TOPIC 64

2. TEXT ANALYSIS

1. THE NOTION OF TEXT

TOPIC 64

CRITICAL INTERPRETATION

CRITICAL COMMENTARY

INTERPRET SUBTLETY

EVALUATE QUALITY

CONSIDER CAUSE AND EFFECT

NORMS GOVERNING WRITTEN TEXTS: THE 7 STANDARDS OF TEXTUALITY

MODE

DISCOURSE

LEXIS

GRAMMAR

1.1 TEXT AND CONTEXT

topic 64: text analysis strategies

2.2 FUDAMENTAL STRATEGIES FOR TEXT ANALYSIS

2.2 PROCESSES IN TEXT ANALYSIS

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There are a huge range of questions we need to ask when we're approaching a text for study. Most of these questions relate to one of four areas: Mode, Discourse, Lexis, and Grammar.

The notion of text has a long tradition inside the human science. A broad definition of this concept considers all manmade products as systems of signs and thereby as texts; but often not as the physical manifestation as such, but as the abstract representation of a work. Considering that everything – including sculpture, music, photography and film – can become a text, either a written text – like literature in a traditional sense – or a verbal text, one can at least wonder whether the concept is useful or not. The notion of document with roots back to ancient times can be considered as multifaceted as the notion of text, but today’s literary critics or art scholars would probably hesitate to use this concept on literary texts or works of art. According to Halliday and Hasan “a text has texture, and this is what distinguishes it from something that is not a text. It derives this texture from the fact that it functions as a unity with respect to its environment.

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El contenido visual es un lenguaje transversal, universal, como la música. Somos capaces de entender imágenes de hace millones de años, incluso de otras culturas. No nos gusta aburrir. No queremos ser repetitivos. Comunicar como siempre aburre y no engancha. Lo hacemos diferente. Hacemos sabotaje al aburrimiento. Creamos lo que al cerebro le gusta consumir porque le estimula.

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Con las plantillas de Genially podrás incluir recursos visuales para dejar a tu audiencia con la boca abierta. También destacar alguna frase o dato concreto que se quede grabado a fuego en la memoria de tu público e incluso embeber contenido externo que sorprenda: vídeos, fotos, audios... ¡Lo que tú quieras!

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Con las plantillas de Genially podrás incluir recursos visuales para dejar a tu audiencia con la boca abierta. También destacar alguna frase o dato concreto que se quede grabado a fuego en la memoria de tu público e incluso embeber contenido externo que sorprenda: vídeos, fotos, audios... ¡Lo que tú quieras!

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un título genial aquí

El contenido visual es un lenguaje transversal, universal, como la música. Somos capaces de entender imágenes de hace millones de años, incluso de otras culturas. No nos gusta aburrir. No queremos ser repetitivos. Comunicar como siempre aburre y no engancha. Lo hacemos diferente. Hacemos sabotaje al aburrimiento. Creamos lo que al cerebro le gusta consumir porque le estimula.

un título genial aquí

El contenido visual es un lenguaje transversal, universal, como la música. Somos capaces de entender imágenes de hace millones de años, incluso de otras culturas. No nos gusta aburrir. No queremos ser repetitivos. Comunicar como siempre aburre y no engancha. Lo hacemos diferente. Hacemos sabotaje al aburrimiento. Creamos lo que al cerebro le gusta consumir porque le estimula.

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TEXT: is any object that can be read, whether this object is a work of literature, street sign or a style of clothing. It’s a coherent set of signs that transmit informative message. Though many people think of text as referring only to written words, writing is not what confers textuality. Text is utterance oral or written. A text refers to a specific body of words that constitute a particular piece of writing. A text can be very short, such as a sonnet, but is considered a text because it is complete in and of itself. Texts are significant resources to transmit socio-cultural and literary aspects & they are also a tool to transmit to our students some of the basis & indispensable competences such as competence in linguistic communication where the pupils identify different formats and types of texts. CONTEXT: Every text, however, has a context, which is the culture, setting, and situation in which it is produced. No text is created uninfluenced by the world around it. It’s the setting of a word or event, the situation in which the communicative event takes place. A world filled with people producing utterances: people who have social cultural & personal identities, knowledge, beliefs and wants to interact with one another. The first syllable of context, ‘con’ is a Latin prefix that means ‘with’ or ‘accompanying’. Thus, context is the information or understanding that is not written/spoken/seen but is necessary to fully understand that which is written/spoken/seen. The context can be divided into: Field of discourse/ Mode of discourse/ Tenor of discourse. Text is the actual content of a work, while context is the historical, social, biographical, or artistic background of the work itself.

