Włodzimierz Bolecki
Coherence of Literary Texts Is a
Convention
Literary Studies in Poland 14, 27-57
W łodzim ierz Bolecki
Coherence o f Literary Texts
Is a C on vention
1
T oday n o n e o f the P olish theorists o f lite ratu re w ould speak o f the coherence o f a text if M aria R e n a ta M ayenow a had not form ulated th e problem years ago. The best know n work in this area is several conferences she organized, the volum es resulting from them (O spójności tekstu — On T extua l Coherence, T ekst i j ę
zyk — Text and Language, Sem a n tyka tekstu i ję z y k a — Sem antics o f T ext and Language), and the tw o editions o f P o etyka teoretyczna {Theoretical Poetics) . 1
I w ould n o t hesitate to say th a t M aria R en a ta M ayenow a has assigned textual coherence an exceptionally im p o rtan t place no t only in her ow n research w ork bu t also am o ng the problem s th at, in her opinion, poetics m ust con fro n t. H er num erous com m ents on this subject perm it us to speak o f her own individual, personal conception o f textual coherence. A gain, hers is the only relatively system atic discussion o f this problem in P o lan d . T hus, this conception
will be the startin g p oint for my considerations.
She form ulates the problem s connected with textual coherence for use in the theory o f literature, how ever, from m any varied fields o f co n tem p o rary linguistics, frequently quite d istan t from
1 O sp ó jn o śc i te k s tu , ed. by M. R . M a y e n o w a , W rocław 1971 (further O S P );
T e k st i ję z y k . P ro b le m y se m a n ty c zn e , ed. by M . R. M a y e n o w a , W roclaw 1974
(further T iJ); S e m a n ty k a te k s tu i j ę z y k a , ed . b y M . R. M a y e n o w a , W rocław 1976 (further S T iJ); M . R . M a y e n o w a , P o e ty k a te o r e ty c zn a . Z a g a d n ien ia j ę z y k a , 1st ed . W rocław 1974, 2nd ed. W rocław 1976 (further PT).
poetics. Before proceeding I m ust n ote th a t her w ork on textual coherence can n o t be u n d ersto o d if we do n o t tak e the inspira tions for it into account. H er conception owes them m uch, and I believe they have determ ined its goals and analytical m ethods. W ith ou t this reservation any consideratio n o f her w ork would be futile.
This article consists o f three p arts. The first discusses the variations discernable in articles on textual coherence. The m ajority o f these articles co n stitu te the startin g p o in t for M ayenow a’s detailed conclusions. The second p a rt attem p ts to reco nstruct the general theses peculiar to her conception o f textual coherence and presents m y polem ic w ith it. The third includes m y slightly different conception o f textual coherence. H er o bservation th a t m any points o f textual coherence are still d eb atab le has encouraged me, and this debatablen ess form s the justification for this article.
T extual coherence is one o f the newest problem s in co ntem p orary linguistics, m ore precisely o f the discipline know n as textual linguistics or text gram m ar. C learly, textual coherence is logically later th a t the problem o f the text itself, the fo rm u latio n o f which is considered no t w ith ou t reason the greatest revo lutio n in linguistics since F erdin and de S aussure’s Course in General Linguistics (1916). The question o f the text is an attem p t by linguists to cross the magic b o u n d ary th a t the sentence form ed until recently. In other words, the goal o f textual linguistics is to search for syntactical elem ents larger th a n the sentence. T extual linguistics aim s to show th a t a text is n o t ju st a sum o f sentences bu t a clearly structured whole th at is derived from sm aller parts. Text gram m ar (as opposed to sentence gram m ar) has in trodu ced tw o new elem ents into linguistics: first, the suprasentence form al stru ctu re o f the whole and, second, the m echanism th ro u g h which the wholes bud from the sm aller language units. There are three im p o rtan t contexts o f this problem , altho ug h each derives from a different m ethodology.
T he first is the trad itio n o f the Czech school o f linguistics connected chiefly with Vilem M athesius, w ho began w ork on the functional w ord o rd e r (aktu alni cleneni xety). Scholars w orking with him (F ibras, F. D anes, an d others) viewed the sentence as a language message and believed th a t research on syntax ca n n o t lim it itself to the sentence level b u t should include the entire discourse and
C oh eren ce o f L ite r a r y T ex ts 29
the extra-linguistic factors connected with it. Jan M u karovsky has used these theses very well for the needs o f poetics.
The second co ntext consists o f sociolinguistic research the representatives o f which (W illiam L abov, Dell H ym es, or Jo h n J. G um perz) claim th at the object o f em pirical linguistic descriptions should be the use o f language, com plete discourses in actual com m unication situations.
The th ird context and certainly the m ost im p o rtan t is N oam C ho m sky’s theory o f generative gram m ar and the polem ics and m odifications connected with it. The m ost im p o rtan t o f the latter for text gram m ar are the w orks o f J. R. F irth and M ichael A. K. H alliday. If C h o m sk y ’s concept, m ainly the differentiation o f surface and deep structure, provided the im pulse to research the possibility o f sentence tran sfo rm atio n s, H alliday drew atten tio n to the co ntin uity am ong categories and language phenom ena. His m ajor co n trib u tio n to the theory o f texts was the analysis o f the connections betw een successive sentences in a discourse (their coherence) and the differentiation o f sub- and suprasentence p h e n o m ena. H alliday show ed th at a text is not a set o f random ly ordered sentences, b u t a developing continuity o f elem ents with precise syntactic connections.
F or the researcher o f the stylistics o f literary texts, H a llid ay ’s ap p ro ach opens new theoretical perspectives. T ra d itio n al stylistics (“tax o n o m ic” as C hom sky says) described texts as static, hom ogeneous wholes. In this trad itio n textual coherence (its unity or structure) is described as a result o f the interaction o f m any independent and hierarchically ordered subsystem s o f the given text or as a system o f opposing relations o r various m etalanguages (verse, strophe, genre, etc.). H a llid ay ’s conception, on the o ther h and, em phasizes the process ch aracter o f the m ulti-sentence discourse; the fluid, the m utual interp en etratio n o f the individual elem ents and especially the sentences.
In sh o rt, text gram m ar is the sharpest polem ic with sentence gram m ar so far. M ethodologically, it is both a co n tin u atio n o f the theses o f tran sfo rm atio n al gram m ar (it accepts C h o m sk y ’s basic axiom s) and a radical d ep artu re from the goals C hom sky assigns to linguistics. Instead o f studying ideal language com petence, it p o stu lates research on the entire m acro stru ctu re of a discourse.
O bviously, the fu n d am en tal cond ition for developing a com plete text gram m ar is p ro d u cin g a set o f coherence rules for its elem ents. T hese elem ents are n o t sentences bu t syntagm as, an d they distinguish the interest o f text g ram m ar (discourse) from th a t o f linguistics (sentences). If C hom sky regarded the task o f linguistics as analyzing language com petence, text gram m arians believe th a t the task is to analyze text com petence, know ledge o f resources and m echanism s fo r building discourses. C oherence is the p h en o m en o n th at m akes a text (discourse) n o t ju s t a set, a corp u s o f collected sentences, b u t a fluid in terp e n etratio n o f one sentence with an o th er, an expansion o f the sentence elem ents into a form al and sem antic whole o f a higher o rd er. C oherence, how ever, is n o t the only p ro blem o f this gram m ar, peculiar because it does n o t belong to the trad itio nal problem s o f sentence linguistics. T he linguistic em b od im ent o f such a general theory o f discourse w ould be a theory th a t led to the fo rm u latio n o f language rules o f the g ram m ar o f a text. Teun A. van D ijk, one o f the m ain representatives o f text gram m ar, has set him self this am bitious goal.
