On ancient vs. modern, eastern vs. western, contributions to text coherence theory

ABSTRACT In modern linguistics, coherence is considered a fundamental property of text. The study of this phenomenon is quite novel, since its origin dates back to the 1960s. However, although in the historiography of linguistics we find no traces of it, both the concept and its study are not so modern as one might think. By studying text unity, current linguistics addresses a central question both in Aristotle’s Poetics and in 19th–century hermeneutical speculation. Also, linguists are addressing a basic notion of ancient Chinese literary criticism, which we cannot ignore. Thus, the objectives of this paper are to analyse these little-known antecedents, with the purpose of contrasting them; to insert the modern study of coherence in the tradition of both Western and Chinese thought; and to assess directly the contributions and merits of these traditions within the history of linguistics. The research carried out shows surprising results. A similar idea of text coherence is identified in both Western and Chinese traditions, but the most astonishing finding is the existence of a pioneering theory of coherence which was fully developed in China more than 1,500 years ago, predating modern explanatory models by many centuries.