UNIT 6

WRITTEN COMUNICATION.
DIFFERENT TYPES OF WRITTEN TEXTS.
STRUCTURE AND FORMAL ELEMENTS, NORMS OF WRITTEN TEXTS.

ROUTINES AND FORMULAS

0. INTRODUCTION
1. LANGUAGE AND WRITTEN COMMUNICATION
1.1. THE NATURE OF COMMUNICATION: LANGUAGE AND SEMIOTICS.
1.2. THE ORIGINS OF WRITTEN COMMUNICATION
2. SPOKEN V.S WRITTEN LANGUAGE
2.1. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
2.1.1. Supremacy of speech
2.1.2. Writing and speech on the same level
2.1.3. Supremacy of writing
2.2. ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENCES
3. RULES THAT GOVERN WRITTEN COMMUNICATION
3.1. FORMAL ELEMENTS
3.2 TEXTUALITY AND WRITTEN COMMUNICATION
4. CRITERIA FOR TEXT CLASSIFICATION: TYPES OF TEXTS
4.1. ROUTINES AND FORMULAS
5. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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0. INTRODUCTION

This unit aims at providing and in depth analysis of the main elements and rules that govern
written communication as well as of the types and structures of different kinds of written
texts.
In order to do so we shall first look into human communication as a whole and at the role of
written language in it. In trying to frame written communication within the wider
perspective of human communication, a constant reference to the similarities and
differences between oral and written communication will be made. Then the different
elements and norms that govern and characterize written language will be outlined and
briefly analyzed. Next, a criteria for textual classification will be followed in order to give a
brief description of different types of texts.. Finally, a brief analysis of the most habitual
routines and formulas used in written communication will be offered.
This unit has been foregrounded on some of the most relevant and influential scholars,
namely, David Crystal, Linguistics ( 1985) Guy Cook, Discourse.(1989) and Rivers, Teaching
Foreign-Language Skills (1981)

1. LANGUAGE AND WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

Writing has been defined as a system of more or less permanent marks used to represent an
utterance in such a way that it can be recovered more or less exactly without the
intervention of the utterer.
According to Crystal (1985), it is particularly important for people to have some historical
perspective in linguistics as it helps the researcher or teacher to avoid unreal generalizations
or doubts about modern developments and innovations. Besides, it provides a source of
salutary examples, suggesting which lines of investigation are likely to be profitable, which
fruitless. Therefore, in order to provide a relevant basis for subsequent sections concerning
the development of written communication within a theory of language learning, we shall
first examine in this section the origins of written communication. We shall first trace back
to the general nature of communication, and then, establish a link between communication,
language and semiotics in order to lead our presentation towards a theoretical framework
for an analysis of written discourse.

1.1. THE NATURE OF COMMUNICATION: language and semiotics.

Research in cultural anthropology (Crystal 1985) has shown that the origins of
communication are to be found in the very early stages of life when there was a need for
animals and humans to communicate adequately for their purposes, in order to express their
feelings, attitudes and core activities of everyday life, such as hunting, fighting, eating, or
breeding among others. However, even the most primitive cultures had a constant need to
express their ideas by other means than guttural sounds and body movements as animals
did. Concerning humans, their constant preoccupation was how to turn thoughts into words.
Hence, before language was developed, on verbal codes were used to convey information
by means of symbols which were presented, first, by means of pictorial art, and further in
time, by writing.
Language, then, is a highly elaborated signalling system with particular design features. It is
worth noting, then, the distinction between human and animal systems as they produce
and express their intentions in a different way. Yet, the most important feature of human
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language that differs from animal systems' is to be endowed with an auditory vocal channel
which allowed humans to develop and improve language in further stages. Besides, the
possibility of a traditional transmission plays an important role when language is handed
down from one generation to another by a process of teaching and learning.
Therefore, we may establish a distinction in terms of types of communication, where we
distinguish mainly two, thus verbal and non-verbal codes. Firstly, verbal communication is
related to those acts in which the code is the language, both oral and written. Thus, singing
and writing a letter are both instances of verbal communication. Secondly, when dealing
with non-verbal devices, we refer to communicative uses involving visual and tactile modes,
such as kinesics, body movements, and also paralinguistic devices drawn from sounds
(whistling), hearing (morse) or touch (Braille).

