the
two pieces was very different in each case. As a means of communication texts play a
very important role in getting the meaning across others. Having very different types like
literary and expressive, scientific and informative, they are expected to meet the
expectation of different purposed readers. In other words, no matter what type it may
be, every text ought to address certain receivers who read it for a specific purpose like
to get information, to read for fun and others. Textuality is the quality or use of language
characteristic of written works as different to spoken usage, it is the strict observance to
a text. It is the nature or identifying quality of a text.
Textuality follows seven standards for a satisfying text including Cohesion,
Coherence, Intentionality, Acceptability, Informativity, Situationality, Intertextuality. When
we say Cohesion in stylistics refers to the grammatical unity of a text in which different
components exist. In order to make a whole structure and unity of components, some
elements such as recurrence, paralleism, paraphrase, pro-forms, anaphora, use of
tense, junction etc. are helpful supporting elements. For example in parallelism, our
goal is to provide them with a reasonable quality of life and an extension of life.
This is necessary for avoiding monotony and ineffectiveness resulting from repeating
the same grammatical units over and over. Coherence refers as the continuity of senses
in a text. What makes a text coherent is the use of related words, utterances etc. This
relation is provided when there is causality, reason, purpose ,time, enablement in the
text. For example if the text is reflected as What to do for health care this text may be
exemplified as mechanical heart implant , revolutionary procedure, first major advance,
alternative to transplantation, Jewish Hospital, heart transplant, new heart, donors,
candidates for a heart transplant patient, die, ends of their lives, critically ill, life
expectancy, surgeons. In terms of Intentionality, the producer of text brings his/her
words together to achieve a specific goal. Text must be produced in a cohesive and
coherent way so that it serves for the text-producers intention. For example, the
sentence 'Cats are animals is about cats and about animal the belief that cats are
animals is about cats, as is the fear of cats, the desire to have many cats, and seeing
that the cats are on the mats.
In terms of Acceptability, readers of a text receive that text for various
purposes. Reading a text means expecting something from that. Consequently, for the
matching of readers expectations with what is meant in the text, there must be a
coherent and cohesive set of components which form it. For example, He accepted that
book as a present from John , it is a jargon, speaker-hearer accepts an utterance from

another speaker as a sentence of his language. Informativity on the other hand is

concern with how unexpected,expected or known,unknown are the occurrences in the
text. For example in the text like, where the mechanical heart implant takes place, how
different is implantation from transplantation, how it works, the producer of the device,
its benefits, how successful it is, etc. It is ordinary trivial knowledge such as articles,
prepositions. It is not about the content, but also to receive little attention to the text. In
terms of Situationality, a text also must be relevant to a situation of occurrence. This is
related with the context and the situation the reader is in. For example, Slow cars held
up the group of receivers (motorists) who are required to provide a particular action will
find it more reasonable to assume that "slow" requires them to slow down rather than
referring to the speed of the cars that are ahead. Lastly, Intertextuality; the reading
process our stored knowledge, experience, previous readings all affect the present
reading perception. That is why the production and the reception of a given text
depends on the participants knowledge of other texts. For example, "Lord of the Flies"
Golding's novel which is nevertheless rooted in the idea of adventures that young boys
can have on an isolated island. He grounds his novel in gritty realism, illustrating the
consequences of fighting as well as the savagery that can overtake the human heart as
the concept of civilization is lost for the characters.
In conclusion to this topic it implies that when studying these standards it
becomes clear that a very broad knowledge base of stylistics is involved in the
description of texts. The study of cohesion entails for certain knowledge of syntax,
semantics even as intentionality and acceptability cannot be studied without serious
knowledge of pragmatics. Contextuality is very much dependent on knowledge of
sociolinguistics and pragmatics, while intertextuality has to do with the experience of
previous texts literary and non-literary. Coherence can be regarded as the umbrellaterm for all these aspects while a certain amount of psycholinguistics is also needed in
order to understand the communicative value of a text. It implies the if we do not know
some of linguistics we cant easily cope up with these standards.Therefore text
stylistics certainly does not claim to solve all the problems regarding the study of
language, but it does claim that it can help to solve many problems that have to do with
the way language is used to communicate. Even though not all the writers followed it. It
seems to be the most relevant component of stylistics, and not just merely another way
of studying stylistics.

References:
Examples of Intertextuality in English Literature. (n.d.). Retrieved
http://english.answers.com/writing-guides/examples-of-intertextuality-in-englishliterature

from

Literacy - Intertextuality - Texts, Social, Text, and Practices - StateUniversity.com. (n.d.).

Retrieved
from
http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2184/LiteracyINTERTEXTUALITY.html
Textual analysis and stylistics | Peter Stockwell - Academia.edu. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://www.academia.edu/1524600/_Textual_analysis_and_stylistics_
Introduction
to
Text
Linguistics.
(n.d.).
http://beaugrande.com/introduction_to_text_linguistics.html

Retrieved

from

Consciousness and Intentionality (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). (n.d.).

Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-intentionality/
Intentionality. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://web.mit.edu/abyrne/www/intentionality.html
Cohesion (linguistics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Retrieved July 6, 2015,
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohesion_(linguistics)
Stylistics | Katya Kachkovska - Academia.edu.
https://www.academia.edu/8263603/Stylistics

(n.d.).

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