Disagreement about the use of linguistics can often be traced to views about functions, and the relation between form and function.
Linguistics is a practice which seeks to find a final analysis of the forms of language but which cannot do so because it is unable to escape itself to become a theory of how the world actually is.
This view is associated in particular with poststructuralist theorists, who has a general principle feel that any kind of form can never finally be determined, but always from the gaze of the analysts.
Another view is that literary text exceeds their form. Thus the text as a whole may be seem as having holistic qualities such as a whole it is more that the sum of its parts, and has qualities as a whole cannot be underside by the analysis of the parts.
Or the text may be seen as having transcendent qualities, aspect which hold of it but which cannot be discovered by formal analysis.
Both views are associated in particular with Romantic and post Romantic theorists; these views remain quiet influential and are often invoked in the suggestion that linguistics cannot ultimately cope with literature.
Form and function to language literature