1.2. THE ORIGINS OF WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

As we have previously mentioned, prior to language development, non-verbal codes were
used to convey information by means of icons and symbols which were presented, first, by
means of pictorial art, and further in time by writing. Later developments in the direction of
the study of meaning were labelled during the last century under the term semantics, which
had a linked sense with the science related to the study of signs, semiotics.
This development in the direction of explicit messages and knowledge was soon followed by
anthropologist researchers interested in the findings of written accounts in earlier societies,
by means of icons and symbols found in burial sites and prehistoric caves. From Greek's
mantikos (significant) and sema (sign), semiotics has a prominent role on the study of signs,
what they refer to, and of responses to those signs.
According to Crystal (1985), most primitive cultures developed a deep-rooted connection
between divinity and language, and therefore, approached language with a clearly religious
purpose. They firmly believed in the power of language, and they felt that the writing had a
voice, and a life of its own. Thus, there are regular tales in the anthropological literature of
natives where alphabets began to be interpreted mystically, as a proof of the existence of
God. Similar stories are not hard to find in other cultures. Thus, the god Thoth was the
originator of speech and writing to the Egyptians.
The Babylonians attributed it to their god, Nabu. A heaven-sent water-turtle with marks on
its back brought writing to the Chinese, it is said. According to Icelandic saga, Odin was the
inventor of runic script. And Brahma is reputed to have given the knowledge of writing to
the Hindu race (Crystal 1985). These story-tales are clearly involved with religious beliefs
and superstitious and mystical ideas as words were seen as all-powerful. Thus, runes were
originally charms, and the power of a charm or an amulet depended largely on the writing
upon it, the more spiritual the subject-matter, the better the charm. We find this kind of
belief in Jewish phylacteries, and in the occasional Christian custom, such as that of fanning
a sick person with pages of the Bible, or making him eat paper with a prayer on it. Examples
of this kind abound in the history of cultures.
As we have seen above, the history of language is bound up with the history of religious
thought in its widest sense. However, more fundamental and far-reaching than this is the
major concern of early Greek and Roman scholarship on thought about language. Thus,
Greeks developed an alphabet different in principle from the writing systems previously
mentioned, and considered to be the forerunner of most subsequent alphabets. Their
permanent contribution in this area is nicely indicated by the history of the term 'grammar'

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(grammatike), which in this early period implied understanding the use of letters, that is,
having the skill of reading and writing (Crystal 1985).
Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics devoted a great deal of time to the development of specific
ideas about language, and in particular, to grammatical analysis. Hence, Plato was called by
a later Greek writer 'the first to discover the potentialities of grammar'' and his conception
of speech (logos) as being basically composed of logically determined categories. This fairly
study of the language, part of the more general study of 'dialectic', was taken over by the
Romans with very little change in principle, and, through the influence of Latin on Europe,
was introduced into every grammatical handbook written before the twentieth century.
Similarly, in ancient India, for example, the Hindu priests had begun to realize, around the
th
5 century B.C., that the language of their oldest hymns, Vedic Sanskrit, was no longer the
same, either in pronunciation or grammar, as the contemporary language. For an important
part of their belief was that certain religious ceremonies, to be successful, needed to
reproduce accurately the original pronunciation and text of the hymns used.
The solution adopted in order to preserve the early states of the language from the effects
of time was to determine exactly what the salient features of Vedic Sanskrit were, and to
write them down as a set of rules. The earliest evidence we have of this feat is the work
carried out by Panini in the fourth century B.C., in the form of a set of around 4,000
aphoristic statements about the language's structure, known as sutras. Also, there were
other ways in which religious studies and goals promoted language study. Thus, missionaries
have often introduced writing by stating the first grammars of languages, and priests and
scholars have translated works such as the Bible and the Scriptures.

2. SPOKEN V.S. WRITTEN LANGUAGE

In order to get a firm grasp on the relationship between oral and written languages we must
first examine once again our historical knowledge of both before we consider the changes
introduced by the invention of typography in 1440.

2.1. Historical Perspective

According to Goytisolo (2001), the first evidence of writing is from 3500 B.C., the date of the
Sumerian inscriptions in Mesopotamia and early Egyptian inscriptions whereas the
appearance of language can be traced back some forty or fifty thousand years. The period
which encompasses primary oral language , then, is consequently ten times the length of
the era of writing. However, in a present-day context, we may observe an overwhelming
influence of the written on the oral component as an attempt to preserve and memorise for
the future the narratives of the past, by means of literature productions, printing and
modern audiovisual and computing media.

2.1.1. Supremacy of speech

Speech was traditionally the original object of linguistic, while writing was only considered a
means of representing the primary form, based on sounds which were the first
manifestation of human communication. This consideration derives mainly from the studies
of Ferdinand de Saussure, who did not consider writing worthy of synchronic study, because
it had not independent life, its only function was to represent the system of sounds which
form a language.

