While the literature on either contrastive linguistics or discourse analysis has grown immensely in the last twenty years, very little of it has ventured into fusing the two perspectives. Bearing in mind that doing discourse analysis without a contrastive base is as incomplete as doing contrastive analysis without a discourse base, the specific aim of this book is to argue that translation can add depth and breadth to both contrastive linguistics as well as to discourse analysis.
Authentic data from both spoken and written English is used throughout to add clarity to theoretical insights gained from the study of discourse processing. Each aspect of the model proposed for the analysis of texts is related separately to a problem of language processing and in domains as varied as translation, interpreting, language teaching etc. The global objectives pursued in this volume are the training of future linguists and the sensitization of users of language in general to the realities of discourse.
Table des matières
Figures
Preface
Arabic Transliteration System
Introduction
1. Contrastive Linguistic Decisions: the Need for Textual Competence
2. Foundation Disciplines
3. The Myth of the Single Register
4. Argumentation Across Cultures
5. Argumentation in Arabic Rhetoric
6. The Paragraph as a Unit of Text Structure
7. Background Information in Expository Texts
8. At the Interface Between Structure and Texture: the Textual Progression of Themes and Rhemes
9. Cataphora as a Textural Manifestation
10. Degree of Texture Explictiness
11. Emotiveness in Texts
12. Translating Direct Speech and the Dynamics of News Reporting
13. The Pragmatics of Politeness
14. Cultures in Contact
15. The Discourse of the Alienated
16. The Translation of Irony: a Discourse Perspective
17. The ‘Other’ Texts: Implications for Liaison Interpreting
Glossary of Contrastive Text Linguistics and Translation Terms
References
Index
A propos de l’auteur
Basil Hatim is Professor in the Department of Arabic Studies at the American University of Sharjah. He has lectured widely in translation theory at universities throughout the UK, Europe and the Middle East, and has published extensively on the applications of text linguistics to translation theory and practice.