FEATURES OF TEXTS AND TEXT TYPES (CHAPTER 5)
WHAT IS A TEXT?
-It refers to any any spoken or written passage of whatever length that forms a unified hall
-Something that has TEXTURE = Give unity and involves the interaction of two components:
1)COHERENCE=Semantic notion
Meanings need to be unified, they have to make sense
2)COHISION
Has to do with elements inside the lexical grammar
The result is LANGUAGE that we might call TEXT
TEXTURE Texts that are cohesive and coherent
Ex. STOP! (It is a text even in one single word)
Tolson (1996)
He talks more about the “reader” of texts, and about the process of making sense of them
“meanings are derived from meaning system to which everyone in our culture has access. The text
itself works to structure these meanings.”
But also, that “the reader comes to the text with all sorts of prior knowledge and expectations”.
The modern consumer of the media is a reader of many different kinds of text, which inter-
relate and feed off one another
-Texts give meanings
-People come to the text with their knowledge and their expectations.
Meaning creation= The text creates meaning but also meaning is created both from the text but
also by our own way of making sense (our backgrounds knowledge).
Modern readers (or media consumers) are readers of many text types which interfere one
another.
TEXT TYPES
First crucial distinction: Fiction and Non-Fiction texts
Fiction= Novels, Poems, Drama, Movies, TV shows
Non-Fiction=Descriptive texts, Informative texts, Instructional texts, Persuasive texts, Literary non-
fiction, Biography, Letters, Information leaflets, Open letters, Review, Newspaper article, Essay,
Travel writings, Blog
-They are written for many different purposes and are aimed at many different people or
audience.
(Ex. Advertisements, reviews, letters, diaries, newspaper articles, information leaflets, magazine
articles)