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Saussure distinguishes three different kinds of linguistic objects: the language system (La
langue), speech (la parole) and writing. The real object of study for him was the abstract
system of signs which find their expression in the actual examples of speech used by people
(la parole). But neither speech nor writing can be the object of linguistic study because
speech is transient, unpredictable and completely context dependant, while writing is not
really part of the language, but a means of making manifest the sound system.
On the same line as Saussure is Leonard Bloomfield, who regarded writing simply as a
means of recording language, presenting it as a sound recording mechanism in a
straightforward, mechanical process; he states that writing is like a 'phonograph' or a 'radio'.
His arguments for the primacy of speech are that it precedes writing chronologically in both
the history of people and a person; that there are indeed non-literate language
communities; that it is an arbitrary representation of a language; that deciphering written
records is impossible without previous knowledge of language; that written forms hinder,
rather than help our understanding of actual speech, and that alphabetic writing is a poor
guide to the underlying phonemes.
For Noam Chomsky, the most influential linguist since Bloomfield, the question of the
nature of the relation between speech and writing is mainly irrelevant.. Chomsky considers
writing more in the context of memory processing limitations, to be used when the sentence
is too complicated and can only be understood with the aid of additional memory (writing);
he even compares it with mathematics in which we use pen and paper to extend our
memory, but our ability or inability to carry out a complex computation is independent of a
person's fundamental knowledge of arithmetic. The abstract entity which is the fundamental
grammar is not causally linked to speech or writing production or perception.

2.1.2. Writing and speech on the same level

In contrast with the linguists who consider writing as only a representation of speech, which
is the genuine expression of Language and the only object of study, some others have given
writing independence from speech; while accepting the existence of an underlying language
system, they didn't enter into such abstract considerations about it and centred more on
the actual use of written and spoken language; for them the nature of written language is a
product of the functions it serves in language use.
Josef Vachek supported the idea that the written form should be at the centre of linguistic
study. He thinks that speech and writing have complementary language functions. The
spoken form carries out dynamic functions, and the written static ones and the difference in
function makes it impossible to say the same thing in a different medium, for it would lead
to a merely phonetic transcription, which has nothing to do with writing.
M. A. K. Halliday, in his book Spoken and Written Language, follows this same line. He sees
them both as emanating from the same source, the underlying language system, and he
focuses on their differences in form and function. He considers the development of writing
systems as the product of changes in society, so the functions of writing were not intended
to replace those of speech; speech and writing serve different purposes and this leads to
structural differences. There are also other differences due to their intrinsic nature; he
considers speech as a process and writing as a product, what leads to further divergence
between them.

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 2.1.3. Supremacy of writing
Brian Stock in The Implications of Literacy suggests that the advent of writing in oral cultures
can break their patterns of behaviour, while Linnea C. Ehri suggests that the influence of
print on our language perception is similar to that of calendars and clocks on our perception
of time.
In general, what lies at the back of all these ideas is that writing is the necessary prerequisite
for analytic thought, and that logical thought can only be carried out in literate societies;
but, though this was an important tendency, it seems to have passed in favour of the more
logical idea that the need for literacy is part of the development of a society which puts it
into contact with new experiences and modes of thought.

2.2. Analysis of Differences

With respect to both codes of communication (Widdowson 1978), oral and written, it is
worth noting that one of their differences relies on the notion of participants and different
skills, thus productive and receptive, to be carried out in a one-way process or two-way
process. Hence, regarding written communication, we refer to writer and reader, when they
are involved in the productive skill of writing and the receptive skill of reading. Similarly, we
refer to speaker and listener, when they are involved in the productive skill of speaking and
the receptive skill of listening.
Furthermore, within a traditional division of language into the two major categories of
speech and writing, Cook (1989) establishes two main differences.
• The first difference is described in terms of time factor, that is, a here-and-now
production;
• and the second difference is depicted in terms of degree of reciprocity , that is, one-way
speech or two-way speech. There are certain features regarding these differences that are
likely to happen within each category depending on the nature of the activity.
Concerning the time factor, we may find features such as time limitations, and the
associated problems of planning, memory, and of production . First, regarding time
limitations, spoken language happens in time, and must therefore be produced and
processed 'on line'. In writing, however, we have time to pause and think, and while we are
reading or writing, we can stand back and view the discourse in spatial or diagrammatic
terms. Secondly, in relation to planning, the speaker has no time to plan and organize the
message as there is no going back and changing or restructuring our words, whereas the
writer may plan his writing under no time pressure, and the message is economically
organized. Thirdly, regarding memory, on spoken interaction we may forget things we
intended to say whereas on writing we may note our ideas and organize the development of
our writing. Finally, concerning production, on speaking we often take short cuts to avoid
unnecessary effort in producing individual utterances, and therefore we make syntactic
mistakes because we lose the wording. On the contrary, on writing, the words are planned
and organized while producing a text, allowing the writer to control the language being
used. Hence, sentences may be long or complex as the writer has more time to plan.
Moreover, mistakes are less likely to happen as we are aware of the grammar of our
utterances.
The second feature to be mentioned is a reciprocal activity, in terms of one-way speech or
two-way speech. This crucially affects the sorts of reactions at a communicative level that
are likely to take place in an interaction. Thus, in speaking, the person we are speaking to is
in front of us and able to put us right if we make a mistake; on the contrary, the writer has
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to anticipate the reader's understanding and predict potential problems. If the writer gets
this wrong, the reader may give up the book in disgust before getting far. Moreover,
regarding reactions, both speakers may show agreement and understanding, or
incomprehension and disagreement to each other whereas readers have no way of
signalling this to the writer. Therefore, readers have to put in some compensatory work in
order to make their reading successful, either skip, or else work very carefully. Both readers
and writers need patience and imagination at a communicative level.
Most obviously, they contrast in physical form Speech uses phonic substance typically in the
form of air-pressure movements Writing uses graphic substance typically in the form of
marks on a surface. As writing can only occasionally be thought of as an interaction, we can
establish the following points of contrast:
1) The permanence of writing allows repeated reading and close analysis. The
spontaneity and rapidity of speech minimises the chance of complex pre-planning,
and promotes features that assist speakers to think standing up.
2) The participants in written interaction cannot usually see each other, so they
cannot make clear what they mean. However, in speech interactions feedback is
possible.
3) The majority of graphic features presents a system of contrasts that has no speech
equivalent. Many genres of written language, such as tables, graphs and complex
formulae, cannot be conveyed by reading aloud.
4) Some constructions may only be found in writing, others only occur in speech, such
as in slang and swear words.
5) Finally we can say that writing tends to be more formal and so it is more likely to
provide the standard that society values. Its performance provides it with a special
status.
Despite these differences, the written and spoken language have mutually interacted in
many respects. We normally use the written language in order to improve our command of
vocabulary, active or passive, spoken or written. Loan words may come into a country in a
written form, and sometimes everything we know about a language is from its written form
e.g. Latin. It is true that writing has derived from speech in an historical sense, but nowadays
their independence is mutual.
Today, a compromise exists whereby vocal and visual language are generally considered as
two equal but very different means of communication.

