THE STUDY OF TEXT WITH REFERENCE TO SPANISH

The aim of the present work is to attempt to substantiate the view that teachers of advanced language students, as is the case for the courses of consecutive and simultaneous interpretation, can benefit in some ways from the work carried out in the area known as "text linguistics". This research reflects the shift of attention away from the study of syntax to the study of semantics and language use. Firstly, in our opinion, before students are expected to enter the booth, or even to summarize and translate difficult passages, they should be taught how to understand the ways in which text in generai and particular kinds of text from specific registers function and especially how "meanings " are conveyed by language users. This can be done by carrying out analyses at various levels of elaborateness of the kind illustrated here. Secondly, as an extension of the work in "register", students could be given exercises in understanding and manipulating the various kinds of semantic relations that can exist between lexical items. The attention could then b