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TEXT
A text is a cohesive and coherent piece of spoken or written language. It is made of words woven together. So, when we talk about a text, we talk about the words that we use to make it.
Words can be used with other words that belong to different part of speech.
Words combination and semantic compatibility are what that allow words to become a text.
A text has a:
- Meaning;
- Purpose;
- Structure.
Texts are made up of words, but those words are used for different purposes. For example:
- In Recipe, the words give instructions;
- In Book blurb, words give information about a story;
- While in Advertisement, words should persuade to buy something.
DIFFERENT TYPES OF TEXT
There are different type of text. Every type can be identified thanks to the ways in which a text is written and thanks to the reading strategies. Examples of written texts:
- Novel;
- Recipe;
- Advertisement;
- Text messages;
- E-mails.
Examples of oral text:
- Face to face conversation;
- Talk show;
- Lectures.
When we talk about a text, we have to take account of the context.
CONTEXT and CO-TEXT
The difference between context and co-text is that context is the surroundings, circumstances, environment and the background that determine, specify, or clarify the meaning of an event, while co-text is the text that surrounds the word, the sentence or the clause of interest.
The context for any text is the larger culture that surrounds it. It is given by wh-words ( what? where? when? why? who? ) and even by the background knowledge that people have, so it isn't expressed only by words.
While the co-text is a group of words that co-occur in the same text and surround the word, the sentence or the clause of interest.
The reading of any text results from the interplay of the text itself ( co-text ) and the cultural background knowledge ( context ).
If there isn’t a relation between words and context, there isn’t even a sense and so doesn't exist any text.
A text is coherent when the participants share a background knowledge even though there aren’t relations between words.
COHESION
Cohesion is what that give a texture to a text. It refers to the choice of lexical words and grammatical items to form something unitary a text.
The way in which textile workers weave threads to form clothes is very close to the way in which we weave words to form a text.
Cohesive links are the linguistics patterns that hold sentences together. They make an explicit connection between the sentences in a text. Without them, there is only a list of statements.
Cohesion and coherence are very important in order to provide meaning to a text.
LEXICAL COHESION
It’s the relationship between words. It occurs when there are sense relations between lexical words. It refers to the way in which lexical items are woven together in a text.
There are different kind of relations that could be involved:
- Repetition;
- Synonymy-Antonymy;
- Hyponymy-Hyperonimy (fruit-apple)
- Specific-general reference (referring to the same items but in a more-less
specific way);
- Meronymy: whole-part relation (one term is a part of an item that is mentioned:
apple-pips);
▲ ENDOPHORIC REFERENCE (textual) : the use of a word or phrase to refer
to something within the same text (we have to keep reading to understand how
endophoric reference works).
For example, in the sentences " I saw Leo yesterday. He was lying on the
beach " and “ when he arrived home, Leo was sleeping : " he " is an endophoric
expression because it refers to something mentioned elsewhere in the same
text, in these sentences "Leo".
Endophoric reference can be split into three subcategories:
- ANAPHORIC REFERENCE : when a pronoun or a lexical element refers
backwards to a noun, a noun phrase, a word (something already mentioned
in a text):
■ Tom said that he was going home ( he refers back to Tom ).
■ Sally arrived, but nobody saw her ( her refers back to Sally )
- CATAPHORIC REFERENCE : when a pronoun is used to refer forwards
to another item: a whole sentence, a noun, a noun phrase or a word (not
already mentioned but presented in the text later, afterwards):
■ I couldn’t believe it. The house was a complete mess ( it refers to the fact
that “ the house was mess ”).
■ If you want them , there are cookies in the kitchen.
- SELF-REFERENCE : it refers to the ability of a subject to speak of or
refer to itself: for example, the word " I " in English.
▲ EXOPHORIC REFERENCE (situational) : it refers to something extra
linguistics, not in the same text, and contrasts with endophoric one. It occurs
when a reference item moves us outside the text. Whatever is outside the text
can be understood if there is a kind of shared knowledge between the people
who talk (this shared knowledge is also known as homophoric reference).
