BAB 6

TEXT, TEXT TYPES, AND GENRE

In the last few years, there has been an increase in emphasis on the idea of genre in learning
classes, including in Indonesia. but there is a common problem associated with this learning that
students often assume the same genre as the type of text, but apparently there are differences. In
the context of Australia, this type of text is a general term in most syllabus documents and the
genre is not widely used.

What is a Text?

Texts are semantic units and language units that make sense, so a conversation, conversation or
writing can be referred to as text only if it makes sense. If it does not make sense, it cannot be
called a text, and it is not communication (Agustien, 2006: 5). Texts are the basic for all
disciplines such as law, religion, medicine, science, politics, and others. each is manifested in its
own language, and has specific terminology.

Halliday and Hasan (1976: 2) state, text is used in linguistics to refer to any passage, spoken or
written, of whatever length, that does form a unified whole […]. A text is considered a semantic
unit, a unit not of form but of meaning, for Halliday and Hasan, a text is a semantic unit. They
emphasize the importance of language as an instrument of social interaction among members of
any language community. Halliday believes that texts are not only semantic units but also
examples of social interaction. In his social-semantic perspective, text is the object of social
exchange of meaning, therefore text is a sign of representation of socio-cultural events that are
embedded in the context of the situation.

A : The phone’s ringing

B : I’m in the bath!

A : Ok.

This implies that both spoken and written text is essentially interactive and has a goal or purpose.
It also implies that texts take place, function, within particular contexts, or register, and those
contexts affect the choices made within the texts. According to De Beaugrande and Dressler
(1981) there are seven standards of textuality, namely, cohesion, coherence, intentionality,
acceptance, information, contextuality, and intertextuality.
Cohesion describes the ways components of sentencesof a text are grammatically and lexically
connected. This conection can be achieved through grammatical dependences. That is to say,
words of setences are releated to eachother depending on grammatical forms and conventions. It
is a semantic relation between elements of the next which are important in its interpretation. This
sinematic relationship is recheaced by use of some techniques such as repetitions, omissions and
occurrences of certain words and constructionthat help in the interpretation of the passage.

Acceptability concerns the text receiver’s attitude that the next should constitude useful or
relevant details or informationsuch that it is worth acception. Text type, the desyrabilityof goals
and the political and sociocultural setting, as well as cohesion and koherence are important in
influencing the acceptability

Intertextuality is a principle that refers to past expresience.that is, the formation and
understanding of a lext is affected by the formationof another text which is similar to it. In other
words,interpreting a text sometimes needs information from pther texts.so, if one read a text
about second world war in the past, for example, will not find any difficulty in understanding
another text which talks about the same topic.

TEXT TYPES AND GENRE

The terms text types and genre are often used interchangeably in different contexts and are
generally thought to mean the samethe same idea. In some of readings to date, too, these terms
have been equated ; text types and genres are seen as essentially the same,however,it is important
to understand thatthere is a difference between the two.so, what isthe actual diffeerence between
text type and genre? It is easy to answer the question by providing two quick definitions.
However, it is the understanding the context behind the denifitions that is important.

Thus, text types refer to text prototypes defined according to their primary social purposes and
six main text types are identified as follows:(1)narratives tell a story,usually to entertain ,
(2)recounts (personal, factual) tell what happened, (3) information reports provide factual
information , (4) intructions tell the listener or reader what to do, (5) explanations explain how or
why something happens, and (6) expository texts present or argue viewpoints.

genres also refer to more specific classes of texts, such as newspaper reports or recipes. texts of
each genre may be purely of one text- type(for example, a bus schedule is purely an information
report, while most recipes are purelyof the text type'intructions') or they may be a blend(for
example, sermonsoften include stretches of narratives or recounts, as well as explanations,
whileusually expository in intent). the classification and labeling of genres may vary,
depending,among other things on the theoretical influences behindeachapproach. for example,
insome instances, written genres are definedin terms of familiar broad categories such as
narratives, description, persusasion, argumentation, etc.

Example of genres and text typesas follows:

genre text type

recipe procedure

personal letter anecdote

advertisement description

police report description

student essay exposition

formal letter exposition

format letter problem-solution

news item recount

CLOSING

this section has an attempt to clarity some terms which are somewhat confusing such

as the term text, text types, and genre. the use of these terms by various linguists and literary
theorists working inder different traditions or orientations is examined anda possible way of
synthesising their insights is discissed.