Macrostructures: An Interdisciplinary Study of Global Structures in Disclosure, Interaction, and Cognition

by Teun A. van Dijk

Macrostructures are higher-level semantic or conceptual structures that organize the ‘local’ microstructures of discourse, interaction, and their cognitive processing. They are distinguished from other global structures of a more schematic nature, which we call superstructures . Originally published in 1980, the theory of macrostructures outlined in this book is the result of research carried out during the previous 10 years in the domains of literary theory, text grammar, the general theory of discourse, pragmatics, and the cognitive psychology of discourse processing. The presentation of the theory is systematic but informal and at this stage was not intended to be fully formalized.

317 pages, Loose Leaf

First published July 1, 1980

About the author

Teun Adrianus van Dijk, is a scholar in the fields of text linguistics, discourse analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis. With Walter Kintsch he contributed to the development of the psychology of text processing.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this as a follow-up on Lohafer's _Reading for Storyness_, hoping to better understand the way van Dijk's ideas about "macropropositions" might be usefully applied to ongoing serial narratives (in other words, monthly comics).

It was a bit of a slog for me, because my background, even in discourse analysis, is very underdeveloped, so I had to let great swaths slide past me. That said, I was a little disappointed to find van Dijk's sense of narrative to be as impoverished as it is here-- he presents these pretty amazing ideas about story-grammars and the way they work, but doesn't really pursue them-- instead, what he thinks of narrative is something much smaller than his overall scheme would suggest.

Really, I don't mean to ding van Dijk-- I just think he's interested in talking about other things. I went in looking for the holy grail, I think, and came out with a collectible shot glass. It's my problem for expecting something else.