Text

Text details in English (on paper)

Text in four different languages in the so-called Rosetta Stone

Text next to an illustration. Cover #1 of the satirical magazine called The Flake

A text is a composition of signs encoded in a writing system that forms a unit of meaning.

It is also a composition of printable characters (with grapheme) generated by an encryption algorithm that, although they do not make sense to anyone, can be deciphered by their original recipient. In other words, a text is a network of signs with a communicative intention that makes sense in a certain context.

The ideas that a text communicates are contained in what are usually called «macropropositions», structural units of a higher or global level, which give coherence to the text constituting its central thread, the structural skeleton that unites high-level formal linguistic elements, such as headings and subheadings, the sequence of paragraphs, etc. In contrast, "micropropositions" are the contributing elements of the cohesion of a text, but at a more particular or local level. This distinction was made by Teun van Dijk in 1980.

The microstructural or local level is associated with the concept of cohesion. It refers to one of the phenomena of coherence, that of the particular and local relationships that occur between linguistic elements, both those that refer to each other and those that have the function of connecting and organizing.

It is also a set of sentences grouped into paragraphs that talks about a certain topic.

Linguistic text

According to Greimas, it is a statement, either graphic or phonic, that allows us to visualize the words we hear and that is used to express the linguistic process. While Hjelmslev uses that term to designate the whole of an unlimited linguistic chain (§1).

In linguistics, not every set of signs constitutes a text.

The language or speech configuration is called text and uses specific signs (language or speech sign) and is organized according to speech or language rules.

Text as "dialogue" and text as "monologue"

Another important notion is that texts (and speeches) are not just "monologues". In linguistics, the term text is used both for productions in which there is only one issuer (single-managed or single-controlled situations) and in which several exchange their roles (poly-managed or poly-controlled situations) such as conversations. The text contains connectors and signs, etc.

Examples:

• Monologue
  • Oral: A declamation, a political discourse.
  • Written: A letter of request or a novel.
• Dialogales
  • Oral: A conversation in a bar or bank.
  • Written: A chat or card conversation.

Features

This text or set of signs extracted from a discourse must meet the conditions of textuality. The main ones are:

• Cohesion.
• Coherence.
• Meaning.
• Progressiveness.
• Intentionality.
• Adequacy.

According to the linguists Beaugrande and Dressler, every well-written text must present seven characteristics:

1. It must be coherent, that is, focusing on a single subject, so that the various ideas contained in it must contribute to the creation of a global idea.
2. It must have cohesion, which means that the various sequences that build it must be interrelated.
3. It must be appropriate for the recipient, so that he uses a language that is understandable for his ideal reader, but not necessarily for all readers (house of the core dumps mentioned above) and so that he also provides all the necessary information (and minimum unnecessary information) for his ideal or recipient reader.
4. It must have a communicative intention, that is, it must mean something to someone and therefore make use of relevant strategies to achieve communicative efficiency and effectiveness.
5. It must be framed in a communicative situation, that is, it must be enunciated from one here and now concrete, which allows to set a horizon of expectations and a context for its understanding.
6. It must enter into relation to other texts or genres in order to achieve meaning and be interpreted according to a number of competencies, budgets, reference frames, types and genders.
7. It has to possess sufficient information to be innovative and interesting but not to require so much that its meaning fails to prevent the recipient from being able to interpret it (e.g. by excessive demand for previous knowledge).

Text types

In order to group and classify the enormous diversity of texts, textual typologies have been proposed. These are based on different criteria such as the function that the text fulfills in relation to the interlocutors or the global internal structure that it presents.

The simplest classification of texts, based on the characteristics that predominate in each one (it is considered that there is no pure text, that is, there is no text that has features corresponding only to each category, all text is hybrid), It is as follows:

• narrative texts
• descriptive texts
• argumentative texts
• commutative texts
• Explanatory texts
• Explanatory texts
• conclusive texts
• informative texts
• predictive texts
• formal text
• instructive text