This type o f linguistic research provides the stu d en t o f the poetics o f literary texts with m uch em otion, excitem ent, and fascination. A t the very outset, the g ram m ar o f text as a m ulti-sentence co n stru c tio n is closer to em pirical literary studies an d its theoretical problem s th an to trad itio n al linguistics. It is possible to hope th a t R o m an J a k o b s o n ’s old form ula {Linguistics and Poetics, 1960) will take on a com pletely new, reenvigorated m eaning.
Before sum m arizing the views on coherence, I m ust note th at fo r a literatu re theo rist text-gram m ar theory has sim ilar and dissim ilar initial axiom s. O ne sim ilar axiom is the thesis o f syntactic and sem antic conn ection o f the successive sentences in a discourse an d the precise su b stan tiatio n o f these co nnections. A dissim ilar one is the thesis o f the necessity o f form ally describing the stru cture o f such a discourse and excluding peculiarities o f literary texts an d literary com m unication from the general rules o f text gram m ar. T here is n o d o u b t th a t fo r text gram m arians literary texts pose problem s sim ilar to those th a t for N o am C h o m sk y ’s theory o f tran sfo rm atio n al g ram m ar a poetic sentence does.
The best p ro o f o f the m ethodological differences concerning textual coherence is th a t nearly all th e a u th o rs o f the articles
C oh eren ce o f L ite r a r y T ex ts 31 prin ted in the volum es edited by M ayenow a define the term s
coherence an d te x t in com pletely different m anners. M oreover, they
have com pletely different research goals. The basic differences can be reduced to eight items.
First, coherence applies even at the level o f the sentence, for a sentence can be regarded as a special text. B oth O lgierd W ojtasiew icz and M. R. M ayen ow a conceive coherence in this way, and M ayenow a refers to Vilem M ath esiu s’ fam ous th em atic-rem atic analysis. H ow ever,
the C zech’s w orks requires close scrutiny. H e deals less with
connective relations betw een sentences (the m ajo r p o in t b o th o f linguistic analysis o f text and o f M ayenow a), and m ore with different types o f w ord order w ithin a sentence depen din g on the sentence co n tex t an d com m unicative situatio n, especially the initial point. C ertainly, the context and com m unicative situation drew M ath esiu s’ a tte n tio n to extra-sentence facto rs; nevertheless, “ the functional dism em berm ent o f the sentence” applies only to the sentence (as a closed structure) and n o t to the text as a co n tinuity
o f sentences. T hus, he does no t em ploy the term coherence in
his study eith er in analyzing the internal sentence syntax or in analyzing the influence o f situational factors on so-called objective o r subjective w ord ord er in a sen ten ce.2
It is n o t su rprisin g then th a t som e linguists (Z. Saloni am o ng others) state th a t coherence does n o t apply to the sentence since every sentence is by definition c o h e re n t.3 C oherence can occur only in a text o f a series o f sentences. Studies o f coherence, Saloni con tin ues, should concern them selves with sections longer th a n one sentence because the connection betw een the w ords in a sentence m eet con ditions different from tho se th a t connective relations betw een sentences meet. H ere the first co n trad ictio n appears.
2 O . W o j t a s i e w i c z , “O pew nej interpretacji p o ję cia sp ó jn o ści tek stu ” (On
S o m e Interp retation o f T extu al C oh eren ce ), [in:] O S P ; M . R. M a y e n o w a , “Struk tu ra te k stu ” (Text S tru ctu re), [in:] P T , pp. 251 —257. M a th e siu s’ article ap p eared in M a y e n o w a 's tra n sla tio n “O tak zw an ym ak tu aln ym r o z c z ło n k o w a n iu zd an ia." [in:] O S P . M a th e siu s’ c a te g o r ie s for a n a ly zin g m u lti-sen ten ce narrative structures has b een su c c e ssfu lly a p p lied by M . C e r v e n k a , “A k tu a ln e r o z c z ło n k o w a n ie zd a n ia w p ro zie a rty sty czn ej” (F u n ctio n a l S en te n c e P ersp ectiv e in A rtistic P rose), transi, by A . G r o c h o w sk a , [in:] STiJ.
3 Z. S a l o n i , “ D efin icja sp ó jn o ści te k stu ” (D efin itio n o f T extu al C o h eren ce ), [in:] O S P . pp. 8 9 - 9 4 .
If, on the one h and, a text is a “long sen ten ce,’’ then the relation s betw een elem ents w ithin the sentence can be a m odel o f the relations w ithin an entire text. If,, on the other hand, the text (as a series o f sentences) is a stru ctu re o th er than a sentence, then the m echanism s observed by linguistics within a sentence c a n n o t be a m odel o f the relations between the elem ents o f the text.
Second, analysis o f coherence can be d one only on sentences used correctly; thus, th ere is no sense in studying such syntactic- sem antic anom alies as poetic sentences. T his is a basic con d itio n , for sem antic theory can describe only those sentences th a t are gram m atically c o r re c t.4 M ost researchers believe, how ever, th at coherence should also include poetic texts, even if these texts presen t linguists w ith greater m ethodological difficulties th an pleasure as a reader. J. P. T h o rn e has show n, in his analysis o f the sentence “ he danced his d id ” from e.e. Cum mings’s poem “any lived in a p re tty how to w n ,” th a t textual coherence and gram m aticalness a re com pletely different, n o t m utu ally exclusive th in g s.5
T h ird , som e linguists believe th a t textual coherence consists o f the precise co nnectio ns o f the succeeding sentence w ith the preceding one in the series. They, then, speak o f linear coherence. T here exists, how ever, a less rigorous po sitio n th a t states th at the co n d itio n for coherence does n o t have to rely on the im m ediate succession o f sentences, for larger fram ew orks o f com po sitio nal arran g em en t suffice, for exam ple the p a ra g ra p h (N ina Leonteva, Elena P aducheva, OSP).
The polarizatio n o f these positions has far-reaching consequences. F o u rth , som e linguists think th a t coherence is purely a question o f syntax because it concerns only the fo r m a l connective relations betw een sentences. They speak o f syntax co h e ren c e.6 N early general
4 I. B e l l e r t , “O n a C o n d itio n o f the C o h e r e n c e o f T e x ts ,” S e m ió tic a 2 (1970); S a l o n i, op. cit.
5 J. P. T h o r n e , “S tylistic and G en era tiv e G r a m m a r s,” Jou rn al o f L in g u istic s, 1965, is a p o le m ic w ith S. R. L e v i n e , “P o etry and G r a m m a tic a ln e ss,” [in:] P ro ceed in g s
o f th e N in th In tern a tio n a l C o n g ress o f L in g u ists, ed. by H . G . L unt, T h e H agu e
1964.
