A Textual Approach to Selected Novels by William Faulkner

Abstract

It goes without saying that, the textual studies are considered one of the most important features of language analysis. Text can be defined as "Language that is functional". The word "Functional" means language that is doing some job in some context. Text is made up of meanings not only words and sentences. In other words, the text is essentially a semantic unit. Because of its nature as a semantic entity, a text more than other linguistic units, has to be considered from two perspectives at once; both as a "Product" and as a "Process".

The text should also have a relation with its context of situation. The "Textual" features enable the discourse to cohere not only with itself but also with its context of situation, which is defined as "The immediate environment in which a "Text is actually functioning". It is worth mentioning that, the relationship between text and context is a dialectical one: the text creates the context as much as the context creates the text. Meaning arises from the friction between text and context.

This means that, part of the environment for any text is a set of previous texts. Any text is characterized by coherence; it hangs together. At any point after the beginnings, what has gone before provides the environment for what is coming next. For example the Bible (Itself admittedly an intertextual nexus) may be considered as well- nigh inextinguishable source of intertexuality in the field of English and American Literature: the biblical connection is even one of the most outstanding characteristics of American Literature.