• Reference, can be classified into ANAPHORA: naming an element already said back in the sentence: A brave lady volunteered, she saved the prince. The 2 sentences are linked by the pronoun ‘she’ which refers anaphorically to the noun ‘lady. CATAPHORA: reference to an element which is going to appear forwards in a sentence: There he is, the king. The 2 sentences are linked by the pronoun ‘he’ which refers cataphatically to the noun ‘the King’ • Substitution, when we write an element instead of another. My horse is tired, I have to get a different one. The relation is established by the presence of the substitute ‘one’ of the second sentence which is referring to the noun ‘horse’ in the first sentence. • Ellipsis, the omission of an element. Will you marry me? – No... the cohesive relation is achieved by the omission of some elements in the second sentence that presupposes the 1st sentence. NO, I won’t marry you. • Conjunction, the relation is achieved by the use of words or clauses to join the sentences. The lady was courageous and brave.

Halliday and Hassan established 5 cohesion categories:

According to Beaugrand and Dressler: COHESION or capacity to organise and structure utterances to facilitate interpretation by means of endophora and exophoras (references to linguistic and situational contexts), repetitions, ellipsis... the way in which the components of a text are connected within a sequence. Cohesion is the network of lexical, grammatical & other relations that provide links between the different parts of a text. These relations organise a text by requiring the reader to interpret words & expressions by reference to other words and expressions

• Lexical cohesion, the main cohesion category. Halliday & Hassan present this example: a) The boy is going to fall if he doesn’t take care. b) The lad is going to fall if he doesn’t take care. c) the child is going to fall if he doesn’t take care. d) the idiot is going to fall if he doesn’t take care. There is a repetition, a synonym, a superordinate term (child), a general word (idiot) all of these terms have in common the fact that one lexical item refers back to another related to a common referent. then, I have just created a descriptive text.

INTENTIONALITY when a text is cohesive & coherent it has a particular intention to fulfil. Intentionality is related to relevance. It’s about the effects of an author on the text & their impact on the receiver. You tell you have a cat in a conversation about WWI. ACCEPTABILITY the text must be acceptable by the audience. You cannot speak about football in church. Acceptability doesn’t necessary implies that the readers believe the contents of the text. The receiver just must be able to understand what kind of text the sender intended to send & what was his intention by sending it. INFORMATIVITY, a text should have always new information, but this information can neither be too easy because the audience gets bord nor too difficult because they can lose interest. SITUATIONALITY, the situation in which the text has been occurred. It is essential for the evaluation of the situationally of the text to know where it happened & what its function was in the situation. It’s the location of a text in a discrete sociocultural context in a real time & place. INTERTEXTUALITY, refers to the relationship between a certain text & other types of texts which share characteristics with it. The way in which the production & reception of a given text depends upon the other texts. There are different ways of classifying texts: according to their form or their function but we will pay attention to the classification according to their topic.

COHERENCE or ability to organise our messages in a logical and comprehensible way to transmit meaning. It what makes the text semantically meaningful. The way in which the components of a text are relevant. Cohesion & coherence are connected to each other. In the case of cohesion, the connection is by lexical & grammatical dependencies. In the case of coherence, the connection is by conceptual or meaning dependencies. We will assume that cohesion is a property of the text & that coherence is a facet of the reader’s evaluation of a text. In other words, cohesion is objective, coherence is subjective & it may vary from reader to reader. Example of a highly cohesive text which is nevertheless incoherent: A week has seven days. Every day I feed my cat. Cats have 4 legs. We cannot make sense of these sentences. What actually gives texture is not the presence of cohesive markers but our ability to recognise semantic relations which establish continuity of sense.

MODE: This category covers the physical appearance and presentation of a text as well as the way in which it is produced. Is the text primarily in the written mode, or does it represent the spoken mode? Is it handwritten or typed? Is the text spontaneous (a conversation, a scribbled note, an IM conversation) or planned (a lecture, an essay)? Are written conventions used to represent spoken features? Are there unconventional spellings or typographical errors in the text?

DISCOURSE: This category covers the sense-structure of a text, and its context. Is there an implied audience for the text? Is the audience immediate or remote? Is it large or small? Which features of the text construct that sense of audience? Who is the narrator/author/speaker of the text? What are his/her attitudes and how are they expressed? What is the context of the text? Is it public/private, official/informal, factual/fictional literary/non-literary, prose/poetry? Does it have an obvious function - to instruct, to persuade, to supplicate, to thank? What is the genre of the text? Is it a newspaper article, a letter, a gothic novel, a romance, a legal report, an instruction manual, how does the text relate to other texts or cultural artefacts? Is it a parody or an imitation?

