Text Linguistics - A Reading List

Abbott, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Barthes, Roland. S/Z: An Essay. Translated by Richard Miller. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1974.

Barthes, Roland. Image, Music, Text. Translated by Stephen Heath. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.

Beaugrande, Robert de. Text, Discourse, and Process: Toward a Multidisciplinary Science of Texts. London: Longman Publishing Group, 1980.

Beaugrande, Robert de and Dressler, Wolfgang. Introduction to Text Linguistics. London: Longman Publishing Group, 1981.

Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974.

Eco, Umberto. The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979.

Fish, Stanley. Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980.

Foucault, Michel. "What is an Author?" in Twentieth Century Literary Theory. Edited by Vassilis Lambropoulos and David Neal Miller. Albany: State University Press of New York, 1987.

Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse Revisited. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.

Halliday, M.A.K. and Hasan, Ruqaiya. Cohesion in English. London: Longman, 1976.

Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.

Kristeva, Julia. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980.

Riffaterre, Michael. Semiotics of Poetry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984.

Silverman, Jonathan and Rader, Dean. The World is a Text: Writing, Reading and Thinking about Visual and Popular Culture. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2008.

Titscher, Stefan et al. Methods of Text and Discourse Analysis. London: Sage: 2000.

Vanhoozer, Kevin J. Is There a Meaning in This Text? The Bible, The Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998.

Applications of Text Theory to Moral Philosophy

Text theory may be relevant to moral philosophy insofar as moral acts may be regarded as texts to be read or interpreted. The textuality of moral acts may be defined by their structural cohesion and coherence,¹ by their ability to be "read" or interpreted, and by their relations to other texts (their intertextuality or transtextuality). 

      The textuality of moral acts may have syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic dimensions. The syntactic dimension(s) of a moral act may be based on its "grammaticality" (its conformity to the formation rules specified by the moral "language"). The semantic dimension(s) of a moral act may be based on its meaningfulness or capacity to signify perceptions, thoughts, and feelings, as determined by its conformity to specified rules of meaning and signification. The pragmatic dimension(s) of a moral act may be based on its usefulness, adaptability, instrumentality, or functionality, as determined by the purposes and functions for which it is used, and by the moral (sociocultural, linguistic, or discursive) context in which it occurs.

      Moral acts may belong to lexical and semantic fields (or domains) that provide linguistic, discursive, and situational contexts for their interpretation. The meaning of moral acts may be determined not only by their form and content, but also by their moral (sociocultural, historical, and psychological) contexts and subtexts. 

      The meaning or signification of moral acts may be determined not only by the intentions of their "author(s)," but also by their semantic content, their situational and interpretive context(s), and the accompanying interpretive process in which the reader(s) or audience participate(s). The "readers" or interpreters of a moral act may include all those individuals to whom the act is presented as a linguistic (sociocultural, psychological, or moral) text and all those individuals for whom the act is relevant. The authorial intentions behind or underlying a moral act may be part of the author's motivations for performing that act. 

      The interpretive or hermeneutic process may be influenced by the reader's preconceptions regarding the author's aims or intentions, although those preconceptions may in some cases be misleading. Accurate, well-placed, and well-founded preconceptions on the part of the reader may, in some cases, facilitate his/her understanding of the author's intentions, but inaccurate, misplaced, and baseless preconceptions may lead to his/her misunderstanding of those intentions.² 

      The intended meaning of a text may also be different from the actual meaning of that text, and the actual meaning of the text may depend on the temporal, sociocultural, and interpretive context.

      Textual analysis may include study of the rhetoric, stylistics, semantics, pragmatics, ideology, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics of a text (speech-act, linguistic sign, sign system, or mode of discourse). Textual analysis may also include study of the discursive strategies and communicative competence of a text, as well as study of the text's linguistic (discursive, sociocultural, or historical) context, and the text's relations to other texts.

      Any text may be subject to overreadings (assignments to the text of meanings that are not actually expressed or implied by the text), underreadings (instances of failure to recognize meanings that are actually expressed or implied by the text), and misreadings (misrepresentations of meanings that are actually expressed or implied by the text).³ 

      Moral acts as texts may be dialogic interactions⁴ between "authors" and "readers," and between texts and other texts (acts, events, sign systems, or fields of interpretation, insofar as they are also texts). The moral meaning of any particular act or text may always be further interpreted in light of the contribution to its meaning by other acts or texts. 

