ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author returns to a fundamental question for literary scholarship with a rational view of the parameters of literature. Drawing on insights from the field of pragmatics, as well as work across the social sciences, he makes a distinction between text and discourse that reframes the latter more restrictively than is typical in either critical theory or most approaches in linguistics. In contrast to the impromptu character of discourse, textual communication is usually premeditated. The major function of such linguistic constructions is to preserve and pass on knowledge and values judged relevant or important to the culture. The insight that textuality is a matter of degree, involving several criteria simultaneously thus becomes unavoidable. In so far as a particular linguistic configuration develops more structural qualities that make it detachable from the discourse praxis, it acquires extra textuality.
