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Article published In:
English Text Construction
Vol. 16:1 (2023) ► pp.30–58

‘Narrative structure’, ‘rhetorical structure’, ‘text structure’

A conceptual complex meets text- and discourse‑world profiling shifts

ORCID logo | Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”

The paper seeks to provide a cognitive-linguistic re-interpretation of the centuries-old notion of whole-text structure. The investigation presented here draws on 317 data sources selected through a scoping literature review. The paper demonstrates how text structure, narrative structure, rhetorical structure, etc. all represent metonymically one and the same multi-faceted underlying concept. That concept is argued to result from the amalgamated operation of conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy combined with the simultaneous and dynamic operation of (what are known in gestalt psychology as) profiling shifts. The paper further demonstrates how such shifts in profiling operate on text-worlds and discourse-worlds to bring about perceptions of a text’s ‘progression’ and of whole-text structure.

Keywords: narrative structure, rhetorical structure, conceptual metaphor and metonymy, text-world, discourse-world, shifts in profiling
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data source selection
  • 3.Review and summary of the data sources
    • 3.1‘Rhetorical structure’
    • 3.2‘Narrative structure’
    • 3.3‘Text structure’
    • 3.4‘Macrostructure’, ‘superstructure’, ‘overall structure’
    • 3.5A generalization of the uses
  • 4.Constructing the conceptual complex of whole-text structure
    • 4.1 whole-text structure, conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy
    • 4.2 whole-text structure, conceptual metaphtonymy and Text World Theory
    • 4.3 whole-text structure, conceptual metaphtonymy, Text World Theory and gestalt psychology’s shifts in profiling
    • 4.4Dataset evidence
  • 5.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 17 November 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.21016.tin
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