Patterns Of Lexis In Text

Patterns of Lexis in Text

Passages of authentic text are analysed to demonstrate the operations of patterns of lexis across sentence boundaries and over considerable distances within and between texts. These insights are related to a comprehensive theory of language, in which 'lexis' and 'text' are shown to be important levels of language organization. Implications for the teaching of reading and writing are also discussed. First Prize English Speaking Union's Duke of Edinburgh Book Competition

Patterns of Text

It is increasingly clear that, in order to understand language as a phenomenon, we must understand the phenomenon of text. Our primary experience of language comes in the form of texts, which embody the complete communicative events through which our language-using lives are lived. These events are shaped by communicative needs, and this shaping is reflected in certain characteristic patterns in the texts. However, the nature of texts and text is still elusive: we know which forms are typically found in text but we do not yet have a full grasp of how they constitute its textuality, how they make a text “tick”. The twelve contributions to this volume show how texts across a wide range of text types hold together by different patterns of chunking and linking. The common purpose in all the contributions is to explore the nature of text patterning as the functional environment within which language operates.

Patterns of Lexis in Text ...