6 C f. K . P o l a ń s k i , “S p ó jn o ść te k stu ” (T extual C o h e r e n c e ), [in:] E n c y k lo p e d ia
C oh eren ce o f L ite r a r y T ex ts 33
agreem ent exists th a t gram m atical and lexical categories fulfil the welding role in the text. A m ong the gram m atical categories, within com plex sentences, stru ctu ral connections o f dependence and co n ju n c tion are enum erated. In m ulti-sentence con stru ctio n s, p ro n o u n s and articles functioning anaphoristically are m e n tio n e d .7 A m o ng th e lexical categories, prim arily repetitions o f given units creating suprasentence lexical o rders or the use o f synonym s creating a sem antically joined lexical series fill the w elding role. G enerally speaking, index expressions, definite and indefinite descriptions, and deictic expressions fill the w elding function in a text (connectors). T he welding function o f logical connections (causal, result, o pp osition ,
consecutio temporum, articles) and m etalinguistic relations to earlier
sentences (questions, answ ers, com parisons) are also m e n tio n e d .8 But syntactic in terp retatio n o f coherence also h as its opponents. They believe th a t textual coherence is purely a question o f sem antics and n o t syntax. T he sup p o rters o f the sem antic theory claim th a t syntactic dependences between sentences ap p e ar only over lim ited sections o f a discourse, betw een sentences directly connected with one an o th er. B ut a text co n tain s m any o th er connections th an those betw een im m ediately adjacent sentences. Jerzy K urylow icz has proposed the m ost extrem e version o f sem antic coherence, for he negates the existence o f syntactic coherence in a text. Because it gets to the heart o f the m atter, it is w orth-w hile q u o tin g it in its entirety.
‘c o h e r e n c e ’ did n o t appear in the S ło w n ik te rm in o lo g ii ję z y k o z n a w c z e j — D ic tio n a ry
o f L in g u istic T erm in o lo g y — ed. by Z. G łą b , A . H ein z, K . P o la ń sk i, W arszaw a
1968); M . A . K . H a l l i d a y , “T h e L in g u istic S tu d y o f Literary T e x ts ,” [in:] P ro c e e d in g s
o f the N in th In tern a tio n a l C o n g ress o f L in gu ists. Cf. a lso M . A . K . H a l l i d a y ,
“ L in gu istic F u n ctio n in Literary S ty le : A n Inquiry in to the L an gu age o f W illiam G o ld in g ’s the In h erito rs,” [in:] L ite r a r y Style'. A S y m p o siu m , ed . by S. C h a tm a n , L o n d o n —N e w Y o rk 1971.
7 A n a p h o r e is regarded by R. H a s a n (G ra m m a tic a l C ohesion in S p o k en
a n d W ritten E nglish, L o n d o n 1968) as the m ain fa cto r in c o h eren ce ; q u o ted
after R . F o w l e r , “C o h esiv e , P ro g ressiv e and L o c a liz in g A sp e c ts o f T ext S tr u c tu re,” [ in :] L ite r a tu r e a s S o c ia l D iscou rse. The P ra c tise o f L in g u istic C ritic ism , B lo o m in g to n
1981, p p . 6 7 - 7 1 .
8 C f., a m o n g others, F. D a n e s , “S em a n ty czn a i tem a ty czn a struktura zd a n ia i te k stu ” (S e m a n tic and T h em a tic Structure o f S e n te n c e an d T ex t), [in:] TiJ; M . C e r v e n k a , “ O tem a ty czn y m n a stęp stw ie” (On T h em a tic S u ccessio n ), ibidem .
A se n te n c e is sy n ta ctica lly articu lated b eca u se its c o m p o n e n ts are jo in e d by sy n ta ctica l c o n n e c tio n s su ch as d efin itio n [ ...] or flex io n a l agreem en t. [ . . . ] There are, h o w ev er, n o syn tactic r eg u la tio n s that can gu aran tee the c o h e r e n c e o f texts o f m o re than o n e senten ce. S p ea k in g o f co h e r e n c e (c o h e sio n ) in so m e story, w e are th in k in g on se m a n tic c o n n e c tio n s b etw een its in d iv id u a l parts. Every se n te n c e is in terpreted on the b asis o f th e text p reced in g it an d on the basis o f the in d iv id u a l k n o w led g e o f the listen er, k n o w le d g e that the a u th o r a ssu m es and ex p ects. If after in tr o d u cin g N a p o le o n , the a u th o r w rites the E m p e r o r, he a ssu m e s th e reader has a b asic k n o w le d g e o f h isto ry . T h e p rev io u s text c o n trib u tes to its b ein g co m p reh en d ed n o t o n ly d u e to the c o m m u n ic a tiv e c o n te n t o f its se n te n c e s but a lso b e c a u se o f the c o n c lu sio n s d raw n from them by the reader. If o n th e b a sis o f the p rev io u s text, his c o n c lu sio n s, and k n o w le d g e the reader ca n a lw a y s d etect the se m a n tic co h e r e n c e b etw een the se n ten ce and w h a t preceded it. th en the tex t is co h eren t. S em a n tic c o h e r e n c e c o n stitu te s the fun d a m en ta l ch a ra cteristic o f a text, d istin g u ish in g it fro m a lo o se c o lle c tio n o f sen ten ces (d isco u rse ). S e m a n tic c o h e r e n c e has clearly p articular im p o r ta n ce for sc h o la r s interested in th e c o n te n ts o f texts (historians, literary h isto ria n s). L in g u istics, h o w ev er, seeks
f o r m a l h iera rch ies, form al p rin cip les that regulate the sem an tic c o n te n ts; su b o r d in a tio n s
(rectio n , sy n ta x o f orders; co n g r u e n c e , syntax o f agreem en t), r eg u la tin g th e word o r d e r .g
Fifth, som e linguists say th at only the w ritten language and language m eaning, an a u th o r’s text, can be the object o f coherence a n a ly s is .10 T he opp osing thesis is, how ever, m ore com m o n. It states th a t the coherence o f a verbal text is determ ined by the
com m unicative situation an d extra-lingual know ledge o f the reader. This contradiction is the greatest one in this theory. The im plications
o f th e first thesis is th a t textual coherence can be analyzed only with linguistic tools. T he im plications o f the opposite thesis is, how ever, th a t textual coherence resulting from the m echanism s o f co m m u n icatio n (for exam ple, the categories o f tru th o r h um or) escapes the com petence o f linguistic description. A linguist, therefore, can analyze only som e o f the interconnections in a t e x t .11 In
g J. K u r y ł o w i c z , “ W sp ó łc z e sn e j ę z y k o z n a w stw o ” (C o n tem p o ra ry L in g u istic s”, transl. by M . A b r a h a m o w ic z , Z n a k , 1971, N o . 5.
10 S a l o n i , op. cit.
11 L in g u ists w h o su p p o rt this p o sitio n ask: “can a text be generated w ith o u t a ccess to ex tra -lin g u istic m aterial —w h ich is c o n sid e r e d to be necessary in order to ex p la in the n o tio n o f c o h e r e n c e ? ” T. A . van D i j k , “S o m e P ro b le m s o f G e n e r a tiv e P o e tic s ,” P o e tic s , 1971, N o . 2. S em a n tic in terp reta tio n , they say, c a n n o t be d o n e w ithin the fram ew ork o f lin g u istic s p roper.
