Man and Message: A Guide to Meaning-Based Text Analysis

by Kathleen Callow

Overview

Copublished with the Summer Institute of Linguistics, Man and Message provides a practical method of analyzing texts based on a cognitive, multilevel model of meaning presented in simple, non-technical language for a wide audience. It begins with a demonstration of human communications as grounded in a cognitive and language-independent meaning base, and details the non-verbal nature of meaning, purpose, conceptualization, thematic patterns, and coherence-providing relations. Then the model is applied to a variety of English texts by dividing it into subunits and displaying their inter-relations at all levels. Each chapter provides pointers in analyses that can be applied to any text in any language. The approach to analysis from a standpoint of cognition realized in language, rather than based in the language itself makes this an original and effective guide for text analysis of any kind in any language.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780761811282
Publisher:	University Press of America
Publication date:	09/03/1998
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	398
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 9.06(h) x 1.23(d)

About the Author

Kathleen Callow has written one other book and several articles on linguistics and discourse and is an International Translation Consultant with Summer Institute of Linguistics.

Editorial Reviews

As a guide to language for beginners this book is invaluable. . .it is an overdue corrective to all approaches focusing on language forms. . .the author debunks popular misconceptions and repeatedly stresses the limitations of otherwise illuminating ways of representing language at work. . .--Andrzej Pawelec, Jagiellonian University

...interesting approach to text analysis based on-emerging from actual translation.--Marcel Thelen, Hogeschool Maastricht, The Netherlands

From the Publisher

As a guide to language for beginners this book is invaluable.. .it is an overdue corrective to all approaches focusing on language forms.. .the author debunks popular misconceptions and repeatedly stresses the limitations of otherwise illuminating ways of representing language at work.. .

Andrzej Pawelec

...interesting approach to text analysis based on-emerging from actual translation.

Marcel Thelen

Presents a new model of text analysis based on meaning rather than surface structure. The authors develop the cognitive categories from which communicated meaning derives and demonstrate how this meaning is realized in texts. They consider how words relate to the world, distinguishing message form from message meaning, the prosodies of the message, schematic and nonschematic message patterns, referential relations, presentational relations, and the meaning structure of a text. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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