      A text may exhibit both an internal and external dialogism. It may engage in dialogue with itself, as well as with other texts.⁵ 

      The interpretation of moral acts may include examination of not only their actual meaning(s), but also their potential meaning(s). A single moral act may have multiple levels of actual and potential meaning. Interpretation of a moral act may thus entail study or clarification of the conditions that made that particular act possible.

      Since a moral act or text may always be further interpreted in light of other acts or texts, no interpretation can be called final or definitive. Hermeneutics as a process of textual understanding is never finalizable.⁶

      The relation between moral philosophy and text theory may be further illuminated by examining the relation between ethics and language. Just as there is a language of ethics, there is an ethics of language. Just as moral philosophy may illuminate text theory, text theory may illuminate moral philosophy. Moral understanding may be based on an ability to correctly "read" or interpret the meaning of moral intentions, principles, acts, etc. and their respective outcomes. Moral misunderstanding may similarly be based on an inability or failure to correctly "read" the meaning of moral intentions, principles, acts, etc.

      A given reader may read a text repeatedly, and yet read that text in a slightly different way each time she returns to it. The reader may experience the text as in some way changed (perhaps in the light of her own formative experiences in the interim) with each subsequent reading. The reader may herself be changed in some way by each subsequent reading of that text.

¹M.A.K. Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan, Cohesion in English (Hong Kong: Longman Group Ltd., 1976), p. 22.

²Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: The Seabury Press, 1975), p. 263.

³H. Porter Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 239.

⁴Mikhail Bakhtin, "Discourse in the Novel," in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin, edited by Michael Holquist, translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), p. 279.

⁵Ibid. p. 282.

⁶Leslie A. Baxter, Voicing Relationships: A Dialogic Perspective (Los Angeles: Sage, 2011), p. 26.

Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem

Kurt Gödel was an Austrian-American logician and mathematician who was born in 1906 in the city of Brünn, in Austria-Hungary (now the city of Brno, in the Czech Republic). He studied and taught mathematics at the University of Vienna, where he participated in meetings of the Vienna Circle, the famous group of philosophers that included Moritz Schlick (1882-1936) and Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970). In 1931, at the age of 25, he published a proof that is now known as Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem and that demonstrated the existence of formally undecidable propositions in any formal system of arithmetic (such as that described by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell in the Principia Mathematica).¹ This theorem is one of the most famous theorems in modern mathematics.² In 1939, Gödel and his wife Adele emigrated to the United States, where he became a member of the faculty of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., and where he developed a close friendship with Albert Einstein. Gödel and his wife became U.S. citizens in 1948. He died in Princeton, N.J. in 1978.

      One way of roughly summarizing Gödel's (First) Incompleteness Theorem, as described by the cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter (1999), is to say that it shows that any consistent axiomatic formulation of number theory includes undecidable propositions (propositions that can neither be proven nor be disproven within that axiomatic formulation).³

      Another way of roughly summarizing Gödel's (First) Incompleteness Theorem, as described by the logician and mathematician Jean van Heijenoort (1967), is to say that it shows that in any formal system adequate for number theory, there are formulas that are neither provable nor disprovable. A corollary to this theorem is that the consistency of any formal system adequate for number theory cannot be proven within that system.⁴ No consistent formal system that is adequate for number theory can prove its own consistency. This is known as Gödel's Second Incompleteness Theorem.

      Another way of roughly summarizing Gödel's (First) Incompleteness Theorem, as described by the logician and philosopher Geoffrey Hunter (1971), is to say that it shows that for any consistent system S of formal arithmetic, if S has decidable sets of formulas and proofs and contains representations of every decidable set of natural numbers, then S is incomplete.⁵ Thus, for any consistent system of formal arithmetic in which (1) the set of axioms and the rules of inference are recursively definable, and (2) every recursive relation is definable, there are undecidable arithmetical propositions of the form (x)Fx, where F is a recursively defined property of natural numbers.⁶ 

      Another way of roughly summarizing Gödel's (First) Incompleteness Theorem, as described by the logician and philosopher Peter Suber (2002), is to say that it shows that any consistent formal system of arithmetic that is of sufficient strength (to have decidable sets of formulas and proofs and to represent every decidable set of natural numbers) is deductively incomplete.⁷ In other words, any consistent formal system of arithmetic that is of sufficient strength contains arithmetical propositions that are undecidable (that are neither provable nor disprovable within that system). 