C o h eren ce o f L ite r a r y T ex ts 35 other w ords, som e claim th a t th e object o f study in coherence is exclusively linguistic, intersentence relations in a text. O thers claim , how ever, th a t there exists an extra-linguistic coherence o f
sentences. The latter applies to such things as agreem ent o f the
m eanings o f a text w ith the relations in o ther te x ts .12 F ocusing w hat has been said: m ost linguists believe th a t the source o f textual coherence derives from the connective relations betw een the sentences; however, researchers w ho take theoretical-linguistic p ro blem s into account, have p oin ted out th a t suprasentence textual stru c tures exist th a t create ch ain s o f relatio nships g u aranteeing textual coherence as a language f o r m .13 W hile som e analyze a text as a stru c turally interconnected, grow ing series o f statem ents, others prefer to claim th a t a text has its ow n, sup ralinear, global m eaning th a t ca n n o t be reduced either to the sem antics or the interconnections o f the sentences. Thus, for the researcher o f the first position coherence proceeds from the sentence to the text, and for the second, from the text to the sentence, from the whole to its parts.
These divisions have one m ore im plication. In answ er to the question, “W hat is a te x t? ” som e linguists say th at it is only a series o f sentences; o thers (such as P etr Sgall), th a t it is a series o f discourses, such uses o f sentences, to which a m odal fram ew ork can be a p p lie d .14 The first position closes analysis o f coherence w ithin the language system ; the second, w ithin the realm o f
the acts o f com m unications.
Sixth, som e linguists (A nna W ierzbicka, Irena Bellert, M aria R e n a ta M ayenow a) claim th a t textual coherence excludes m etalingual and m etatext discourses, for a coherent text is a hom ogeneous one. “T he definition o f a coherent tex t,” Irena Bellert writes, “concerns an idealized text with n o digressions, a text th at expresses one uniform line o f reasoning, a co n tin u o u s plot, etc.” 15 But som eone else points out th at precisely the m etatextual fram ew ork
12 B e l l e r t , op. c it.; W o j t a s i e w i c z , op. c it.
13 C e r v e n k a , “O tem a ty czn y m n a stę p stw ie ” ; W. O. H e n d r i c k s , an u n p u b lish e d w ork c ited after v a n D i j k , op. cit.
14 P. S g a l l , “O p o jęciu te k stu ” (On the C o n c e p tio n o f T ex t), tran sl. by A . G r o c h o w s k a , [in:] STiJ.
o f the discourse are the coherence elem ents in a text an d m etatexts fill the role o f im p o rtan t connectors in a t e x t .16
Finally, the last tw o contradictions.
Seventh, coherence, A presyan says, is n o t only or n o t ju st a problem o f textual coherence, b u t a m etalingual p roblem o f its description. Thus, coherence is no t so m uch a category o f the text described, as the m ajority of linguists claim , bu t a m etalanguage category, an artificial language, for exam ple a sem antic version o f a given t e x t .17
Eighth, som e linguists claim th at coherence is directly connected with c o m p re h e n sib ility ;18 others, however, believe a text can be incom prehensible to a reader and still be c o h e r e n t.19
If on the basis o f the recon structed prem ises one attem pted to describe the axiom atic theory o f textual coherence, one could draw only one conclusion; the theory o f textual coherence is an incoherent theory, an internally inconsistent theory.
Such a thesis is obviously striking, b u t false, because the
collection o f all the positions on the subject does not form
a theory o f th e phenom enon. U ndou btedly, there are varying concepts o f coherence, because there are different theories o f texts. In particular, there are different linguistic m ethodology that derive from different trad itio n s and th a t define the research object (language, system, discourse, act, sentence, text) in varying ways and subordinate it to different scholarly goals.
Several different scholarly goals can be distinguished am ong the linguists statem ents on coherence.
The first goal o f research on textual coherence is an analysis o f types and resources for connections betw een successive sentences
16 K. P i s a r k o w a , “O sp ó jn o ści tekstu m ó w io n e g o ” (On the C oh eren ce o f the S p o k en T e x t), [in:] TiJ, p. 71; H . I s e n b e r g , Ü berlegungen zu r T tx tth e o rie , Berlin 1968; v a n D i j k , op. c it., p. 249.
17 Y u. D . A p r e s y a n , S e m a n ty k a le k s y k a ln a . S yn o n im ic zn e śr o d c i j ę z y k a (L e x ic a l S em a n tics. S y n o n im ie L angu age M e a n s), transl. by Z . K o z ło w s k a , A . M a r k o w
ski, W roclaw 1980, pp. 24 — 55.
18 M a y e n o w a , O S P , PT . “T h e d e te c tio n o f u n a m b ig u o u s c o h e r e n c e m echanism s or the d e term in a tio n that they are n o t present is the first e s se n tia step in d escrib in g a text, is the first and essen tia l step tow ard the elem en ta r y und erstan d ing o f the tex t, “ —TiJ, p. 309.
C oh eren ce o f L ite r a r y T e x ts 37
in a discourse. A description o f those language categories th at within the stru ctu re o f a sentence fill distinct suprasentence functions is the goal.
The second goal o f research on textual coherence is connected with the concepts o f discourse g ram m ar inspired by C h o m sk y ’s generative-tran sform ational gram m ar o f the sentence. The goal o f this gram m ar is to create a general theory o f discourse (a theory o f structures th a t extend beyond the sentence) based on the rules for generating sentences. T he disagreem ent concerns the rules o f effectiveness o f such a gram m ar. O n the one hand, even the m odified version o f C h o m sk y ’s g ram m ar o f sentences is still in adequate for describing po etry sentences.20 On the o th er hand , a gram m ar th at could generate all different kinds o f texts (including literary ones) still rem ains a postulate and a hope o f a few researchers. P erhaps th a t p o stu late is the m ost im p o rtan t echo o f C h o m sk y ’s faith in the existence o f language (here text) universals.
The third goal o f research on textual coherence is to m ake so-called m echanical processings o f a text. F rom this p oin t o f view Soviet linguists are w orking with textual coherence. They ask in w hat m an n er are derivatives m ade from the initial text (sum m aries, m achine tran slatio n s, extraction s o f inform ation ). Such research has also been used in the theory o f foreign language instruction.
The fo u rth goal o f research on textual coherence is a co nstru ction o f an artificial m etalanguage th at should describe the discourses fo rm ulated in a n atu ra l language. A ccording to Soviet linguists every text has som e global m eaning th a t is verbalized in a n atu ral language retaining the sem antic equivalences o f and the relevant order, word selection an d order, etc. The sem antic version should ensure transm ission o f the m eaning form ulated in the n atural language retaining the sem antic equivalences o f and the relevant inform ation to the n atu ra l language.
In the third an d fo u rth cases, textual coherence is treated as an end goal. It is achieved by sum m arizing the initial text. Typically, the co herent text produced by these operations, however, has had the sem antic am biguities ch aracteristic o f n atu ral languages elim inated.
Finally, the fifth goal o f research on textual co h eren ce is to u n d e rsta n d the text. A d escription o f the coherence m echanism s, M. R. M ayenow a em phasizes, brings the read er closer to a correct in terp re tatio n o f a given te x t.21
The m ost im p o rtan t differences between these co n cep tio n s depend on the fo rm u lation o f one prem ise and the answ ers to three questions.