Exophoric reference can be carried by deictics , with words such as " this",
"that", "here", "there ", as in " did the gardener water those plants? ” It is quite
possible that "those" refers to the environment in which the dialogue is taking
place - to the " context of situation ", as it is called -. This kind of reference
takes us outside the text. Exophoric reference is not cohesive , since it does
not bind the two elements together into a text.
(For this reason, many advertisements address the reader directly using “ you ”,
and companies refer to themselves as “ we ”. Both are exophoric references ).
▲ SUBSTITUTION : a device that allows avoiding the need to repeat the same
word too many times; it allows to substitute an element of the text with another
to avoid repetition and redundancy.
This device is often carried by: pronouns, the dummy auxiliary verb do ,
demonstrative pronouns, so (for an entire close).
▲ ELLIPSIS or OMISSION : omission of section of a sentence. The only part of
text that can be omitted is a part of text that is already presented elsewhere in
it, so that the reader can reconstruct/understand what is missing thanks to the
text itself.
It can be used in order to create an illusion closeness between reader and
writer , rather than obscuring meaning. It is a contributory factor of cohesion
because ties writer and reader, given that the last one has to fill the gaps created
by the writer across the ellipsis. For example, sentences without a verb phrase
are very common in speech: Barcelona is best in summer. Madrid in winter. In
this case, “ is best ” is missing.
While substitution swaps elements, ellipsis involves omitting elements. Speakers who know each other well often use ellipsis because they have many shared meanings and references.
▲ CONJUNCTION : the term conjunction means joining. It has the role of
indicating in which way the new information links to the previous sentences. In
“ I got up early and fed my cat. Cats like cream. Cream is also a popular colour for paint. Famous painters include Michelangelo, who painted the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. The Vatican is where the pope lives ”.
This text is meaningless ; certain links are fake. The text looks cohesively linked but it makes no sense because there isn’t actually cohesion. This text uses the stream of consciousness technique and imitates the person’s unplanned thoughts.
For example, the word “ cat ” is the focus of the first sentence and is the theme of the second one.
CULTURE refers to all the factors that link groups together in all aspects of social life. Culture refers
to the ways of life of members of a society. For example, how they dress, family life, job and so on.
Languages allow communications to establish relations among the members of a group. Learning a language also means use the words in a cultural way.
Lack of cohesion : ambiguity failed communication
“ Our kitchen floor is very damp. We have two children and would like a third. Could you please send
someone round to do something about it ?”
It can refer to “ our kitchen floor is very damp ” and the fact that they want a third child.
So, this text is ambiguous , but you can understand what the writer want to say thanks to your knowledge that tells you that if a couple wants to have a child, they don’t have to ask for it.
Wrong cohesion.
■ DIRECT SPEECH:
“ Mrs Curtin ( teacher A talk to pupil ): go and ask Mrs Travis ( teacher B ) if she can give you the note that your mum wrote for her last week and bring it back here to me now.
She : refers to Mrs Travis ( grammatical cohesion , anaphoric reference )
You : refers to the pupil ( grammatical cohesion , cataphoric reference )
Her : refers to Mrs Travis ( grammatical cohesion , anaphoric reference )
It : refers to the note ( grammatical cohesion , anaphoric reference )
■ INDIRECT SPEECH:
Pupil (to teacher B): “ Mrs Curtin says if please can she (you) give you (her) the note for ( of ) my mum ?”
she : refers to Mrs Curtin; ( you) : refers to Mrs Travis
you refers to pupil; (her) : refers to Mrs Curtin
When you use the indirect speech, you have to change the pronouns.
Cohesion and references are very important in order to provide meaning.
WORD
Word is a single speech element that has a meaning. In order to be a spoken word, a word has to be made up of unit of sounds while in order to be a written word, a word has to be composed by letters and has to have a meaning.
PART OF SPEECH: Lexical and grammatical words.
- Lexical words : they contain the main semantic information in a text. They
fall into the four main lexical word classes (noun, verb, adjective and
adverb);
- Grammatical words : These words relate other words to each other in
particular ways. Their function is to make explicit the links between lexical
words and to create the context in which the lexical words can operate
successfully (pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, determiners and
auxiliary verbs).
In a text, we might find words belonging to a semantic field or linked by sense relations.
