textliche

Textliche is a term used in German-language scholarship to refer to textuality or the text-focused dimension of communication. It denotes the linguistic and structural features that constitute a text as a coherent unit, including organization, cohesion, discourse markers, narrative voice, and genre conventions. In this sense, textliche analysis concentrates on the text itself rather than on non-textual elements such as images, layout, or sound.

Origin and scope: The word derives from the adjective textlich meaning "textual" and is employed in compounds such as textliche Merkmale or textliche Ebene. It is widely used in literary studies, linguistics, rhetoric, and digital humanities to discuss aspects that contribute to how a text is read and interpreted. The term is more common in German-language contexts and may be translated or paraphrased as textual or text-based in English-language scholarship.

Applications and methods: Textliche analysis uses linguistic and literary methods to examine meaning, structure, and interpretation. Typical features examined include cohesion and coherence, narration and perspective, rhetorical devices, theme development, and genre conventions. In corpus and computational studies, textliche features are quantified and compared across authors, periods, or genres, often alongside non-textual data in multimodal research.

Limitations and debate: The term is not universally standardized, and its scope varies by field and author. Some scholars prefer more explicit terms such as textual analysis, stylistics, or discourse analysis. In multilingual contexts, the German term textliche may require careful translation to avoid ambiguity.

See also: textuality, discourse analysis, stylistics, corpus linguistics, multimodal analysis.