The present article gives an overview of the situation of text linguistics in Brazil, in comparison with that in Europe, more specifically in Germany. Four lines of historical evolution are observed within the discipline: from theory to application, from abstract to concrete text, from micro-text to macro-text and from centripetal to centrifugal forces. In Germany, from the sixties to the eighties, major research interest centered on theoretical issues. Since te ninities, the focus has moved to questions of application. More recent research projects deal with the description of text types. The brazilian production of the eighties concentrated on the subjects of cohesion and coherence as well as on sociocognitive strategies of text processin...