Levels Analysis: J. R. Firth’s Theories of Linguistic Analysis

Summary This paper should be considered a sequel to the paper read at the meetings of the Canadian Linguistic Association at Kingston in June 1960 and to be published in the Proceedings of the Learned Societies of Canada; in the first paper, the linguistic theories of J. R. Firth (and which are summarised in section 1.0. 1.1, and 1.11 of this paper) were outlined, and in this article the procedures at the different levels (Firth himself has used the term “spectrum analysis”) of the analysis of a text are described and copiously illustrated from the works of Firth and his associates. These methods have been developed by Professor Firth and his colleagues in London on the lines of the linguistic theory promulgated by Professor Firth and adumbrated in the original paper. This article concludes with a detailed bibliography of the writings of Firth and his colleagues; reference is also made to the work of other scholars who have discussed Firth’s linguistic theories.