3. RULES THAT GOVERN WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

Written language evolved independently at different times in several parts of the world. Its
emergence as well as its further development was not an homogeneous one. As a result of
this we find today two different types of writing systems. Writing has been defined as Non-
Phonological systems and Phonological systems.

1) Non-Phonological Systems.

These do not show a clear relationship between the symbols and the sounds of the
language. They include the pictographic, ideographic, uniform and Egyptian hieroglyphics
and logographics.

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2) Phonological Systems.
These do show a clear relationship between the symbols and the sounds of language.

3.1. FORMAL ELEMENTS

There are some features characteristic of written language, but this should not be taken to
imply that there's a well-delimited dividing line between writing and speech. However, the
extent to which each of them makes use of different resources is directly related to the
nature of the two channels: speech is the language of immediate communication, and
writing is a type of communication with a distance in between. This is the reason why
written texts present the following formal elements:

A
Linguistic features o f written language A good writing system must be fixed, flexible, and
adaptable at a time, so that:
• it must provide a codified expression for the elements expressed by oral language: each
idea = a written form
• it must provide means for creating expressions for elements not codified yet: neologisms,
borrowings...
B
Syntactic features o f written language The syntactic elements which make writing different
from speech are:
• markers and rhetorical organisers for clauses relationships and clarity (written texts are
more permanent)
• use of heavily pre-modified NPs , SVO ordering and use of passive constructions and
subordinate phrases
C
Lexical features o f written language In order to compensate the absence of paralinguistic
devices and feedback:
• more accuracy in the use of vocabulary, avoiding redundancy and ambiguity (due to its
permanent nature)
• use of anaphoras and cataphoras, repetitions, synonyms... to signal relationships between
sentences
• there is more lexical density in writing than in speech (more lexical items than
grammatical ones)
D
Graphological implications
Texts can be presented in different ways, as our culture value many times more the form
than the content. To compensate for the absence of feedback and paralinguistic devices,
written texts need to be accurate in spelling, punctuation, capital letters to mark sentence
boundaries, indentation of paragraphs, different fonts to call attention (italics, bold... ) and
in poetry or texts to draw attention, exploitation of resources such as order and choice of
words, variations in spelling (Biba la kurtura).
With respect to graphological resources, we are mainly dealing with visual devices as we
make reference to orthography, punctuation, headings, foot notes, tables o f contents and
indexes. As most of them deal with form and structure of different types of texts, and will

