ABSTRACT
At the outset, a terminological clarification is perhaps in order. Although fully aware of the semantic gap, I use ‘rhetoric’ as a convenient cover term for al-balāgha which subsumes the three Arabic rhetorical ‘sciences’ ʿilm al-maʿānī, ʿilm al-bayān and ʿilm al-badīʿ. The term ‘text linguistics’ is used here to refer to the inter-disciplinary study of ‘text’ in ‘context’, and the manner in which these intimately relate to each other in highly systematic and diverse ways. A ‘text’ is a sequence of sentences (or any alternatively conceived language elements) which relays a set of mutually relevant communicative intentions, and which ultimately serves an overall rhetorical purpose such as ‘describing’ or ‘counter-arguing’. Finally, ‘context’ includes aspects of message construction such as ‘intentionality’ or the purpose for which utterances are used, ‘intertextuality’ or the way texts constantly refer to other texts, and ‘register’ membership or the assignment of a text to a particular ‘field’ of discourse (subject matter), ‘tenor’ (level of formality) and ‘mode’ (written vs. spoken, etc.).
