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Text linguistic science, respectively discourse analysis, is a rather young linguistic discipline, which was mainly established in the 1960s and 70s. It mainly emerged from three linguistic movements: rhetoric, stylistics and structural analysis of narratives.

Discourse analysis tries to figure out specific schemes which are relevant to define a chain of words as a text. As there have always been different definitions of what a text is it is absolutely necessary in this paper which definition is actually used. However, it has to be said that there is still no one and only valid definition of what a text is.

Thus, the beginning of the paper deals with several theoretical subjects and explains the term “text” that is relevant for the following analysis. Besides, it describes which criteria have to be fulfilled in order to achieve textuality. In the course of the analysis the paper applies the introduced text theory to an excerpt of David Lodge’s novel 7KLQNV« which was published in 2001. The

excerpt’s textuality is examined by illustrating how far the seven criteria of textuality are fulfilled. This novel was chosen because it combines many different ways of telling. The analyzed extract, for example, is a stream of consciousness and contains many peculiarities. Therefore, it is very interesting to figure out if the passage can be defined as a text without problems. Furthermore, this paper analyzes the relevant peculiarities in the text’s structure and in its syntax. In the course of this analysis, again, several necessary theoretical aspects are explained. Furthermore, the text type is named. As there are no peculiarities in the text’s sound structure and as sign theory does not play a role these two points are not taken into consideration. At the end some concluding remarks sum up the text analysis’s most important results.

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The analyzed text passage is an extract of David Lodge’ s last novel 7KLQNV« , which was published by Secker and Warburg in 2001. The novel

contains several different narrative perspectives. The passage which is to be analyzed is an interior monologue, a so-called stream of consciousness in the firstperson point of view:

Looking at the text superficially it becomes clear that there are some peculiarities. For example, there are many jumps from one idea to the other which is emphasized by using three dots behind each other (… ). Without reading the text more aware the recipient will not be able to understand the sentences’ meaning. Thus, the reader is forced to exert his mind in order to arrange the words. Hence, the physical appearance of the words can influence the recipient in his judgment. Obviously, there are several characteristics which turn a chain of sentences into a text. Consequently, there are both interior and exterior aspects that are of importance for achieving textuality.

¹ Lodge, David,7KLQNV(London, 2001), p.1.

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In everyday life one usually associates the term “text” with a written piece of work which is generally more or less informative. However, if one has a look at the different definitions that are given by dictionaries, it becomes obvious that there is no one and only valid definition. Nevertheless, this paper uses a particular meaning by applying the term “text”. Yet it has to be pointed out from the beginning on that the decision of accepting or refusing textuality also depends on several subjective criteria.

Therefore, it is quite hard to systematize all characteristics which seem to be absolutely necessary for a text. Vater (²1994:25) points out, for example: “Die Schwierigkeiten bei der Textdefinition sind teilweise objektiver, teilweise subjektiver Natur: Sie liegen sowohl im Phänomen ‘Text’ selbst begründet als auch in der Verschiedenheit der verwendeten Ansätze.”

In contrast to everyday life text linguists do not regard writing as the only form of a text. On the contrary, they think that oral communication is also a text. Wawrzyniak (in: Vater ²1994:16) says, for example:

There is another important aspect for textuality. According to the linguists Halliday and Hasan (1976:1) the term “ text” is: “… used in linguistics to refer to any passage, spoken or written, of whatever length, that does form a unified whole.” Thus, a text must have at least a kind of logical nexus. That is why DeBeaugrande and Dressler (1981:3) have advanced the thesis, that something is only a text if it fulfills the seven criteria of textuality, otherwise the text would not be communicative and therefore, it would not be a text: “Wenn irgendeines dieser Kriterien als nicht erfüllt betrachtet wird, so gilt der Text nicht als kommunikativ. Daher werden nicht-kommunikative Texte als Nicht-Texte behandelt… ”