The prem ise is: the objects o f research on coherence are sentences, statem en ts, or discourses (as one wishes), but n o t speech acts in the sense proposed by J. L. A u s tin .22 Because if we ad op ted A u stin ’s perspective, it w ould be necessary to include ex tra-language elem ents o f the com m unicative situ ation in the syntactic an d sem antic description o f the text. Because for A ustin, the syntax an d the m eaning o f the text are no t exclusively language p h e n o m en o n but are elem ents o f action in a p articu lar social situ atio n . A u stin ’s pro p o sal opens new, fascinating perspectives for describ ing h etero geneous elem ents o f the social com m unicative situ atio n , b u t it ca n n o t be m ade to agree with research on intratext co m m u n icatio n (intralanguage). A ustin has n o t only created a new term inology (speech acts and its aspects; locution, illocution, p erlocu tio n), but a new object (field) for research th a t can m ost sim ply be nam ed a theory o f language action.
Excluding extra-language elem ents o f co m m u nicatio n and rem aining w ithin the realm o f intratex t com m u nicatio n, the th ree questions are:
1. A re the categories o f a text the sentence and other language elem ents, or does the text have its own suprasentence, textual categories?
2. D oes analysis o f coherence apply only to exclusively language elem ents o f the text, or does it include the re a d e r’s extratextual know ledge? W hat is the function o f p resu pp osition in a text?
3. A re m etatextual elem ents in a text foreign m atter, an o th er text, or structural elem ents p ro p e r to the given text?
D ifferent answ ers to these q uestions define the boun daries betw een the different m ethodologies o f co n tem p o rary linguistics and determ ine
21 M a y e n o w a , TiJ.
C oh eren ce o f L ite r a r y T ex ts 39
the different conception o f the text an d the ability to describe its elem ents.
These differences have fu n dam ental significance for research on the poetics o f literary texts, for they expose the scale o f d istance from the object and goals with which poetics deals. M. R. M ayenow a has m ade an attem p t to apply a linguistic com prehension o f coherence to research on the poetics o f the literary text. I will now proceed to discuss her conception.
2
N early all the articles m entioned so far are from the field o f linguistics. T he theses on textual coherence th a t ap p ear in them concern either coherence in language o r in any text, n o t necessarily literary w orks. M ay en o w a’s articles have a different ch aracter. Her concep tio n o f textual coherence concerns un do ubtedly literary
texts, and poetics is the discipline in which textu a l coherence app ears
as a term . M ayenow a has form ulated her views on coherence in lite rary texts and texts in general in three articles: “ Spójność te k stu ” (Textual C oherence and the R e a d e r’s A ttitu d e, OSP), “T eoria tekstu a tradycyjne zagadnienia p o ety k i” (Text T heory and T rad itio n al P roblem s o f Poetics, TiJ), and “ In w entarz py tań do teorii tek stu ” (An Inventory o f Q uestions on Text T heory, STiJ). She sum m arized them in the c h a p te r “S tructure o f a T ex t” in the textb oo k PT.
C learly, I ca n n o t discuss all o f M ay e n o w a’s detailed, pen etratin g analyses or their evolution over m ore th an a decade. Thus, I will present only the m ost key theses as well as the m ost d eb atab le ones o f her entire conception.
First, M . R. M ayenow a has ad o p ted a n arro w linguistic definition o f a text. F o r her, texts are n o th in g b u t m ultisentence structures. As a result, analyses o f coherence m echanism s are chiefly syntactic and are concerned exclusively with connectio ns between adjacent sentences. Thus, coherence m echanism s conn ecting sentences in the text in terest her. I will n o t enum erate these m echanism s; as regards intersentence conn ection s there is n o debate. She notes, how ever, th a t the analysis o f these conn ections serves to illum inate the sem antic m echanism s in a literary text.
Second, M ayen ow a’s conception of textual coherence is prem ised on its com m unicative ch aracter (particularly evident in her em phasis o f the role o f presupposition). The com m unicative ch aracter o f this conception is defined by three axiom s th a t for M . R. M ayenow a are a definition o f a coherent text. A co herent text has one
producer, one receiver, and one subject. These unities have a functional
character. This m eans sim ply one type o f know ledge, th a t she explicates as the ability to assign to one person all the m odal fram ew orks ap p earing in all the sentences o f the text. The unity o f subject, however, should be u n d ersto o d p ro bably to den ote a text th a t is always a statem ent ab o u t fragm ent o f reality (OSP, PT).
T hird, a coherent text is hom ogeneous. As a result dialogues and discourses with m eta texts are incoherent.
F ou rth, her conception o f a co herent text is norm ative. M . R. M ayenow a em phasizes th a t the con ditio ns for coherence are objective, and the coherence o f a text depends on w hether they are fulfilled. She also points out the existence o f text norm s, saying there are, for exam ple, types o f sentences th a t are ap p ro p riate only at the beginning or only at the end o f a text (TiJ, p. 301; PT, pp. 2 6 7 —287). H ere the essential differences betw een the text g ram m arian s’ and M ayenow a’s conception is ap parent. Inasm uch as the form er aim m ainly to describe the elem ents and types o f coherence in a discourse, M ayenow a places great em phasis on the b o un dary between coherent and incoherent texts, on the techniques for m aking an incoherent text coherent, which is typical o f Y. A presyan’s ap proach.
T o end this very b rief characterizatio n I present one m ore o f M ayen ow a’s theses; “literary texts built as a kind o f whole with a m arked beginning and end are seldom coherent texts on the level o f p rim ary m eaning” (PT, p. 313). This thesis is also presented in this fo rm : texts with a d o m in an t cognitive function are constructed for m axim al coherence; the poetic function, on the contrary, serves as the prim ary destroyer o f textual coherence (OSP; TiJ, pp. 3 0 8 -3 0 9 ).
If it is agreed th at these are the actual general prem ises o f M ayen ow a’s conception o f textual coherence, then my reservations are the following.
C o h eren ce o f L ite r a r y T ex ts 41
First, if literary texts are the objects o f description by poetics, then the n o tio n o f text m u st adequ ately acco un t for their peculiarities. F o r linguistics the n o tio n o f tex t seems to have only tw o m eanings: as opposed to th e n o tio n o f system or to th a t o f sentence. As m entioned previously, in the second case the text is only a m ulti-sentence series, w hose lin ear o rd e r has an additive character. A nalysis o f the syntactics o f such texts done by linguists are reduced to exam ining from tw o to five successive sentences in the series or a t m o st a dozen or so sentences in a p arag ra p h . T aking the goal o f linguistic d escription into account and learning A u stin ’s speech acts as elem ents o f ac tio n aside, this ap p ro ach to analysis is un derstan d ab le. H ow ever, attem p ts to transfer such descriptions to literary texts are a misunderstanding. Even if we assum e th at a literary text is com posed only o f sentences, it is obvious th at there is a great difference betw een the structure o f a few sentences from Jam es Jo y c e ’s Ulysses an d the sentence structu re o f the whole. T he status o f these text sentences betw een which there are no syntactic co nnectio ns (sentences th a t constitu te a character, plot, or description) in the concept o f textual coherence seems to be exactly the sam e as th a t o f ungram m atical sentences (poetic ones) in tran sfo rm atio n al gram m ar. T he relatio ns betw een such sentences against the b ack g ro u n d o f syntactic coherence are thus “ im perfect,” “d ev ian t,” “ a n o m a lo u s” p h en o m en o n , or, if one prefers, “textual
agram m aticism s.” The first conclusion is th a t the sem antic, syntactic, an d prag m atic m echanism s observed in sections o f a few sentences o f discourses qualitatively differ from the m echanism s over an entire
literary text. O ne ca n n o t say th at an analysis o f the coherence
in a p a ra g ra p h o f a few sentences is a m odel for the analysis o f coherence in an entire text. It is only an analysis o f a few sentences, an d if one speaks o f them as a text, then the term has little in com m on with the term “tex t” used in literary studies (for exam ple, the language level o f a literary w ork). W ithout entering in to the details, th ere do exist categories o f literary texts th a t are lan guage creations, b u t th a t c a n n o t be described by observing only the linear in terco nnections o f the sentences. A m ong them are such categories as plot, ch a rac te r, n a rra tio n , time, space, sym bolism , etc. These are the categories th a t Jan u sz Sławiński calls the great
sem antic figures o f a literary te x t.23 Their role loom s large in building textual coherence (text and n o t successive sentences). W hat is troubling in M ayenow a’s conception, is th at they are absent in the description o f coherence in literary texts an d there is no indication o f w hat the relation ship s between the coherence o f the prim ary sentence level o f a text and the o ther su prasentence levels o f a text are.
