Text Types and Properties: A Comprehensive Guide
Text Types
Narrative Text
Definition: Tells a story with characters and actions within a specific time and space. It’s a fictional creation, but can incorporate elements of reality. Subjective in nature.
Features: Expressive, emotive, appealing, connotative, conative, and phatic.
Form: Prose or verse.
Structure:
- Introduction: Introduces characters, setting (time and place), and the inciting incident that triggers the action. Description is predominant.
- Rising Action/Climax: Action becomes complicated, leading to a conflict that requires resolution. Narration dominates, and dialogue plays a key role.
- Resolution: The conflict culminates in a solution or outcome. Narration dominates, and description may reappear.
Characteristic Fields: Literary, dramatic epics, chronicles, historical annals, subjective autobiographies and biographies, religious mythologies, opera, operetta, zarzuela, cabaret, etc.
Language Levels: Slang, colloquialisms, and vulgarity in dialogues; standard and cultured language in literary and narrative descriptions.
Characteristic Terms: Cultisms, colloquialisms, proverbs, slang, foreign words, phrases, euphemisms.
Expository Text
Definition: Aims to inform, teach, and clarify concepts. Objective in nature. Defines, describes, characterizes, analyzes, sequences, and organizes information.
Features: Informative, representative, referential, and metalinguistic.
Form: Prose.
Structure:
- Introduction: Introduces the subject (direct exposition) and may include a definition. (In texts consisting solely of definitions, there may be no introduction.)
- Body: Describes features, parts, qualities, circumstances, processes, etc. May include the definition if the text serves as a dictionary entry.
- Conclusion: Varies depending on the text type; many expository texts lack a formal conclusion. May provide a summary or solution.
Characteristic Fields: Journalism (news), scientific, technological, technical, professional, educational, military, legislative, judicial, administrative, social, sociological, political, guidelines, etc.
Language Levels: Standard, technical, or scientific.
Characteristic Terms: Technical terms, foreign words, cultisms.
Argumentative Text
Definition: Defends a position by reviewing, synthesizing, deducing, inducing, analyzing, concluding, and demonstrating. Attempts to persuade the reader. Can be objective or subjective depending on the arguments used.
Features: Appealing, connotative, or conative.
Form: Prose (but can appear in verse).
Structure:
- Introduction: Introduces the topic and starting point, concluding with a hypothesis to be proven.
- Body: Presents a series of arguments (and counterarguments) to support the viewpoint.
- Conclusion: Synthesizes or summarizes the arguments, concluding with the hypothesis confirmed as a thesis or rejected.
Characteristic Fields: Philosophy, journalism (opinion pieces), scientific, technological, technical, professional, educational, administrative, social, sociological, institutional documents, oratories, etc.
Language Levels: Standard, scientific, or technical.
Characteristic Terms: Technical terms, cultisms, foreign words.
Rhetorical Text
Definition: Expresses feelings, sensations, emotions, memories, and thoughts, aiming to evoke the same in the reader and raise their awareness and sensitivity in an aesthetically pleasing way. Characterized by literary and rhetorical devices. Subjective in nature.
Features: Expressive, emotive, poetic, or aesthetic.
Form: Verse or poetic prose.
Structure:
- Introduction: Introduces the topic and starting point.
- Body: Includes description, enumeration, and potentially narration, dialogue, and argumentation, all related to the topic.
- Conclusion: Not always present, but may provide closure or resolution.
Characteristic Fields: Literary (lyric poetry, prose poetry, calligrams, visual poetry), oratories.
Language Level: Literary and standard.
Characteristic Terms: Cultisms and foreign words.
Text Properties
A text is a unified linguistic unit whose components gain meaning in relation to each other. The verbal context, comprising everything said so far, shapes the meaning of subsequent statements. Texts are characterized by:
- Completeness: The message is presented as complete, though it can be expanded.
- Closed Linguistic Universe: Components derive meaning solely from within the text.
- Thematic Unity and Purpose: A common theme and purpose provide coherence.
- Coherence: Interplay of meaning and intent creates a unified whole.
Structural Diversity:
- Sequential/Narrative
- Expository, Narrative, Descriptive, Argumentative
- Persuasive
- Rhetorical
Definition of Text
A text is a communicative unit characterized by:
- Context: Produced in a defined physical and social environment.
- Intent: Driven by a specific purpose.
- Effect: Influences the receiver’s beliefs or knowledge.
- Variable Size and Shape: Adapts to the above aspects.