Form and Context in Eugenio Coseriu’s Textual Linguistics

Abstract

This study discusses about the place of textual studies at the level of the language functioning from a model formulated by Coseriu. As the author admits the possibility of a double position of the text and, consequently, two diverging conceptions of textual linguistics, the relationship between form and context is examined in each one of them. The conception of Textual Linguistics transclausal grammar, refused by the author, considers the systematization of the formal resources, used by the languages to producing texts without emphasizing the context role. The Textual Languistics, as hermeneutics of sense, has the study of literary texts as its priority object, characterized  by non-temporality on the  author-reader’s relationship. From this perspective the Textual Linguistics takes priority to the internal relationship to the text and the linguistic context of signs’ use. The historic context of the text production and its relationship with the formal aspects is emphasized by Coseriu only in the comparison between informative texts and literary ones.