Second, M ay en o w a’s three axiom s o f textual coherence (a “d isco u r se by one p roducer for one receiver ab o u t one o b ject,” PT, p. 252) arouses serious do ubts.
One p roducer is, first o f all, one organizing consciousness that
“presents the given text as a closed arran g e m e n t” (PT, p. 253).
In other words, it is the a u th o r as the highest instance “to
w hom we assign the organization o f the tex t” (PT, p. 254). In a form al, sem iotic, or daily sense, this thesis is obvious, u nq uestioned. It, however, sharply con trad icts M. R. M ay en o w a’s o th er explications. In the language o f sem antics this thesis m eans acco rd in g to her th a t “the I within the m odal fram ew ork of every sentence m ust
p o in t to the sam e p e rso n ” (PT, p. 253). This m eans th a t the
m odality o f the text (the relation ship o f the text p ro d u cer) is the sam e as the m odality o f the individual sentences. If so, then I ca n n o t enum erate a single such literary text. It is necessary to distinguish the m odality o f the entire text (the level im plied by the p ro d u c e r’s text) from the m odality o f the individual sentences (level o f discourse: heroes, n a rra to r, characters in a d ram a) and to include the m odality o f the convention o f the discourses (quotation, allusion, grotesque, pastiche, paro dy, etc.). H arm o n izin g these m odalities into an identity in a literary text is sim ply im possible. This is the source o f the singularity o f the literary (the poetic) work. All the problem s o f in terp re tatio n o f a literary work begin with m odality, in o ther words, with its global m eaning, its force, its ideological m essage, or the a u th o r’s intentio n. The variations in in terp re tatio n are in p a rt a result of varying u n d ersta n d in g o f the m odalities o f the individual elem ents and levels o f the text. This thesis o f M. R. M ayenow a sharply co n tra d icts the basic
23 J. S ł a w i ń s k i , „ S em a n ty k a w y p o w ied zi narracyjnej” (S e m a n tics o f N arrative P ron o u n ce m en t), [in:] D zie ło , ję z y k , tra d y c ja . W arszaw a 1974.
C o h eren ce o f L ite r a ry T exts 43 thesis o f poetics, the axiom o f the multiple ambiguity o f literary texts. The prem ise o f am biguity in a literary text denotes th at the “I” in a m o dal fram ew ork or fram ew orks is n o t one person or consciousness (in a functional sense) b ut a garland o f varying m odalities. T hu s, th e sem antic explication o f the principle o f one p ro d u cer arouses my doub ts.
The practical sense o f this thesis all arouses my d o u b ts; for the literary h isto rian every text is a sign o f an “ordering consciousness” , if the function o f this consciousness is supposed to be the “presenting o f a text as a closed arran g e m e n t.”
M oreover, I suspect th a t in M ayeno w a’s th o u g h t we are co n fronted with hom onym y in the case o f the w ord “tex t.” Once it m eans “a closed arra n g e m e n t” separated by “one p ro d u c er,” an o th er tim e the m echanism for developing sentences, as is evident in the clear explication o f dialogues as incoherent texts. I shall re tu rn to this later.
I have identical reservations regarding b oth the sem antic explication o f one receiver (“ all the possible y o u ’s o f the m odal fram ew ork should refer to the sam e p erson or group o f p erso n s,” PT, p. 254) and the principle o f unity o f subject. The word “subject” has a narrow , linguistic m eaning in M ayenow a’s w ork. The subject in a coherent text is the sam e as the indivisible m eaning o f successive sentences o f the text for her (their logical product). But in literary texts there are few such sentences. It suffices to think o f the principle o f ju x tap o sitio n , the poetics o f grotesque language, dadaistic w ord com position, the futurist idea o f “ free w ords,” or the surrealist co n vention o f écriture automatique. T hus, the above can be reduced to one qu estio n : whenever M. R. M ayenow a speaks o f a literary text, she m eans a series o f successive sentences interconnected by syntactic and sem antic dependences. Only a text conceived in this m anner could fulfil the con dition s given. But a conception o f text constructed in this m an n er is a stru cture o f m inim al usefulness for the literary researcher.
A nticipating my fu rth e r cou n terarg u m en ts I will state th at M. R. M ayenow a describes literary co m m unication (sender (produ c e r ) —receiver !) with term inology taken from linguistics, the ideal o f which is a form alized n o tatio n (textual coherence).
o f the acoherent status o f a m etatex t within a text th a t M . R. M aye- now a accepts. C haracteristically, they realize th at their p osition is self-contradictory. T hus, W ierzbicka states th a t a m etatext, alth o u g h it is a “foreign b o d y ,” 24 clearly perform s a welding function. A hom ogeneous u n d ersta n d in g o f a text, elim inating any m etatext,
has only one explanation. The goal o f A. W ierzbicka and I. B ellert’s
coherence analyses is to create a sem antic version o f a text un dersto o d as a series o f successive, interconnected sentences. T here is not enough space here for a detailed polem ic with M ay en o w a’s theoretical-literary generalization o f this con ception, I will state only one thesis: m etatexts are m ore characteristic textual categories than , for exam ple, are those p arts o f sentences th a t function at the suprasentence level (an ap h o ra, deixis, indexes, o r descriptions). M etatextual statem ents are one o f the m ost im p o rta n t signals o f
the transformation o f sentences into a te x t or, if one prefers,
a discourse. If I were to defend M ay en o w a’s earlier thesis, I could say th a t m etatexts are the m ost definite, form alized signs o f an “ organizing consciousness.” A m etatext is always a sign o f the “ I” o f the a u th o r, a signal o f the presence o f the subject o f the discourse. The basic function o f a m etatext is precisely to weld the elem ents o f the text to g e th e r: to weld n o t sentences (which an a p h o rs do) b u t to weld the suprasentence structure o f
the te x t. 25
F o u rth , the n orm ative n atu re o f M ay en o w a’s con cep tio n implies directives for tran sfo rm in g incoherent texts into co h eren t ones. The w ritten language m ay be incoherent on its p rim ary level, M ayenow a says. But while reading the text, the reader can create a coherent version, with the reservation th a t this version is not the a u th o r’s b u t the re a d e r’s. H er explan ation here is identical with R om an In g a rd en ’s concept o f concretization with all its consequences. T he effect o f co ncretization , Ingarden writes, is different from a text, thus an object o f concretizatio n. The concretization (as a process) depends on filling gaps in the initial version (read:
24 A . W i e r z b i c k a , „ M eta tek st w te k śc ie ” (M eta tex t in T ext), [in:] O SP, p. 106.
25 Cf. M . P ł a c h e c k i , K . Z a l e s k i , “ M eta tek st w tek ście k ry ty czn y m ” (M etatext in C ritic T e x t), [in:] B adan ia n a d k r y ty k ą lite ra c k ą , ed. b y J. S ła w iń sk i, W rocław 1974.
