Humanistic Texts: Characteristics, Structures, and Genres
Humanistic Disciplines: General Characteristics
Humanistic disciplines aim to study all aspects related to the personal and social nature of human beings, including their historical and cultural manifestations. General features include:
- Tendency towards abstraction: Dealing with mental entities, either because their fields are ideas or the constructs to which these ideas give rise.
- Speculative: They are characterized by logical reasoning. They conform to elaborate speculations, which are more or less convincing but not verifiable.
- Open to debate: They are, by definition, non-definitive, since they are subject to constant discussion.
- Ideology and subjectivity: The humanities are more permeable to the appearance of the private and subjective ideas of those who produce them.
- Doctrinal language: Each discipline has its own terminology and sometimes even its own specific language.
Major Structures
The text types most often used to present humanistic disciplines are exposition and argumentation. The structures that most frequently appear in such texts include:
- Analytical or explanatory: The exposition of an idea or theme appears first, followed by a detailed development of it.
- Synthetic or conclusive: The development comes first, followed by the conclusion, which is the theme of the text.
- Dual framework: The theme appears at the beginning and end as a conclusion, with the development in between.
- Parallelistic or repeated linear: The theme of the text is distributed along the ideas expressed within it.
Genres and Subgenres of Humanistic Texts: Linguistic Features
The main genres or subgenres into which humanistic texts are divided are the study and the essay. In a study, the author approaches the issue from a professional perspective, with a more conventional structure, tone, and language. In contrast, the intention of the essay is to suggest ideas and provoke reflection in the reader, using a freer structure.
The Study
Its features are:
- Thematic Unit: The subject matter is well-defined from the beginning, and the author adheres to it.
- Objective attitude: The author intends that the writing appears as a product of serious research or study. These texts will be dominated by declarative sentence forms and impersonal and passive reflexive sentences.
- Rigorous treatment of the subject: The author properly qualifies their claims so that they are not vague or fuzzy, avoiding the use of expressions and verbal forms of notional value.
- Accuracy: The need for accuracy is manifested in the abundance of complements within noun phrases. In addition, the humanities have specific terminology.
The Essay
The essay is unpretentious, unfinished, and in a state of meditation and preparation. Its main features are:
- It presents an author’s personal view on an issue.
- It’s a genre open to controversy.
- The author’s views are controversial because they are personal.
- It aims at suggestion and provoking thought in the reader.
- The recipient is a large public that does not necessarily have deep knowledge of the subject but has some interest in being informed and is willing to reflect.
- It is variable in its extent, subject, tone, approach, and the attitude of each author.
- It usually has a parallelistic structure.
Some authors prefer longer sentences with elaborate and complex syntax, while others prefer short, simple, and clear sentences.