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be further developed as part of a subsequent section, we shall primarily deal with
orthography and punctuation in this section.
Firstly, orthography is related to a correct spelling, and in relation to this term, Byrne (1979)
states that the mastery of the writing system includes the ability to spell. This device covers
different word categories, but mainly, rules of suffixation, prefixation, and addition of verbal
markers as gerunds, past tenses or third person singular in present tenses.
Secondly, according to Quirk et al (1972) punctuation serves two main functions. Firstly, the
separation of successive units (such as sentences by periods, or items in a list by commas),
and secondly, the specification of language function (as when an apostrophe indicates that
an inflection is genitive). Moreover, punctuation is concerned with purely visual devices,
such as capital letters, full stops, commas, inverted commas, semicolons, hyphens, brackets
and the use of interrogative and exclamative marks. It is worth noting that punctuation has
never been standardised to the same extent as spelling, and as a result, learners tend to
overlook the relevance of punctuation when producing a text. Learners must be encouraged
to pay attention to the few areas where conventions governing the use of the visual devices
as fairly well established, among which we may mention letters and filling in forms as part of
a sociocultural educational aim. Thus, students must try to understand the relevance of the
use of capital letters as a mark of sentence boundary, the use of commas to enumerate a
sequence of items, the use of question and exclamation marks to express requests or
attitudes, and the use of inverted commas to highlight a word or sentence.
In any case, what is most characteristic of written communication is that we see it (the
organisation, length...). It is the visual mode mainly which is involved. E
Textual Organization
For different purposes written texts may be divided into many different units, of different
types or sizes. A prose text such as this one might be divided into sections, chapters,
paragraphs, and sentences. A verse text might be divided into cantos, stanzas, and lines.
Once printed, sequences of prose and verse might be divided into volumes, gatherings, and
pages (Swales 1990).
In general, a prose text one might similarly wish to regard as units of different types
passages in direct or indirect speech, passages employing different stylistic registers
(narrative, commentary, and argument), passages of different authorship and so forth. And
for certain types of analysis (most notably textual criticism) the physical appearance of one
particular printed or manuscript source may be of importance: paradoxically, one may wish
to use descriptive mark-up to describe presentational features such as typeface, line breaks,
use of white space and so forth.
These textual structures overlap with each other in complex and unpredictable ways.
Particularly when dealing with texts, the reader needs to be aware of both the physical
organization of the book and the logical structure of the work it contains.

3.2 TEXTUALITYAND WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

According to Rivers (1981), writing a language comprehensibly is much more difficult than
speaking it. When we write, she says, we are like communicating into space if we do not
know the recipient of our piece of writing, whereas when we communicate a message
orally, we know who is receiving the message. We are dealing here once again with a
traditional division of language into the two major categories of speech and writing.

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Dealing with written language and its resources, we observe that both categories, speaking
and writing, share similar features as well as differ in others regarding the nature of the
communicative process.
Then, following Byrne (1979), we can establish similar resources for both speaking and
writing at a linguistic level, thus on its grammar and lexis, but not to the extent to which
some resources apply directly to the nature of the two channels. Thus, as speech is the
language of immediate communication, most linking devices will also occur in the spoken
language although less frequently than in writing where they are essential for the
construction of a coherent text.
Therefore, in order to examine the construction of longer texts, we will examine the rules
that most successful writers unconsciously follow and native readers unconsciously expect
to find. It is relevant, then, to address the term textuality in written and oral texts as it is
involved in rules governing written discourse. In the approach to text linguistics by de
Beaugrande & Dressler (1981), text, oral or printed, is established as a communicative
occurrence, which has to meet seven standards of textuality. If any of these standards are
not satisfied, the text is considered not to have fulfilled its function and not to be
communicative.
Cohesion and coherence are text-centered notions, designating operations directed at the
text materials.
i
Cohesion concerns the ways in which the components of the surface text (the actual words
we hear or see) are mutually connected within a sequence (de Beaugrande & Dressler
1981).
ii
Coherence on the other hand concerns the ways in which the components of the textual
world, thus the concepts and relations which underlie the surface text are mutually
accessible and relevant.
As far as written texts are concerned and with respect to these two standards of textuality,
we must point out that the need for cohesive devices in order to build a coherent text will
be greater in oral than in written communication. The immediacy of oral communication
together with the use of non-verbal communication will compensate for the lack of cohesive
devices.
The remaining standards of textuality are user-centered, concerning the activity of textual
communication by the producers and receivers of texts:
Firstly, intentionality concerns the text producer attitude that the set of occurrences should
constitute a cohesive and coherent text instrumental in fulfilling the writer intentions.
Secondly, acceptability concerns the receiver attitude that the set of occurrences should
constitute a cohesive and coherent text having some use or relevance for the receiver.
Thirdly, informativity concerns the extent to which the occurrences of the text are expected
vs.unexpected or known vs. unknown or uncertain.
Fourthly, situationality concerns the factors which make a text relevant to a situation of
occurrence.
Fifth, intertextuality concerns the factors which make the utilization of one text dependent
upon knowledge of one or more previously encountered texts.
The above seven standards of textuality are called constitutive principles (Searle 1965), in
that they define and create textual communication as well as set the rules for
communicating. There are also at least three regulative principles that control textual
communication: the efficiency of a text is contingent upon its being useful to the participants
with a minimum of effort; its effectiveness depends upon whether it makes a
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strong impression and has a good potential for fulfilling an aim; and its appropriateness
depends upon whether its own setting is in agreement with the seven standards of
textuality (de Beaugrande & Dressler 1981:11).
However we should point out that how the coherence, cohesion and effectiveness of written
texts rely on an understanding of genre analysis and its workplace applications. Moreover,
as writing is the way of making contact at a distance, we cannot forget graphological devices
studied above, which compensate for the absence of oral feedback and paralinguistic
devices.

