What's in a Text? Inquiries into the Textual Cornucopia

Linguists of various orientations, translators and literary scholars share an interest is text. Although guided by diverse interests and aims, they ask themselves, if only subconsciously, the following questions: What kind(s) of texts do we study or translate? Why do we study them? What are we looking for? What do and don't we find? What do we do with whatever we do find? What does it tell us about language, its speakers or the human mind? Generally, what is (a) text for me as a linguist and/or translator? In the present volume, the questions are brought into the level of the conscious and addressed by several practitioners in the fields of linguistics and translation (contributions with a literary slant also have a linguistic orientation). However, the readers who look for ultimate answers to these questions will be disappointed: such may not exist. But that need not render the reading, or the entire field of text analysis, less appealing. On the contrary, the ambition of the book is to help the reader appreciate the richness of text and the variety of texts as a treasure trove for scholars representing multifarious approaches to language.