IDIOMS:
An idiom is a combination of words whose overall meaning is not compositional, in other words, his overall meaning is not composed from the sum of meanings of the individual constituents. They are units of language with fixed grammatical and lexical content. For this reason, you can’t substitute words, add adjective or adverb and it can’t be pluralized. You can’t change the order of the words. You can’t use idiomatic expressions in formal language, only in informal language ( spoken language ).
This is why idiomatic expressions are often use in a manipulated way (for example, you can change the inflection of verbs). Manipulation includes words play; we can play with words for example using homophones:
“ We can die/dye for you ” (morire o tingere).
TENSE
Tense refers to the way in which verbs are used to signal time: for example, a verb can be marked to show that an action happened in the past: talk talk ed.
Information texts are intended to tell the reader about “the nature of things”, these types of text tend to use present-tense verb form , while prose fiction gives messages about the nature of the world, it tends to this by looking back and giving a narration of a series of events that happened to a set of fictional characters. The prose fiction employs past tense verb form.
It can be a very useful scene-setting strategy in fiction to “ stop the clock ” and give a description of a place or person that uses present tense verbs to carry the idea “this is how things usually are in this place/with this person”.
VOICE
It is something that tends to vary according to the genre of the writing. It can be active or passive. We use passive form to create a neutral text and to depersonalize a text.
Subject becomes the agent phrase (it can be omitted)
Object becomes the subject
PHRASEOLOGY
A combination of words can be a formula , an idiomatic expression , a proverb or a collocation. These definitions are linked to the observation of multiple expressions, to their function and to what the reference literature has identified as constituent characteristics of idiomatic expressions, formulas, etc... All have in common the fact of being quite fixed word combinations. It is difficult to change a word in these combinations of words.
Idiomatic expressions are always metaphorical. Their meaning has nothing to do with the meaning of the individual constituents. There are cases in which the words that constitute the idiomatic expression exist in reality and have their own independent meaning.
Example: " kick the basket " that can be used literally (a person can kick a trashcan literally, for real) but in other cases it has a figurative sense, that is " to die ".
Another example: " a storm in a tea cup " which also exists in Italian " una tempesta in un biccher d’acqua ". The individual components exist both in Italian and in English but in their literal meaning, these words are never put together. If they are, they automatically become part of an idiomatic expression because it is clearly metaphorical. We don’t talk about a real storm, also because literally speaking, a storm can’t take place in a glass of water.
Therefore:
- there are cases in which there is a literal interpretation next to the metaphorical one;
- There are cases in which exists a metaphorical use that hasn’t literal correspondence although the words that make up the expression exist;
- There are cases in which certain words are used exclusively in an idiomatic expression, that is, words that don’t exist in the language, for example: " to get rid of something " that means “ avoid something ". The word " rid " doesn’t exist in English, it is used only in this idiomatic expression.
Their three constituent characteristics are:
- the meaning of the expression that is not given by the sum of the meanings of the constituents;
- the possibility of existence of the literal meanings or not;
- the fixity of the expression (fixity in the sense that the constituents can’t be changed: " a storm in a tea cup " can’t become " a tempest in a tea cup ". The words are fixed and are not fixed only in the sense that they can’t be changed, they can’t even be added);
What is a collocation? They are fixed expressions (words can’t be changed) even if in some cases they admit using one word instead of another. They are very frequent in the language and are transparent in their meaning. They haven’t a figurative or metaphorical meaning. Examples: " fare una domanda " " ask a question " we can’t use another verb or another noun such as " make a question ". The problem of collocations is that they characterize each language. They are problematic on translational level.
What is a formula? Formulas are fixed; normally they are very tied to situations, to contexts (greeting and farewell formulas). Example: " Happy Easter", "See you". Here too, there are problems on translational level. For example in Italian we say " buona Pasqua " while in English we don’t say " Good Easter ". They haven’t recognition in dictionaries. But it is likely that in the final part of the dictionary there are sections reserved for formulas. The formulas are linked to pragmatic acts.
What are proverbs? They are fixed, nothing can be changed. The meaning of the words present in the proverbs is their literal meaning. They have a special status because they express in few words a popular wisdom. They summarize some element of communication and attitude. For example: " L’abito non fa il monaco " means " appearances deceive ".