      This means that within any consistent nontrivial formal system of arithmetic, there are arithmetical propositions that are true or false but that cannot be proven to be true or false within that system. The axioms and inference rules of any consistent nontrivial formal system of arithmetic are insufficient to decide the truth or falsehood of every arithmetical proposition expressible within that system. It is impossible to devise a consistent nontrivial system of formal arithmetic whose axioms and inference rules are complete enough to prove or disprove all the arithmetical propositions expressible within that system. No formal system of arithmetic that is of sufficient strength to have decidable sets of formulas and proofs and to represent every decidable set of natural numbers can be both consistent and deductively complete.⁸

      Moreover, a consistent formal system adequate for number theory cannot prove its own consistency. It cannot guarantee that it will not contain some inconsistency.

      This means that in order for every possible proposition expressible within a nontrivial formal system of arithmetic to be provable or disprovable, the system has to be in some way inconsistent. Deductive completeness within such a system must therefore come at the price of inconsistency. All consistent nontrivial formal systems of arithmetic are deductively incomplete.

      The logician and philosopher Jaako Hintikka (1996) explains that it is important not to confuse the incompleteness of a nonlogical (mathematical) theory with the nonaxiomatizability of a logical theory.⁹ He also explains that it is important not to confuse deductive incompleteness (the inability of an axiomatic system to prove or disprove all propositions expressible within that system) with semantic incompleteness (the inability of an axiomatic system to express as theorems all logically valid sentences of the underlying language), or with descriptive incompleteness (the inability of a formal system to provide models of all the objects or sets of objects that it is asked to describe), or with Hilbertian incompleteness (the inability of an axiomatic system to provide a set of axiomatic models to which none can be added without violating the axioms of that system).

¹Larousse Biographical Dictionary, ed. by Magnus Magnusson and Rosemary Goring (New York: Larousse, 1990), p. 598.

²Ibid., p. 598.

³Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Goldren Braid (New York: Basic Books, 1999), p. 17.

⁴Jean van Heijenoort, "Gödel's Theorem," in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by Paul Edwards, Vol. 3 (New York: MacMillan, 1967), p. 348. 

⁵Geoffrey Hunter, Metalogic: An Introduction to the Metatheory of Standard First Order Logic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), p. 228.

⁶Kurt Gödel, "On formally undecidable propositions of Principia Mathematica and related systems" [Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme," 1931] in Kurt Gödel Collected Works, Volume I, edited by Solomon Feferman, et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) p. 181.

⁷Peter Suber, "Glossary of First-Order Logic," (1999-2002), online at http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/courses/logsys/glossary.htm.

⁸Ibid.

⁹Jaako Hintikka, The Principles of Mathematics Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 91.

Leibniz's Law

G.W. Leibniz (1646-1716) says in Section IX of his Discourse on Metaphysics (Discours de Métaphysique, 1686) that no two substances can be exactly alike. This is known as Leibniz's Law. Another way of expressing this is: No two substances can be exactly the same and yet be numerically different. If two substances were exactly the same, then they would be the same substance and would not be two separate substances. 

      Leibniz's Law (that no two things can share all their properties in common) can be expressed in a positive way as follows: if two things are identical, then they share all their properties in common (this metaphysical principle is called the indiscernibility of identicals), and conversely, if two things share all their properties in common, then they are identical (this metaphysical principle is called the identity of indiscernibles). According to the indiscernibility of identicals, if two things are identical, then no difference between them is discernible, and according to the identity of indiscernibles, if no difference is discernible between two things, then they are identical.

      An objection that might be raised to the identity of indiscernibles is that if two things are superimposed on each other, then they might temporarily share all their properties in common and yet not be the same. It might not be possible to discern that they are two things, rather than one. An objection that might be raised to the indiscernibility of identicals is that if two things are, to any means of detection, identical, then they might still differ from each other in a property that is undetectable. It might not be possible in practice to detect any difference between them. 

      Thus, a distinction may need to be made between theoretical and practical discernibility. The difference between two nonidentical things may in some cases not be practically discernible or verifiable. Similarly, the sameness of two things may in some cases not be practically discernible or verifiable.             

