There has been, and still is, a degree of confusion in linguistics over the definitions of 'text' and 'discourse'. Our own usage hinges on the distinction proposed by Widdowson; a text is 'sentences in combination', in contrast with discourse which is the 'use of utterances in combination'.
A little more explicitly, we might contrast text – a 'structured sequence of linguistic expressions forming a unitary whole' - with discourse as a 'structured event manifest in linguistic (and other) behaviour’.
We can go further, defining text as the 'verbal record of a communicative act' and distinguish text-as-product from discourse-as-process. We realize that this is a somewhat conservative position to adopt. It does, however, at least have the merit of allowing us to concentrate here on text – a product of the linguistic system – and leave until the next chapter elements which are products of all the communication systems available to human beings and not just the linguistic: (1) discourse and (2) speech acts and parameters of stylistic variation.
How, then, are texts distinguished from non-texts? Three characteristics have been suggested. For a text to demonstrate‘texture' (i.e. to be a text) it must possess (1) generic structure (it must belong to a recognizable genre or register, both notions we shall take up again in the next chapter), (2) textual structure (it must reflect the selection of options from the THEME systems; theme and information) and (3) internal cohesion.
The first of these characteristics – generic structure – belongs conceptually outside the linguistic system itself and within the larger semiotic systems of communication in general; it belongs, in short, with a discussion of discourse. The remaining two, however, are particularly germane to our present interests – outlining the form and function of the systems which organize discoursal meaning – and will, therefore, be discussed next.
But, before we look in detail at THEME and, more briefly at cohesion, it would be well to state clearly what we believe text to be.
We see text as a combination of sentences linked by both syntactic and (more importantly) semantic means (through and with the linguistic co-text): cohesion. Text is only text by virtue of the network of lexical and grammatical links which hold it together. It is 'the basic linguistic unit, manifested at the surface as discourse' and signalled by choices from the theme and information systems of the grammar. These systems manipulate linguistic structure to distribute and focus information; the theme system through the lexico-grammatical structure of the clause and the information system through the phonological structure of the tone group.
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