Bryan Abos-Padilla
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Text and text types
What is a text? The aim of this unit is to clarify what we understand by text and how to discriminate what is text and what is not.
Halliday,M & R. Hasan. and Beaugrande, R. & W. Dressle are some authors who helps us to get a better understanding of that word and its use in the context of this course.
So, what is text?
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Text is any piece of writing that has a CONTEXT.
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Text is a "communicative ocurrence" which meets seven standards of textuality (Beaugrande and Dressler).
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It has a definable communicative function. A text is not defined for its length, but for its context.
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It can be written or spoken but for this course, we will focus only on written works.
• Texts can be clasify according to their purpose:
Informative Persuasive Descriptive Instructive
Example of a key activity of this unit
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Text type
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Purpose
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Text/image distribution
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Font size, form
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Colors
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Icons
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Leaders of opinion
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Target public
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Main idea
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Hidden message/ideas
Reflection of the unit
The utility of this unit is that it provide guidance for us as students. After this unit we were supposed to clearly understand what text is according to the requirements of the course and how to classify them according to their purpose. Also we learned to work with them, particularly with persuasive texts and to indentify some features of their composition.
Constitutive and regulative principles
Constitutive principles:
1. Cohesion: (text centered notion)
Has to do with how the surface components of the text are interconected following a secuence. Therefore, the components depend on each other.
2. Coherence: (text centered notion)
There is a logical secuence within the components of the text which makes them relevants and accessible for the reader. It is the way the text is linked.
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Cause: Because of an action, another happens
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Enablement: An action made another possible
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Reason: An action is produced after considering antother
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Purpose: An action was planned in advanced.
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Time: Verb tenses usage to show chronology.
3. Intentionality:
It has to do with the attitude of the writer and deals with the feeling he wants to invest it with.Intentionality has also to do with why and how a text is produced.
4. Acceptability:
Reader's attitude towards the text. He is the one who decides whether it is coherent and cohesive, or if it is meaningful for him.
5. Informativity:
Has to do with the expeced v/s the unexpected information in the text. Therefore, prediction has an importan role in informativity.
6. Situationality:
Relation between text and its environment. Situationality deals with the relevance of text with the context it can be read.
7. Intertextuality:
Relation the text has with other pieces of writing outside. Intertextuality implies one text depends on other to be understood. E.g.: parodies, sagas, reviews, etc.
Regulative principles:
If a text es efficient there is minimum effort by the reader to understand the text
If a text is effective leaves a strong impression and fulfill its goal
If a text es appropiate there is accordants between the text's setting and the 7 standards
Example of a key activity of this unit
The aim of the activity was to determin whether the efficiency, effectiveness and appropiateness of this types of texts (twit, text message and e-mail) to notice how they were different and why.
Reflection of the unit
This unit deepens in the definition of text and provides standards that can be observed in real context, so a text can be analised and undestrood. It is very interesting to know this classifications, since it cements the path to text analysis in practice, and helps us in our own writting, to make our productions atractive according to the regulative standards of textuality
Cohesion and coherence
1. References:
One item refers to another mentioned or not in the text.
E.g.: "She is Michelle Bachelet, the president of Chile"
2. Substitution:
The recpacement of an item within the text for a functional word.
E.g.: "the last excercise is isn't right, you should check that one".
3. Ellipsis:
The Deletion of words for the for economy or practicality.
E.g. "The man said (that) the book was expensive"
4. Conjunctions:
To create cohesion within the text through the use of conjunctions
E.g.: "Apple and oranges are completely different things"
5. Proforms:
Using pronouns instead of content words.
E.g.:"My mom gave me a new cell phone. She is so nice".
6. Lexical items:
To use a word repeatedly or synomims of it depending on its word class.
E.g.: My mother... (mom, ancester, progenitor, parent, mommy.
7. Recurrence:
Repetition of elements or patterns in the text
Eg: "My sister likes photography. My sister has many cameras. Actually, My sister bought another yesterday.
8. Parallellism:
Repetition of patterns according to grammatical structures. E.g.:"I enjoy watching t.v., drinking beer and performing magic tricks".
9. Paraphrase:
To repeat an idea with different words.
E.g.: "Text linguistics is a very hard subject" v/s "The subject taught by miss St. John is very complicated".
Example of a key activity of this unit
How text binds together: text analysis of a newspaper article
For this unit, we analysed a newspaper article which was about the abuses that Teletón in Chile commits against children. This was a very interesting work to do since we had to put into practice what we had learned in the course in terms of cohesive devices.
Reflection of the unit
Cohesion and coherence are terms that many times are easy to confuse. The aim of this unit was to clearly ilustrate the difference between both of them in practice through a practical piece of work previously explained. The idea was to be able to analyse a text according to the cohesive devices learnt in classes. It was probably the hardest assingment to do in this course, but since it was challenging, it was also interesting so we could evidence our progress within the objectives of the subject.
Discourse
Cristal, 1997
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A continuous scratch (especially spoken) language longer than a sentence. This is a very simple definition. And has to do with estructures and lenght
Mercer, 1995
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Language in its social context, as it is used to carry out the social and intellectual life of a community. This is a linguistic macro definition, which is very general and has to do with social features.
Fairclough, 1992
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Different ways of structuring areas of knowledge and social practice, more abstract meaning. This definition deals with ideologic features.
Example of a key activity of this unit
In this unit, three definitions of discourse were given to us so we could compare and contrast them to reach an agreement on how would we define discourse. The result of that process is that I personally understand discourse as a socio-linguistic feature. longer than a sentence, that, within a context, can deliver an ideological message.
Reflection of the unit
This unit's importance can be evidenced in the ability of provide an accurate definition of discourse, so we can clearly identify when we are in front of a text which reunites the characteristics of one, and provide examples.
Text typologies
Text typology is concerned with the identification of the criteria leading to the classification of texts. Depending on the criteria adopted, there are several possibilities of classifying texts.
Functional
Deals with the satisfaction of various communicative necessities of the speakers.
They are divided the following types:
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Representative
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Directive
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Expressive
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Commissive
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Declarative or performative
Strategic
The classification is according to the topics of the text and the ways they are expanded:
They can be:
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Narrative
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Descriptive
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Argumentative
Situational
It is a classification that has to do with the sphere of activity.
They can be:
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Private, formal or public.
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monological and dialogical.
Genres
Textual events of the same category are identified as belonging to different genres.
E.g.:
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Schemes, schemata, discourse structures, macro-structures, rhetorical structures, etc.
Example of a key activity of this unit
In this unit, we got into groups and read a text about the different text typologies. We contrasted our previous knowledge with what we could gather from the text. Finally we sumarise the deffinitions of the different text types in the whiteboard.
Reflection of the unit
This unit was very interesting for me particularly. I had some knowledge about the text typologies, which I remember from highschool, but it was nothing like that since what we saw in classes was more complex and therefore more interesting to analyse. What is remarkable is that I believe that when we work on definitions in groups it is easier to recall them later, and makes the class way more entertaining.