C o h eren ce o f L ite r a ry T exts 45
on m aking it coherent). T he differentiations o f this type (text and concretization, text and com m unication, text and the reading process, etc.) are an echo o f the fu ndam ental epistem ological problem o f th e 20th century, the dualism o f fact and situation. This dualism und ou b ted ly has heuristic value, bu t its basic m eth od olo gical flaw, or consequence, is its inability to overcom e the separation between facts (language, text, poetics) and situations (reading, com m un ication ). I will re tu rn to this p o in t in the last part.
A n exam ple o f the texts th at M . R . M ayenow a proposes to subject to coherence transfo rm atio n s are dialogues. The structures o f these discourses, according to her, are incoherent for tw o reasons: first, the p ro d u c er is not one person and, second, the replies o f the dialogues are not form ally interconnected. Only after gaps have been filled can one speak o f coherence. A n exam ple o f such an incoherent dialogue would be:
A — H o w m uch d o es a ticket to the co n c e r t co s t? B - F orty zło ty .
A — T h a t’s very exp en sive.
B — N o , it’s n o t. If you calcu late the c o s ts o f m a in ta in in g such a large o rch estra, it turns out that the m inistry m ust p ro v id e a su b stan tial su b sidy.
Its tran sfo rm atio n into a coherent text w ould be: “ H ow m uch does a ticket to the concert cost? A ticket to the concert costs forty zloty. A ticket to the concert costs forty zloty, th a t’s very expensive. (Y ou would realize th at) a ticket th at costs forty zloty
isn ’t very expensive, if you c a lc u la te d ...” (PT, p. 266).
I will n o t q u o te any further exam ples o f incoherent texts (and their tran sfo rm atio n s); am ong them are a lyric m onologue and a n arratio n from a novel. I believe th a t M ayeno w a’s analysis o f incoherence in dialogues is not concerned with dialogues at all. R ath er only one facto r in her analysis causes incoherence: the given text is n o t a series o f form ally interconnected sentences and there are no repetitions between the replies. If the given version can be tran sfo rm ed into a linear series o f such sentences, M ayenow a says th a t after adding coherence elem ents to the prim ary version, we get a coherent text. If th a t is im possible, the text is incoherent. The best example for her is a conversation in which each speaker says a sentence on a different subject. My assum ption th a t the thesis o f the incoherence o f dialogues camouflages
the problem o f form al interconnection o f the sentences could be confirm ed by the existence o f dialogues in which the replies are interconnected (by repetitions). H ere is my tran sfo rm atio n of the dialogue q u o ted above, w hich in light o f h er prem ises it is difficult to reg ard as incoherent.
— H ow m uch does a ticket to the co n cert co st? — T o the co n cert? F orty zloty.
— F o r ty ... T h a t’s very expensive.
— Expensive? N o, it’s no t. I f you c a lc u la te ...
But it is not difficult to observe th a t the criterio n for textual coherence in these exam ples is syntactic in the extrem e.
Fifth, the thesis o f textual coherence d o m in ated by a cognitive function and o f the incoherence o f literary texts a t the language level can also only be u n d ersto o d as a no rm ativ e one. It is difficult to accept w ithout ad d itio n al assu m ption s th a t the norm s for coherence in a literary text can be expressed by the norm s for coherence in non-literary texts. I c a n n o t agree w ith her suggestion th at analyzing a fragm ent o f a literary text, “let us fo rg et that
we have the beginning o f a novel before us. Let us treat the
text as a w ritten text an d apply the sam e m eth o d s for interpreting it as a coherent text th a t we applied to the history textbook exam ple,” 26 or with the in tro d u cto ry p ro p o sal to th e analysis of Step y akerm ahskie (A ke rm a n s’ Steppes): “Let us look at a well-known text as if it were a text from daily life” (PT, p. 311).
I am aim ing tow ard this co nclusion: the coherence m echanism s described by M . R. M ayenow a are uncharacteristic o f literary texts, even if we believe they refer only to the prim ary, language layer o f a w ork. C o n tem p o rary th eoretical-literary th o u g h t assum es th at literary texts are peculiar texts th a t c a n n o t be reduced to other types o f language com m unications. L iterary co m m u n icatio n can n o t begin by forg ettin g the peculiarity o f a text bu t only by remembering (bring to bear) the m axim um n u m b er o f co nv ention s, rules, or situ atio ns typical for the given discourse. Ig no ring the literary peculiarities o f a text in an analysis denotes th e n egation o f the object u n d er study. In short, forg etting th a t I have the “beginning
26 M . R. M a y e n o w a , “S p ó jn o ść tek stu a p o sta w a o d b io r c y ” (T extu al C o h eren ce and the P o sitio n o f R ece iv e r), [in:] O S P , p. 200.
C o h eren ce o f L ite r a r y T ex ts 47
o f a novel” or a son net and not a text from daily life in fron t o f me, I break w ith the rules o f literary com m u nicatio n. Then I would be re ad in g n o t a literary text b u t som e other language
object, a text as a collection o f sentences: from a new spaper,
from a textbook, from a scholarly article.
Finally, the last p rob lem concerns the interpretation o f the function o f presu p p o sitio n in literary texts. (I will m axim ally accentuate the argum ent for c la rity ’s sake.)
Either coherence derives exclusively from the form al interconnec tions between sentences an d such coherence can be described by linguistic m ethods, or the presup position s and extralanguage (extra- textual) know ledge o f the reader are also welding factors in a text, which would m ean th a t linguistic description o f coherence m echanism s is inadequate. Iren a Bellert has w ritten : “T here is a dependence o f the sem antic in terp re tatio n o f a coherent text on the h e a re r’s know ledge ab o u t the w orld, since a set o f conclusions is obtain able no t only on the grounds o f the rules o f language and deductive reasoning, b u t also on the grou nds o f the know n facts a b o u t th e w orld.” 27
M ayenow a’s conception breaks open m o st clearly at this p o in t because she declares herself for b o th positions.
But the second po sitio n on presuppositions introduces extra textu a l
knowledge into the p ro blem o f coherence. This know ledge has no
form al linguistic expression. If we agree with O sw ald D u cro t th at “one ought to include presupposition s in the co ntents o f a discourse, th a t one should regard them as integral p arts o f the m ean in g,” 28 then coherence c a n n o t be described in syntactic categories, and the coherence o f a literary text ca n n o t be reduced to ju st the form al language and intersentence com po nen ts.