LEXIS: Is the lexis formal or informal? Are there technical or subject-specific lexical sets? Are nouns concrete or abstract? Are verbs stative or dynamic? To what extent is modification used? Are adverbs and adjectives used prominently or not? What lexical fields are evident? Are they ones you would expect to be applied to the subject-matter? Does the text draw on the ambiguity of word-meanings? Does it include puns or other ludic uses of language? Are any words repeated in the text? Are there any swear words or other words usually considered taboo? Does the text use euphemisms?

GRAMMAR: Is the mood declarative, interrogative or imperative? Verbs - is the tense past, present, or a compound tense? Are modal verbs used? What use is made of co-ordination or subordination? What kinds of subordinate clauses are used, and what role do they play in the sentence? Are marked themes or end-focusing used to draw attention to elements of the clause? Is the grammar standard or nonstandard? How do grammatical structures help to organise the text? Are sentence adverbials (However,Nevertheless) used to express relationships between different parts of the text?

: ommon advice for creative writers is “show, don’t tell,” and indeed we might feel offended if we read something in which the author hits us over the head with his or her theme, for example. Since an author often wants to show us things i n a subtle way, we can sometimes serve our readers by pointing out how a seemingly insignificant detail or a seemingly random image might be more meaningful than it appears. As a good critic you have a responsibility to spell it out, to TELL your reader what you believe the author is trying to show us.

We need to explain why the text is an accomplishment or has value. In meaningful analysis, it is generally not enough to simply list the techniques used: (three similes, four allusions, and synecdoche). We should explain how the usage is effective or ineffective. The critic William Empson tells us that “we usually begin with the assumption that a work of art is worth reading.” Avoid writing about exhibits you feel are not worth discussion, but feel free to give a qualified appreciation if you believe something is ultimately successful despite some flaw such as cliché, sentimentality, mixed metaphor, or triteness.

: After you precisely define an effect, work to explain some specific choices the author made to cause that effect, providing reasons and evidence for your claim. (The long rambling sentences reinforce the stream-of-consciousness style). In addition to considering how the different aspects of the text reinforce one another, you might consider how they are meaningfully juxtaposed. It can be particularly significant and illuminating if you can find a correlation between theme and style, cont ent and form, between WHAT the author says and HOW it's said.

Means interpreting and evaluating a text against some interpretation and evaluation criteria. Interpretation is related to text comprehension

–Analytical analysis which implies three types of analysis: Prosodic. Types of feet: Iambus, Trochee, Anapest, Dactyl; Types of meter: monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter…; Rhythmical variations: catalectic, anacrusis, end-stopped, hypermeter foot; Lines: half-line, Run-on-lines. English rhyme patterns: Monosyllabic, free verse, blank verse, ballad, couplet, ode, iambic pentameter (quatrain, sextain, septet, octave, Spenserian stanza, octosyllabic quatrain, the sonnet and terza rima); Sound pattern: Alliteration and euphony. Syntactic. Speech mode: direct indirect or free speech. Text genre. Sentences: statements, questions, imperatives, exclamations.Sentences organization: Paragraphs. Clauses assembly: Coordination, complex sentences; Clause constituents: Physical actions, sensory or mental perception, emotion; reciprocal construction, reflexive construction; passive transformation. Literary devices: anacoluthon, aposiopesis, asyndeton, ellipsis, enallage, hyperbaton, pleonasm, repetition. Semantic. Two types of meaning: Denotative meaning: conventionally ascribed to a word, e.g., beard: hair on the face below the mouth. Connotative meaning: evaluative attribution to the denotative reference of a word, e.g., beard: associated with old and wise men. Types of denotative meaning: literal / figurative. Examples of figurative language: Sarcasm, metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy, hyperbole,meiosis, simile, irony.

–Text interpretation effect. The Cooperative principle was formulated by the linguistic philosopher Grice. This principle must be applied to both speaker and listener. The speaker’s speech should keep to four maxims; the listeners should assume that the speaker is following the four maxims. Grice’s four maxims: Maxim of quality: the propositional content must be true (irony does not break the maxim because of the illocutionary force). Maxim of quantity: there must be enough of it. Maxim of relevance: the content must be relevant to audience. Maxim of manner: the message must be clear. The structure of speech events. Attempts to classify utterances into sets of functions: speech acts Searle’s (1976) speech events system: –Directive: desire regarding the action. –Commissive: statements that function as promises or refusals for action. –Representative: propositional content is true. –Declarative: bring about a new state of being. –Expressive: statements of joy and disappointment.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: - Sanders, T., Schilperood, J. and Spooren, W. Text Representation: Linguistic and Psycholinguistic Aspects. Amsterdam, Benjamins. 2002. - Harahap, I.A., Text Types Used in The Textbooks: A Systemic Linguistic-Based Study. Doctoral Dissertation. UNIMED. 2021. - www.britannica.com - The Oxford English Dictionary