4. CRITERIA FOR TEXT CLASSIFICATION: TYPES OF TEXTS

Any text is a message that is part of a communicative process. The elements that inform the
communicative exchange (sender, receiver, code etc.) will somehow condition the form and
structure of the text. Each text will therefore have its unique characteristics that will
differentiate it from others. However it is also possible to observe regularities among
different types of text that will allow us to classify texts according to different criteria.
Texts can, as a result, be classified following different point of views. Whatever the
classification might be it must be taken into account that it will not be a closed nor absolute
one. Text typologies are not absolute nor can they reflect the idiosyncrasies and creativity of
real world productions. It must be noticed, that, in general, close analysis of different text
types will reveal a mixture of different types of texts.
Traditionally, written texts were divided following the classification of genres (lyric, epic and
drama) then linguistics linked their rhetorical mode to the syntactic structures , routines and
formulas that characterized them, and classified the written texts into: argumentative,
expository, narrative, descriptive. Nevertheless many other classifications are possible.
According to the type of code used, texts can be classified in verbal and non-verbal texts
depending on whether they are based on natural spoken language or not.
According to the intention of the sender, texts can be divided into informative, explicative,
persuasive, prescriptive or literary.
According to the variety of the discourse texts can be expository, argumentative,
descriptive, narrative or dialogic.
According to the topic or theme texts can be scientific, humanistic, legal, journalistic, etc.
The classification offered here, will analyze texts and its different elements following the
criteria based on the variety of discourse used in the communicative exchange.
The variety of discourse refers to the different strategies used in the construction of the
text. These strategies are determined by the intention of the sender on the one hand (to
inform, explain, persuade etc.) and by the perspective he adopts accordingly in the
transmission of such information. As a consequence, the sender or writer, might perceive
the information as:
a) a set of facts, real or fictitious
b) a set of observations taken from the reality
c) an ordered explanation of one or more ideas
d) a reasoning in order to persuade the receiver or reader
The combination of intention together with the different perspective adopted in
transmitting such information results in what we call varieties of discourse: narrative,
descriptive, expository, and argumentative. In other words, it is the function the text plays
in communication what will determine the classification and thus its structure.
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This distinctions between the different varieties of discourse, will not necessarily imply that
texts will inevitably use just one of them. AS mentioned above, it is quite common that one
text carries different discourse varieties. For instance in a story we might find, narration,
descriptions, dialogues, etc.
According to the variety of discourse we can therefore distinguish: narrative, descriptive,
expository and argumentative texts
Narrative texts
The most universal of all the types of written texts, refer back to the story-telling traditions
of most cultures. They can be further divided into FICTIONAL - fairy tale , novel- AND NON
FICTIONAL- newspaper reports- In fact there seem to be some basic universal structure that
governs this type of texts: Orientation (time, place and character identification to inform
reader of the story world), Goal, Problem. Resolution and sometimes a morale at the end.
For this characteristic structure, some of the routines and formulae used are presentatives
(there is...), relatives, adjuncts of place and time, flash-backs, different narrative point of
view, narrative dialogues, use of dynamic verbs and sequencing adverbials.
Descriptive texts
They are concerned with the location and characterisation of people and things in the space,
as well as providing background information which sets the stage for narration. This type of
texts is very popular in L2 teaching, and all types have the same pre-established
organisation. Within descriptive texts we might find:
• External descriptions, presenting a holistic view of the object by an account of all
its parts
• Functional descriptions, which deal with instruments and the tasks they may
perform
• Psychological descriptions, which express the feelings that something produces in
someone
• Technical descriptions that are characterized by their objectivity
• Impressionistic descriptions characterized by their subjectivity
Some of the most characteristic structures are presentatives (there...), adjuncts of location,
stative verbs (look, seem, be...), use of metaphors, comparisons, qualifying adjectives and
relative sentences as well as the use of the perfect and progressive forms for background
information.
e.g. They were watching TV when suddenly they heard a strange noise
Expository texts
They identify and characterize phenomena, including text forms such as definitions,
explanations, instructions, guidelines, summaries, etc...They may be subjective (an essay)
and objective (definitions, instructions), or even advice giving. They may be analytical,
starting from a concept and then characterizing its parts, and ending with a conclusion.
Typical structures are stative verbs, "in order to", "so as to", imperatives, modals and verbs
of quality.
Argumentative texts
They are those whose purpose is to support or weaken another statement whose validity is
questionable.
The structures we find are very flexible, being this the reason for the existence of several
types: Classical/Pros & Cons zigzag, One-sided argumentation, ecclectic approximation,
Opposition's argumentation first, Other side questioned, etc.

