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In the following paper we propose to clarify, from a terminological point of view, certain aspects of the limits established within the set of investigations and studies included in what we call text and discourse linguistics, that is, text linguistics, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, etc. For this purpose, we have confronted several of the most important contributions to text theory, mainly during the 1970's and 1980's, provided that this is the period in which foundations are laid for text and discourse theories, and also the 1990's, with definitions found in various dictionaries of linguistic terminology, specially those pertaining to its object of study, i. e. text or discourse. Said definitions have been established following the developments in these fields of research. Close observation and analysis of such definitions reveal the evident difficulties encountered by researchers when applying these concepts and using this specialised terminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]