The Taming of the Text - Explorations in Language, Literature and Culture (Paperback, New edition)

This study attempts to explore the ways in which language constitutes textual functions, ranging from mediation to manipulation, from questioning to commanding, and from narrative to Bakhtin's theory of literary communication. The contributors provide a view of the social functioning of texts, taking account of linguistic, literary and cultural elements. They bring together new perspectives on literary analysis and theory, on pragmatics and discourse analysis, as well as on text linguistics and reception theory. Various types of text are examined - descriptions, travel accounts, dialogues, press columns, recipes, poetry and drama - including work by Brecht, Camus, Defoe, Frost, Harrison, Larkin, Plath and Shakespeare.