On ancient vs. modern, eastern vs. western, contributions to text coherence theory

ABSTRACT

In modern linguistics, coherence is considered a fundamental property of text. The study of this phenomenon is quite novel, since its origin dates back to the 1960s. However, although in the historiography of linguistics we find no traces of it, both the concept and its study are not so modern as one might think. By studying text unity, current linguistics addresses a central question both in Aristotle’s Poetics and in 19th–century hermeneutical speculation. Also, linguists are addressing a basic notion of ancient Chinese literary criticism, which we cannot ignore. Thus, the objectives of this paper are to analyse these little-known antecedents, with the purpose of contrasting them; to insert the modern study of coherence in the tradition of both Western and Chinese thought; and to assess directly the contributions and merits of these traditions within the history of linguistics. The research carried out shows surprising results. A similar idea of text coherence is identified in both Western and Chinese traditions, but the most astonishing finding is the existence of a pioneering theory of coherence which was fully developed in China more than 1,500 years ago, predating modern explanatory models by many centuries.

KEYWORDS:

• Text coherence
• literary criticism
• hermeneutics
• China
• tradition

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers of Language & History for their insightful comments and suggestions, which have all been taken into account and have improved the final version of this paper. I also gratefully acknowledge Dr. Giles Witton-Davies, from National Taiwan University, for his help with the language revision, as well as the College of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Tamkang University, which funded this revision.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ On practical grounds, no theoretical distinction between discourse and text, spoken and written text, text linguistics and discourse analysis, is made in this article.

² This notion of unity is not so obviously found in other Aristotle’s linguistic works, such as Rhetoric oror De interpretatione.

³ See also Schleiermacher (1998, 24, 27, 70, 80, 109, 140, 148, 152, 154).

⁴ Also translated as On Literature, Essay on Literature, The Poetic Exposition on Literature.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the College of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Tamkang University.

Notes on contributors

José Miguel Blanco Pena

José Miguel Blanco Pena PhD in Linguistics (1998) from the University of Navarra (Spain), and currently Full Professor in the Department of Spanish at Tamkang University (Taiwan), where he has worked since 1999. A specialist in Text Linguistics and didactics of Spanish as a foreign language, he is Co-founder and Co-director of SinoELE international research group, and also Editor-in-chief of the electronic academic journal SinoELE, specialised in teaching Spanish to Chinese speakers. He is a member of the international research team Fono.ele (University of Alcalá, Spain), and collaborator of the Master’s Degree in Linguistics Applied to the Teaching of Spanish as a Foreign Language (University of Jaén, Spain). He has participated in several organising and scientific committees for national and international conferences. Principal investigator and collaborator of several projects sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Government of Taiwan, and the Ministry of Science and Innovation and Education of the Government of Spain. He has given lectures, talks and training workshops at different institutions and universities in Spain, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and is the author, coordinator and editor of numerous publications on Linguistics and teaching Spanish to Chinese speakers.