      Leibniz's Law can be expressed symbolically as (x)(y) [x=y → (F)(Fx ↔ Fy)], which may be read as "for every x and for every y, if x is identical to y, then every property F that is possessed by x is also possessed by y, and every property F that is possessed by y is also possessed by x" (this is the indiscernibility of identicals), and conversely as (x)(y) [(F )(Fx ↔ Fy) → x=y], which may be read as "for every x and for every y, if every property F that is possessed by x is also possessed by y, and every property F that is possessed by y is also possessed by x, then x is identical to y" (this is the identity of indiscernibles).
      The philosopher Max Black (1952) offers several arguments against the principle that if no difference is discernible between two things, then they are identical. He argues that two things cannot be identical, since if they were, then they would be only one thing, and not two. If we say that a is identical to b, then we are merely using two different names to refer to the same thing. And if a and b are merely two different names for the same thing, then when we say that "a is identical to b," we are merely saying that "a is a," which is a tautology. The principle that "If there is no difference between a and b, then they are the same" is trivial. And if there were a universe consisting of two exactly similar spheres, then conceivably two things could share the same properties and still not be the same, and thus the identity of indiscernibles would again be put into question.¹

      It may, however, be worth noting that two things may be similar to, or the same as, each other in possessing many distinct kinds of properties. Identity between two things may involve material, formal, spatial, temporal, relational, and other kinds of properties.

      Can an exact duplicate or replica of something be properly called "identical to" or "the same as" that thing? If so, why may there still be some doubt or uncertainty about whether the two things are alike in every respect? What may happen to the identity of the two things as they change over a period of time?

      Do changes in the properties of things always change the natures of those things? Moreover, do changes in the physical, intellectual, emotional, or social attributes of a person always change the nature of that person?  Are you the same person that you were 5 minutes ago? 7 days ago? 5 years ago?
      Surely, there must be some properties that are relevant to sameness, and some that are irrelevant. Should we then relativize or qualify the indiscernibility of identicals by saying that in order for two things to be the same, they must share all properties that are essential or relevant to their sameness? Some properties may be essential to the identity of two things, while other properties may be unessential. 

¹Max Black, "The Identity of Indiscernibles," in Mind, Vol. 61, No. 242 (April, 1952) pp. 153-164.

Moral Agency and Personhood

In an article published in the February 18, 2010 edition of The New England Journal of Medicine, Martin Monti et al. reported that functional MRI scanning may detect awareness and cognition in some patients with severe brain injuries who have no other evidence of sustained, reproducible, purposeful, or voluntary behavioral responses to visual, auditory, tactile, or noxious stimuli. Thus, a small proportion of such patients who have severe brain damage and who appear to be unconscious or only minimally conscious (with wakefulness but without awareness) may actually have some level of awareness as detected on functional MRI scanning, and may in fact be able to communicate by willfully modulating their brain activity.¹ 

      In an editorial in the same edition of the NEJM, Allan H. Ropper noted that "The unfortunate term 'vegetative' has been used to describe patients whose eyes open after a period of coma but who lack any meaningful responses to stimuli. Open eyes give the impression of normal alertness, but the patient's behavioral repertoire is limited to reflexive actions such as posturing or purposeless movements, roving eye movements, swallowing, and yawning."² 

      The term "persistent vegetative state" (PVS) has been used to refer to prolonged states of unconsciousness (due to traumatic or non-traumatic brain injuries, degenerative or metabolic brain disorders, or severe congenital malformations of the nervous system) in which the patient is completely unaware of self and of the environment but has sleep-wake cycles, with preservation of hypothalamic and brainstem autonomic functions. Such patients "show no evidence of sustained, reproducible, purposeful or voluntary behavioral responses to visual, auditory, tactile, or noxious stimuli; show no evidence of language comprehension or expression; have bowel and bladder incontinence; and have variably preserved cranial nerve and spinal reflexes."³ They may be able to exhibit such behaviors as blinking, swallowing, groaning, grimacing, breathing spontaneously, and reflex posturing of the limbs, but they are unable to eat, drink, talk, or make purposeful limb movements. As a result of being permanently confined to bed or chair, they also tend to develop such complications as muscle wasting, limb and joint contractures, skin breakdown, pressure sores, recurrent urinary tract infections, and pneumonia.⁴

      However, the term "vegetative" has pejorative connotations, and implies that the patient who is in this state of unconsciousness is merely vegetating or is merely a vegetable. The term diminishes the personhood of the person who is in this condition.

