Text, Context, Pretext: Critical Issues in Discourse Analysis

by H.G. Widdowson

Written by a leading researcher in the field, this fascinating examination of the relations between grammar, text, and discourse is designed to provoke critical discussion on key issues in discourse analysis which are not always clearly identified and examined.

Genres: Linguistics

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Professor Henry Widdowson is an internationally acclaimed authority in applied linguistics and language teaching. His many books, articles, and lectures have been seminal in establishing both the field of applied linguistics and its mode of enquiry.

For many years he was the Applied Linguistics adviser to Oxford University Press. He was the co-editor of Language Teaching: A Scheme for Teacher Education and the series editor of Oxford Introductions to Language Study and the author of Linguistics in the same series. He is series adviser of Oxford Bookworms Collection.

His latest work, Defining Issues in English Language Teaching, appears in the Oxford Applied Linguistics series alongside several other of his titles, including Teaching Language as Communication, Practical Stylistics, Learning Purpose and Language Use, and Explorations in Applied Linguistics 1 and 2.

Professor Henry Widdowson is Emeritus Professor of Education, University of London, and has also been Professor of Applied Linguistics at Essex University and Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Vienna.

'[Widdowson is] a theorist of language and language teaching. His extensive writings have addressed the most significant areas in the field.'

'Widdowson consistently defends clear-thinking and clear presentation of ideas. For international ESOL, he has probably been the most influential philosopher of the late twentieth century.'

Christopher Brumfit, Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning

Reviews

[Vahid Najafi Nahr · Rating 1 out of 5]

The style of the writer was not my favorite one. The content was so heavy and vague and hard to understand! But the aim was useful and perfect for helping the linguistic and academic world.

[Lachlan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written and published book about the foundations of discourse analysis as the study of what texts are taken to mean. Widdowson provides a broad critical history of discourse analysis, arguing that the interpretation of texts involves consideration of not only the words themselves but also their context and the 'pretext' or purpose with which readers approach them. This leads on to a thorough examination of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), a movement within linguistics that students tend to find attractive, because it purports to lay bare hidden biases and prejudices in texts. Finally, linguistics seems to them to have some social value. However, Widdowson, although sympathetic to CDA's own pretexts, uses his elegant prose to deny that CDA has any pretensions to scholarly respectability, dismissing it as no more scientific than rivalling 'readings' of literary works. At times, the author's irony descends into acid sarcasm, but generally I can only praise such a sustained and thoughtful argument.

[Tiara Meida]

i wanto to read this book, seriously