This ends m y discussion o f M. R. M ay en o w a’s conception o f textual coherence. The final form o f this conception was shaped prim arily by the failure to sep arate ad equately the goals o f a lin g u ist’s coherence analysis from the goals o f a literary theo rist desiring to describe a text from the p o in t o f view o f literary com m unication.
27 B e l l e r t , op. cit.
28 O. D u c r o t , “ L es P r é su p p o sé s, c o n d itio n s d ’e m p lo i ou élém en ts de c o n te n u ,” [in:] R ech erch es su r les sy s tè m e s sign ifian ts, ed . by J. R e y -D e b o v e , T he H a g u e 1973.
P rofessor M ay en o w a’s generosity weighed on this conception , too. In synthesizing the results o f m any different analyses, she did n o t avoid th e self-contradictory ones, perh aps less self-contradictory th an su bord in ated to different goals and schools o f tho u g h t.
3
Below I wish to present som e o f my own th o u g h ts on the coherence o f literary texts. Because o f the tentative ch a rac te r o f these considerations, I will fo rm u late m y o b servation s as a series o f hypotheses.
First, I propose to distinguish clearly tw o co ncepts: a m ulti
sentence linkage or series (discourse) and a text. The concept
o f a text ca n n o t be reduced to th a t o f a series o f sentences or vice versa: a series o f sentences is no t a m odel o f a text. Study o f series o f sentences, their m utu al interconnections, m echanism s for their tran sfo rm atio n and generation is a task for linguistics (text gram m ar). Study o f a text, how ever, is a task for poetics. A m u lti sentence series (discourse) is only one, alth o u g h basic, level o f a literary tex t; the sentence units are the basis for the existence o f m ore com plex textual structures. T he linguistic form s o f discourse coherence (an aphora, description , indexes, etc.) are form s o f connection only in sentence series and are no t the exclusive or even the m ain categories o f coherence in literary texts. L iterary texts have their own textual categories th a t ca n n o t be described with linguistic tools. A nd these suprasentence structures in literary texts perform the welding function m ore pow erfully th a n the lexical or gram m atic connectors. Every type o f ju x tap o sitio n or even change o f n a rra to r (from / to He, for instance) causes a change o f the coherence m echanism s in a literary text, alth o u g h it does n o t d istu rb the form al, linguistic form s betw een individual sentences. It is necessary also to distinguish the linguistic m echanism s o f any language statem en t from the peculiarities o f literary texts. The category o f new spaper notes certainly differs from the catego ry o f literary work.
Second, b o th text gram m arians and M . R . M ayenow a have confused tw o theoretical problem s in their w ork. T he first one is
C o h eren ce o f L ite r a r y T e x ts 49
the development o f a m ulti-sentence series (discourse), the second is textual coherence. The m ixing o f these tw o questions caused the co n tra d ictio n between the syntactic an d sem antic m ethods for analyzing coherence m entioned above. T hus, I propo se to include only syntactic analysis o f units larger th a n a sentence in the prob lem o f a developing or grow ing series o f sentences (discourse). This is the p ro p er place for the analysis o f them atic-rem atic relations, for analysis o f the welding function o f lexical rep etition s, o f an ap h o ric or discussive expressions. T he m echanism s for developing a m u lti sentence series (discourse) can b e described entirely in linguistic categories. M oreover, they can be presented in a form al n o tatio n , for instance as a schem at for th e deriv atio n o f sentences. G ra m m a r norm s govern syntax o f series in this sense, an d their rep resentatio ns are the respective language categories. W ith o u t going fu rth er in to detail : we speak o f the d evelopm ent o f a m ulti-sentence series when we are interested in th e re la tio n s o f the connections betw een successive sentences in a series. T he m echanism s for developm ent can be m ore or less explicit; the co m p o n en ts o f the connections (an ap ho ras, repetitions, indexes, etc.) are m ore or less exposed in the stru ctu re o f the linear succession. M . R. M ayenow a deals with ju s t this phenom enon.
A literary text, however, develops on higher levels th a n the im m ediate sentence succession. T his p ro b lem is well know n am on g specialists studying the n a rra tio n , poetic language or p lo t structures. O ne can speak o f the developm ent o f m etrical or stylistic series, bu t in each case a different level o f the text is being described and different scholarly tools are used. E ach level o f the text develops according to its own rules (m etric level, n arratio n lev el,29 plots, or co m positio n), bu t the rules o f all these levels determ ine the n atu re o f the unfolding o f a literary text and its coherence.
The analysis o f the variety and interdependence o f these different series is in tu rn the whole p leasu re o f the scholar o f poetics.
C oherence o f literary texts, how ever, is quite different. It is
29 F o w l e r , op. c it., pp. 72 — 77, a tte m p ts to a p p ly d e sc r ip tio n o f th e d e v e lo p m e n t o f senten ces. H e d istin g u ish es a p ro g ressiv e sty le, a n o n -p ro g re ssiv e sty le, and a lo ca lly ch a n g in g style. S u ch lo c a liz a tio n o f the narrative style d ep en d s on b reak in g w ith the p rev io u s p rin cip le for th e d e v e lo p m e n t o f the d isc o u r se at so m e p o in t in the text.
exclusively sem antic and com m unicative and does no t depend on the im m ediate succession o f the sentences. A bove all there are texts in which the language level does n o t form an unfolding series o f sentences. A m ong them are iconic presen tatio n s o f the th o u g h t process, which linguists reg ard as exam ples o f incoherent texts. I prefer to say th at on the sentence level a distu rb an ce o f the unfolding m echanism or the co n stru c tio n occurs, bu t on the text level, at the n arratio n technique level (convention) there is coherence. The study o f tex tual coherence belongs to the sphere o f literary com m un ication , b u t the study o f form al connections betw en sentences belongs to the th eory o f discourse o r the theory o f the developm ent o f language statem ents. A researcher w ho analyzes the m echanism s for the developm ent o f a m ulti-sentence series aim s, clearly, to form u late conclusions a b o u t the general principles for the developm ent o f every discourse, b u t the syntax o f the developm ent o f sentences is q u ite rem o te from the problem s o f textual poetics and literary co m m unication .
T he best exam ple o f the difference betw een the developm ent o f a m ulti-sentence series (discourse) and textual coherence is a set o f sentences M ayenow a classifies as an incoherent text.
T h e cin em a w as lo ca ted o n P u ła w sk a S t.; P u ła w sk a St. is o n e o f the streets in W arsaw ; th e streets in W arsaw h a v e such a sh a p e; su ch a sh a p e ca n be represented by th ese c o m p a r iso n s, e t c . ,()
N o te th a t these sentences in the term inology o f the text g ram m arians and M. R. M ayenow a possess the form s o f coherence, rep etitio n : th e final elem ent o f each sentence is repeated at the beginning o f the next. O ther coherence can be add ed to this discourse.
“T he cinem a is located on P uław ska St. (because) P uław ska St. is one o f the streets in W arsaw , (but) the streets in W arsaw have such a shape, etc.”
It is clear, however, th a t regardless o f the nu m b er o f form al connections between these sentences P rofessor M ayenow a would regard this text as incoherent. It is logical to reg ard it as a collection o f sentences and not a text, bu t I will disregard th a t issue.
i0 M. R. M a y e n o w a , “In w entarz p ytań d o teorii te k stu ” (A n In v en to ry o f Q u e stio n s on T ext T h eo r y ), [in:] ST iJ, pp. 293 — 294.
