Text Types

There are 5 major texts types:

Narrative

Descriptive

Directive

Expository

Argumentative

Text Types

Text types vs text forms

Text types are general semantic-functional
concepts and are not to be confused with
text forms (advertisements, editorials,
sermons, shopping lists, poems, telephone
books, novels, etc.)

Narrative texts

Narrative texts have to do with real-world events

and time.
They may be fictional (fairy tales, novels) or nonfictional (newspaper report).
They are characterised by a sequencing of events
expressed by dynamic verbs and by adverbials
such as and then, first, second, third
Example: First we packed our bags and then we
called a taxi. After that we etc.
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Text Types

Descriptive texts

Descriptive texts are concerned with the location

of persons and things in space.
They will tell us what lies to the right or left, in
the background or foreground, or they will
provide background information which, perhaps,
sets the stage for narration.
It is immaterial whether a description is more
technical-objective or more impressionisticsubjective.
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Descriptive texts
State or positional verbs plus adverbial
expressions are employed in descriptions

Examples:
1) The operation panel is located on the
right-hand side at the rear;
2) New Orleans lies on the Mississippi.

Text Types

Directive texts

Directive

texts are concerned with concrete

future activity. Central to these texts are
imperatives (Hand me the paper) or forms
which substitute for them, such as polite
questions (Would you hand me the paper?)
or suggestive remarks (I wonder what the
paper says about the weather).
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Narrative, descriptive and directive texts have

grammatical forms associated with them which
may be expanded to form sequences of a textual
nature
They are all centred around real-world events and
things. In contrast, expository and argumentative
texts are cognitively oriented, as they are
concerned with explanation and persuasion, which
are both mental processes.
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Text Types

Expository texts

Expository

texts identify and characterize

phenomena.

They include text forms such as definitions,
explications, summaries and many types of
essay.

Expository texts

Text Types

may be subjective (essay) or objective (summary,

explication, definition)
may be analytical (starting from a concept and
then characterizing its parts; e.g. definitions) or
synthetic (recounting characteristics and ending
with an appropriate concept or conclusion; e.g.
summaries)
are characterized by state verbs and epistemic
modals (Pop music has a strong rhythmic beat;
Texts may consist of one or more sentences) or by
verbs indicating typical activities or qualities
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(fruitflies feed on yeast)

Argumentative texts

Argumentative texts depart from the assumption

that the receivers beliefs must be changed
They often start with the negation of a statement
which attributes a quality or characteristic activity
to something or someone (esp. scholarly texts).
They also include advertising texts, which try to
persuade their readers that a product is somehow
better, at least implicitly, than others.
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Text Types

Few texts are pure realizations of a single type:

Advertisements may be both argumentativepersuasive (this is good because) and directive
(So buy now!)
Expository texts can be neutral or contain
evaluative elements (reviews, references, letters to
the editor)
Laws regulate some aspects of society, directing
the behaviour of its members, but also inform on
these aspects (they are both directive and
expository)
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Source: Gramley,S., Ptzold, K.M., A

Survey of Modern English, London,
Routledge, 1992

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Identify text types in the

following passages:
1) Papers should not exceed 7000 words
(including footnotes and Works Cited) and should
follow the latest MLA Handbook. Papers should
be submitted in double-spaced format (two hard
copies and a disk) to the editors of the issue at the
following addresses:
Tina Krontiris, School of English, Aristotle
University, 541 24 Thessaloniki, Greece, and
Jyotsna G. Singh, Department of English,
Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI
48824-1036.
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Text Types

2) Most artists are very nervous of scientific

analysis. They feel it destroys something about the
human aspect of creativity. [] Some fear that too
much analysis will only break the spell. Likewise,
most scientists see the creative arts as an entirely
subjective development that long ago left science
to tread the long road to objective truth alone.
Whole books have been written about this
bifurcation, but here I want to talk about some
interesting points of contact between art and
science that are facilitated by the growth in our
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understanding of complex organization and

pattern. I believe that the sciences of
complexity have a lot to learn from the
creative arts. The arts display some of the
most intricate known examples of organised
complexity. Likewise, the creative arts may
have something to learn from an
appreciation of what complexity is and how
it comes about.
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Text Types

3) Yes, I have returned to this arcaded city,

unwisely, it may be. I rented a place in one of the
little alleyways hard by the Duomo, I shall not say
which one, for reasons that are not entirely clear to
me, although I confess I worry intermittently
about the possibility of a visit from the police. It is
not much, my bolt-hole, a couple of rooms, lowceilinged, dank; the windows are so narrow and
dirty I have to keep a table lamp burning all day
for fear of falling over something in the half dark.
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4) The geography of the Aran Islands is very

simple, yet it may need a word to itself. There are
three islands: Aranmor, the north island, about
nine miles long; Inishmaan, the middle island,
[] nearly round in form; and the south island,
Inishere in Irish, east island, like the middle
island but slightly smaller. They lie about thirty
miles from Galway, up the centre of the bay, but
they are not far from the cliffs of County Clare, on
the south, or the corner of Connemara on the
north.
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Text Types

5) Acanthus
A thistle-like plant (common to the warm
Mediterranean region) whose narrow and
pointed-lobed leaves, when stylized, form
the characteristic decoration of the
Corinthian and Composite Orders of
columns.
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6) President George W. Bush has told us that the

question of whether to withdraw from Iraq is one
that his successors will have to deal with not
him. I dont think so. Bush is not going to have
that luxury of passing Iraq along. You see, the
insurgency in Iraq is in its last throes just like
Dick Cheney said. Unfortunately, its being
replaced by anarchy in many neighborhoods not
democracy. And I dont believe the American
people will put up with two and half more years of
babysitting anarchy instead of midwifing
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democracy.

Text Types

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7) The dancers were trickling away on to the touchlines of

the long-floor. The walls were decorated with scenes from
the remoter past, portrayed in what no doubt an advanced
style, so that in the one nearest Dixon, for example, some
lack of perspective or similar commodity made a phalanx
of dwarf infantrymen seem to be falling from the skies
upon their much larger barbarian adversaries who, unaware
of this danger overhead, gazed threateningly into the empty
middle distance. Lowering his eyes from these memorials,
he caught sight of Michie talking and laughing with his
girl. She had the kind of water-gipsy face that affected him
uncomfortably.
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Text Types

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