Text linguistics

Text linguists produce information about Finnish texts, genres, conventions of writing texts, and more generally on the relationship between written language and people’s actions in the present-day textual society. Text linguistics at RILF first started as the analysis of agendas, decisions, and other administrative documents. More recently, we have extended the scope of the research: the text linguists at RILF analyze not only texts written by different officials and other institutional texts, but also texts that could be called everyday texts and web texts. 

Our research problems are closely linked with practical questions of language, and text linguistics is connected with the tradition of critical science. The results of the research can be applied to the guidance of language users, e.g., in an attempt to improve their critical reading skills and textual work. Text linguists also aim to activate general discussion about language and to increase language awareness.

Further, the researchers test different theoretical views and research methods. They aim at establishing an all-round model of text analysis that can be applied to the study of any linguistic product.