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By paying attention to the intention of the writer as well as to specific syntactic and formal
features and to habitual routines and formulas we can add other type of texts:
Postcards
Pieces of writing normally directed to friends or family when travelling, and sometimes used
for congratulations and greetings. We just write on one side and the language used is
colloquial.
Letters
They can be formal (to enterprises or someone we are not closed to) and informal (to
friends or family) There are some routines to write letters: apart from the writer's address
on the top right-hand corner, the date, the first line (dear + name/sir/madam/Mr/Mrs...),
the closing (Yours...) and the signature, present in both types of letters, each type of letter
follows this structural organization into paragraphs:
• Formal: 1st = reason why writing, 2nd = what you want from addressee, 3rd =
conclusion.
• Informal: 1st = introduction, 2nd = reason, 3rd = additional info, 4th =
conclusion.
• There are also directive letters, to provoke some reaction on the reader, using
imperatives & remarks.
Filling-in forms
Consist of answering what you are asked, as briefly as possible, so no writing style is needed
to do so.
Curriculum vitae
Consists of a clear summary to give the academic knowledge and experience someone has
on a certain matter, so it includes personal details, current occupation, academic
qualification and professional experience. They can be presented and displayed in many
different formats that will very much depend on the addressee. They should use formal
language and straightforward organization of contents.
Summaries
Brief resumes of articles, booklets and books that due to their special form of composition
and writing allow the reader to gather the main information about the original work without
reading it.
Reports
They are used to present clearly and with details the summary of present and past facts or
activities, and sometimes of predictable future facts from checked data, sometimes
containing the interpretation of the writer but normally with the intention of stating the
reality of an enterprise or institution without deformative personal visions, and can be
expositive, interpretative & demonstrative.

4.2. ROUTINES AND FORMULAS

There are sometimes when we choose how, when and why not to be creative with language
to repeat what is normally used in a given situation: we use linguistic routines and formulae.
These are defined as fixed utterances or sequences of utterances which must be
considered as single units, because their meaning cannot be derived of them unless
considered as a whole.
In written texts we find different types of routines and formulaic expressions, which vary
depending on the type of text, as we have been previously seeing. Understanding them
usually requires sharing cultural knowledge, because they are generally metaphorical in
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nature and must be interpreted at a non-linguistic level (for instance, Dear in a letter does
not always carry affective meaning).
All those phrases and sentences that, to some extend, have a prescriptive character, can be
considered as routines and formulaic expressions: to consider all the different existing
routines would take too long, but some examples are, in letters & postcards (Yours sincerely)
in C.V's, the organization of info in different blocks, in narration (Once upon a time) in
descriptions (on the left, high above),etc...
Following a general division of any kind of text we may sometimes begin with a brief
heading or descriptive title, with or without a byline, an epigraph or brief quotation, or a
salutation, such as we may find at the start of a letter. They may also conclude with a brief
trailer, byline, or signature.
Elements which may appear in this way, either at the start or at the end of a text division
proper, are regarded as forming a class, known as divtop or divbot respectively.
The following special purpose elements are provided to mark features which may appear
only at the start of a division. Firstly, the head, which may contain any heading, such as the
title of a section, a list or a glossary. Sometimes regarding text type, the heading may be
categorized in a meaningful way to the encoder. Secondly, an epigraph which contains a
quotation, anonymous or attributed, appearing at the start of a section or chapter, or on a
title page. Thirdly, an argument in terms of a formal list or prose description of the topics
addressed by a subdivision of a text. Finally, an opener which groups together dateline,
byline, salutation, and similar phrases appearing as a preliminary group at the start of a
division, especially of a letter. The conclusion will be characterized by a brief trailer of the
subject matter as a summary of facts. A byline or a signature may also conclude any piece of
writing.

5. BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Crystal, D., Linguistics. Harmondsworth, England. Penguin Books, 1985

• Goytisolo, J. Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible heritage of
Humanity 18 May 2001. Speech delivered at the opening of the meeting of the Jury (15 May
2001) 2001
• Cook, Guy.. Discourse. Oxford University Press, 1989
• Brown, G.and G. Yule. Teaching the Spoken Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1983
• Myles, J. Second Language Writing and Research: The Writing Process and Error Analysis in
Student Texts. Queen's University. California Press, 2002
• Rivers, W. Teaching Foreign-Language Skills. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1981
• Widdowson, H. G. Teaching Language as Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1978