      The study by Monti et al. in the Feb. 18, 2010 edition of the NEJM demonstrates that a small proportion of patients who have been previously diagnosed as having entered a "persistent vegetative state" may actually have some awareness and cognition. They may be able to respond to auditory stimuli, and they may be able to voluntarily modify their brain activity in order to perform simple communicational tasks.

      Are individuals with depressed levels of consciousness who are minimally aware of their environment but unable to make any behavioral responses able to retain their moral agency? Are individuals who are fully aware of their environment but unable to make any behavioral responses (such as completely paralyzed individuals, or individuals with the "locked-in syndrome," as originally described by Plum and Posner in 1966)⁵ able to retain their moral agency? Such individuals obviously retain their personhood, but can they still function as moral agents? Are they still responsible for whatever thoughts and feelings they may have? 

      What are the criteria for moral agency? Moral agency is a contributor to, but not a requirement for, personhood, since some persons (such as small children and the mentally impaired or handicapped) may not have sufficient voluntary control over their actions to be held morally responsible for them. The proper definition of personhood is quite controversial, since legal recognition of personhood conveys various rights and responsibilities upon any being who is legally considered to be a person. Thus, the politics of personhood has complicated the development of consensus regarding such issues as the nature of reproductive health rights, the legitimacy of end-of-life decision making, the nature of corporate personhood, and the nature of animal rights. 

      Any attempt to establish a definite set of criteria for personhood may be problematic, insofar as any such set of criteria may not be sufficiently inclusive. Every human being is a person. Whether non-humans can also be considered persons is a matter that has been much discussed elsewhere (e.g. Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, 1993; Sarah Chan and John Harris, "Human Animals and Nonhuman Persons," in The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics, ed. by Tom L. Beauchamp and R.G. Frey, 2011). Every person has a personality, i.e. a set of physical, cognitive, perceptual, mental, emotional, and social traits or characteristics that define him/her as a distinct individual. The identity of each person is also defined by his/her relations with other persons.

      Agency may be defined as the state of acting or of having the capacity to act (independently or in cooperation with other agents). An agent may be defined as an individual or collective entity that acts or is capable of acting. An agent may act autonomously or in cooperation with other agents--in, upon, through, because of, by means of, for the purpose of, or in behalf of some other agent or entity. 

      Moral agency may be defined as the state of acting or of having the capacity to act, such that the agent is in a position to be held morally responsible for their actions. In order to be held fully responsible for their actions, an agent must have sufficient autonomy (or freedom of choice) to be held fully responsible for their actions, their actions must be voluntary and under their own control, and the actions must be intentional.

     There may be many kinds of agency, including physical, moral, human, non-human, rational, legal, and professional agency. Physical agents include biological, chemical, environmental, radiologic, and thermal agents. Legal agents include law enforcement officers, attorneys, legal guardians, legal representatives, executors, contractors, brokers, and lobbyists. Business and professional agents include literary, theatrical, sports, travel, insurance, booking, sales, and real estate agents.
      Agents acting jointly or collectively may share a moral responsibility for their joint or collective actions. The nature of the responsibility of each agent for a joint or collective action may depend on whether each agent is a willing participant in the action, whether each agent is aware of the possible consequences of the action, and whether each agent has the ability to promote, prevent, or modify the expected or actual outcome of the action.

¹Martin M. Monti, et al. "Willful Modulation of Brain Activity in Disorders of Consciousness." N Eng J Med; 362: 579-589, Feb. 18, 2010.

²Allan H. Ropper. "Cogito Ergo Sum by MRI." N Engl J Med; 362: 648-649, Feb. 18, 2010.

³The Multi-Society Task Force on PVS. "Medical Aspects of the Persistent Vegetative State." N Engl J Med; 330: 1499-1508, May 26, 1994.
⁴American Hospice Foundation. "Coma and Persistent Vegetative State: An Exploration of Terms." 2005, at http://www.americanhospice.org/articles-mainmenu-8/caregiving-mainmenu-10/50-coma-and-persistent-vegetative-state-an-exploration-of-terms.

⁵Fred Plum and Jerome B. Posner. The Diagnosis of Stupor and Coma. Philadelphia: F.A. Davis and Company, 1966.