International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 2 No. 23; December 2012 167 Textometry: A Method for Numerical Representation of a Text Assistant Prof. Dr. İlker Aydın Yüzüncü Yıl Üniversitesi Van, Turkey Emrullah Şeker Muş Alparslan Üniversitesi Muş, Turkey Abstract This study aims to suggest a systematic text linguistic analysis method. It includes numerical representation of any text not only to illustrate the textual features of any text in concrete numerical terms but also to set a standard of classification via these numerical data. In order to achieve this aim, we initially set our variables upon the fundamental characteristics of what makes a piece of writing a text. The resulting variables were grouped into non-textual, textual and metatextual categories, as to which four different types of sample texts were analyzed. The results were illustrated in tables and represented in numerical values and then compared. The different types of texts produced different textometric values, which were interpreted as the level of these texts in terms of textual features. The outcome values obtained from the administration of the textometry on any text are suggested to be used as a method of labeling the texts for text linguistic or educational purposes. Key Words: textometry, text analysis, text linguistics, metatextuality, non-textuality 1. Introduction Text linguistics is the study of a text as a linguistic product. This focuses on a text in terms of the linguistic criteria which constitute the fundamentals of any text making it meaningful and concrete message. Discourse analysis, text linguistics and pragmatics are the methods used for this purpose. They have differences in their scope of the analysis. Structuralism, outlined by Ferdinand de Saussure (1983), describes language as an analyzable structure, composed of parts that can be defined in relation to others. In the early stages of the linguistic analysis, therefore, it was grammar and structure that determined what to be analysed in a given text. Pragmatics, on the other hand, as Mey (1993) states, differs from structural linguistics in text analysis in that it studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning. Without considering the context, reading any text may cause deviation in meaning, which leads the reader to understand less than the author‟s intention or to misunderstand. According to Blommaert (2005), moreover, discourse analysis differs from text linguists in that they take characteristics of persons into account rather than text structure. However, all these approaches contribute to understanding a linguistic material. What we do in this study is to consider the factors contributing to written language beginning from the author‟s initial intention to the addressee‟s final recognition of pragmatic competence which is defined by Chomsky (1980) as the knowledge of how language is related to the situation in which it is used. Halliday and Hassan (1985) regards text linguistics as an analysis of a text in its semio-socio-cultural environment since text and context are so intimately related that neither concept can be comprehended in the absence of the other. We, therefore, will set our study on multi approaches to administrate the linguistic analysis of a textual material. We start the text analysis from the author‟s possible initial aim before producing the text by referring to his / her biography, world view and life experiences; continue with textual characteristics defined by Beaugrande and Dressler (1981) such as lexical and structural cohesion and coherence, and finally complete with the reader‟s (the addressee‟s) possible perception as a final product.