eISBN: 978-88-8305-092-3

When the study of meaning became a linguistic discipline, the main interest of semanticists was in the technical level of language and the major focus was represented by the single word. A different view of the relationship between language and meaning was provided by Malinowski (1923) at the beginning of the 20th century. The meaning of language was interpreted in terms of context of culture and context of situation. Malinowski’s theories influenced linguists such as Firth (1957) and Halliday (1985) and language became to be considered meaningful only if considered within the language events in which it is used. For this reason, language started to be analysed only in authentic contexts: the focus of interest is not the single word any more but the meaningful relations words enter into with the other words around them (Sinclair 1991; 1996). The main theme in this book is meaning: how meaning originates and how meaningful communication can be established in texts.

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