The article starts from the epistemological characterization proposed by D. Copceag for E. Coseriu’s outlook on language, epitomized in the term “linguistic realism”, and examines its possible application in the domain of text linguistics as a hermeneutics of sense, for defining the legitimate object of this discipline and distinguishing it from the ways in which the same material object ‘text’ may be approached in other linguistic disciplines or in other domains of scientific inquiry. Several instances of Coseriu’s own use of the term “realism” in correlation with “functionalism” and “rationalism” are reviewed, with special focus on the “integral typology of real (genuine) languages”, which provides the blueprint of a relevant analogy for the exploration of genuine texts. Finally, an illustrative text analysis helps to highlight the differences between the semantic perspective which is proper to integral text linguistics, from the standpoints of adjacent disciplines, such as a pragmatics of individual texts, or of completely different pursuits, such as sociology, cultural history, marketing etc., where texts are treated as sources of information, being thus reduced to an instrumental status.