Exploring the ‘augmented reality’ of ‘real’ texts: A Coserian perspective

Abstract

The paper examines Eugenio Coseriu’s project of a “text linguistics as a hermeneutics of sense” on the backdrop of the wider – “integral” – map for the study of language / speaking as a cultural activity. The aims and objectual scope of this type of text linguistics, as well as its limitations and outer limits, i.e. its conceivable interfaces with other disciplines of textuality, in particular with text semiotics and poetics, are discussed from the viewpoint of a critical-constructive question: if / to what extent the conceptual construction envisaged by Coseriu in the latter part of the 20th century is still meaningful, feasible and productive today. The “critical-aesthetic perspective” in the study of speaking as a creative activity proposed by Ana Agud offers clarifying interpretations on several conceptual and methodological points which we hold to be directly relevant for text linguistics; these are used in the course of the discussion in order to shed light on the notion of ‘real (genuine) text’ as the legitimate focus of text-linguistic investigations in a Coserian framework.