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i
Cohesion
Cohesion concerns the ways in which the components of the surface text (the actual words
we hear or see) are mutually connected within a sequence (de Beaugrande & Dressler
1981), that is, intratext linking devices are connected to extra-textual reference. Cohesion
has been a most popular target for research, and it is well known its relation to the second
of the textuality standards, coherence.
Since cohesive markers are important for the understanding of oral texts as well as written,
interpreters, as all speakers, make extensive use of cohesive devices, for example in order to
enhance coherence, but also for reasons of economy (e.g. saving time and alleviating
conceptual work load by using anaphoric devices like generalisations and pro-forms).
Halliday and Hasan, in their ground-breaking work Cohesion in English (1976), describe
cohesion as a semantic concept that refers to relations of meaning that exist within a text.
They define two general categories of cohesion: grammatical cohesion (substitution,
ellipsis, conjunction, reference) and lexical cohesion.
Grammatical cohesion.
We find firstly, substitution and ellipsis which are closely related. So, substitution takes two
forms: a) substitution per se, which is "the replacement of one item by another", and b)
ellipsis, in which "the item is replaced by nothing", usually called zero-replacement. There
are three types of substitution: nominal, verbal and clausal.
Secondly, conjunction is a relationship indicating how the subsequent sentence or clause
should be linked to the preceding or the following sentence or parts of sentence. This is
usually achieved by the use of conjunctions. Frequently occurring relationships are addition,
causality and temporality.
Subordination links things when the status of one depends on that of the other, by means of
a large number of conjunctive expressions: because, since, as, thus, while, or therefore.
Finally, reference is another well researched area within linguistics. It is defined by Halliday
& Hasan (1976) as a case where the information to be retrieved is the referential meaning,
the identity of the particular thing or class of things that is being referred to. The cohesion
lies "in the continuity of reference, whereby the same thing enters into the discourse a
second time." In other words, reference deals with semantic relationship. Reference can be
accomplished by exophoric reference, which signals that reference must be made to the
context of the situation; endophoric reference: reference must be made to the text of the
discourse itself; it is either anaphoric, referring to preceding text; or cataphoric, referring to
text that follows.
Also, Halliday & Hasan (1976) describe the following types of reference: personal reference:
nouns, pronouns, determiners that refer to the speaker, the addressee, other persons or
objects, or an object or unit of text; demonstrative reference: determiners or adverbs that
refer to locative or temporal proximity or distance, or that are neutral; comparative
reference: adjectives or verbs expressing a general comparison based on identity, or
difference, or express a particular comparison.
Lexical cohesion
Lexical cohesion does not deal with grammatical or semantic connections but with
connections based on the words used. It is achieved by selection of vocabulary, using
semantically close items.
Because lexical cohesion in itself carries no indication whether it is functioning cohesively or
not, it always requires reference to the text, to some other lexical item to be interpreted
correctly. There are two types of lexical cohesion: reiteration and collocation.
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First of all, reiteration includes repetition, synonymy, hyponymy, metonymy (part vs.
whole), antonymy whereas collocation is any pair of lexical items that stand to each other in
some recognisable lexico-semantic relation, e.g. "sheep" and "wool", "congress" and
"politician", and "college" and "study".
Like in the case of synonymous reference, collocational relation exists without any explicit
reference to another item, but now the nature of relation is different: it is indirect, more
difficult to define and based on associations in the reader mind. The interpreter sometimes
adds coherence to the text by adding cohesion markers.

ii
Coherence.
The term cohesion is often confused or conflated with coherence. But it is necessary, both
from a theoretical and a practical point of view to retain this distinction between surface
and content. The term coherence concerns the ways in which the components of the textual
world, thus the concepts and relations which underlie the surface text, are mutually
accessible and relevant.
Coherence is a purely semantic property of discourse, while cohesion is mainly concerned
with morpho-syntactic devices in discourse. A coherent text is a semantically connected,
integrated whole, expressing relations of closeness, thus, causality, time, or location
between its concepts and sentences. A condition on this continuity of sense is that the
connected concepts are also related in the real world, and that the reader identifies the
relations.
In a coherent text, there are direct and indirect semantic referential links between lexical
items in and between sentences, which the reader must interpret. A text must be coherent
enough for the interlocutor to be able to interpret. It seems probable that this coherence
can be achieved either through cohesion, for instance, markers and clues in the speakers'
text, or through the employment of the user-centered textuality standards of intentionality,
acceptability, informativity, situationality and intertextuality. These markers are defined as
all the devices which are needed in writing in order to produce a text in which the sentences
are coherently organized so as to fulfil the writer's communicative purpose.
Byrne (1979) claims that they refer to words or phrases which indicate meaning relationships
between or within sentences, such as those of addition, contrast (antithesis), comparison
(similes), consequence, result, and condition expressed by the use of short utterances, and
exemplification (imagery and symbolism).
Within the context of textual analysis, we may mention from a wide range of rhetorical
devices the use of imagery and symbolism; hyperbole, antithesis, similes and metaphors;
onomatopoeias, alliteration and the use of short utterances for rhythm and effect; repetition
and allusion to drawn the reader's attention; and cacophony and slang to make the piece of
writing lively and dynamic.

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