31. TEXT AND CONTEXT. TEXT TYPOLOGY.

CRITERIA FOR TEXT

CLASSIFICATION. THE REGISTER.

I have chosen the topic 31, which is about the concept of text,
context, the different criteria for classification of texts and the notion
of register. In order to achieve a logical comprehension of the topic, I
will divide it into the following sections:

1. Introduction.
2. Text.
3. Context.
4. Text typology.
5. Register.
6. Conclusion.
7. Bibliography.

1. INTRODUCTION.

In this topic we are going to analyse the concept of text and

some related concepts, such as context, text typology, the criteria for
text classification and the register. All these concepts are important
to be developed to our students in order them to acquire
communicative competence.
The term “Communicative competence” was coined by
Dell Hymes, who argued that CC not only consists of grammatical
competence, but also, sociolinguistic and pragmatic one. Later, it
would be Canale and Swain, who added the idea that only in
discourse and through discourse all the competences are realised.

2. TEXT.

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 We can define the concept of text as a unit of language in use.
It is not only a grammatical unit, but also a semantic one. It can be a
single word or a large group of sentences, but it must form a unified
whole, and must have as a main purpose communication. According
to Halliday: “It is language that is functional”. In other words,
that is doing some job in some context. But, what is it that
differentiates a text from a group of sentences? First of all, it is a
semantic unit; it does not consist of sentences, but it is encoded in
sentences, and it needs to have cohesion and coherence. Then,
“stop” is a sentence, while “an odourless scented flower smelled
silently” is not because it has no meaning.

It must be born in mind that a text does not consist of

sentences; it is realized by sentences. In fact, the property of ‘being a
text’ is given by textual features such as texture and ties. First of all,
the concept of texture expresses in itself the property of ‘being a text’
and this is what distinguishes a text from something that is not a
text. Texture, then, functions as a unity with respect to its
environment. The resources that English has for creating texture
contribute to its total unity and they are called ‘ties’.

Halliday and Hasan (1976) define ‘ties’ as the term used to refer to a
single instance of cohesive relation (anaphora, cataphora, reference).
The concept of a tie makes it possible to analyse a text in terms of its
cohesive properties and give a systematic account of its patterns of
texture. We can characterize any segment of a text in terms of the
number of kinds of ties which it displays: reference, substitution
ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion.

A text is not an undifferentiated sequence of words, much less of

bytes. In addition, written texts conform to rules that most successful
writers unconsciously follow and native readers unconsciously expect

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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 (1988),
a text, oral or printed, is established as a communicative occurrence,
which has to meet some standards of textuality : cohesion,
coherence, intentionality and acceptability, informativity,
situationality and finally, intertextuality. If any of these standards are
not satisfied, the text is considered not to have fulfilled its function
and not to be communicative.

(1) Cohesion and coherence are text-centred notions.

On the one hand, cohesion concerns the ways in which the
components of the surface text (the actual words we hear or see:
phrase, clause, sentence) are mutually connected within a sequence.
It also deals with cohesive ties as mentioned above (anaphora,
cataphora, ellipsis, etc) and signalling relations (tense and aspect,
modality, updating, junction, conjunction, disjunction and
subordination).

(2) Coherence concerns the ways in which the components of the

textual world are mutually accessible and relevant. These
components are the concepts and relations which underlie the surface
text: a set of relations subsumed under causality (cause, enablement,
reason, purpose time) and global patterns (frames, schemas, plans,
and scripts).

(3) Intentionality subsumes the intentions of text producers, that

is, their attitude. This standard deals with the pragmatic perspective
of discourse, that is, the conversational maxims of co-operation:
quantity, quality, relation and manner on saying ‘be informative, be
truthful, be relevant and be brief’ .

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(4) Informativity concerns the extent to which the occurrences of
the text are expected vs. unexpected or known vs. unknown or
uncertain.. The emphasis on content, that is, content words (verbs,
nouns, adjectives, adverbs), arises from the dominant role of
coherence in textuality, while language systems like phonemes or
syntax seem to have focused less attention.

(5) Situationality concerns the factors which make a text “relevant

to a current or recoverable situation of occurrence” (Beaugrande &
Dressler, 1988), (i.e. in dramatic texts, as a subclass of literary texts,
there exist the prerogative of presenting alternative organizations for
objects and events in live presentations (prologue, unusual frequency
of events, actions with no reason, etc).

(6) Acceptabiliity concerns the factors that make a text be of

relevance for the listener.

(7) Finally, intertextuality concerns the factors which make the use
of one text dependent upon knowledge of one or more previously
encountered texts, that is, the ways in which the production and
reception of a given text depends upon the participants knowledge of
other 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 strong impression and has a good
potential for fulfilling an aim; and its appropriateness depends upon

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whether its own setting is in agreement with the seven standards of
textuality (Beaugrande & Dressler 1988).

Let us move now to see the concept of context, closely related

to the text:

3. CONTEXT.

In order to communicate, which is the primary function of a

text, a text needs a context. The context includes the participants’
knowledge and perception of paralanguage, other texts, the situation,
the culture as well as the intentions and relationships of the
participants.

According to Halliday and Hassan, there are 4 types of context:

- Context of situation, which would consist of the field; in other

words, what the text is about, the total event in which the text
occurs; the tenor, concerned with the relationship between the
participants; and the mode of discourse, which refers to the function
of the text including the channel (written / spoken) and its genre
(narrative, descriptive, argumentative…).

- The Context of Culture determines the way the text is interpreted in

its context of situation. It refers to where the text appears. It is a
wider context.

- The Intertextual context; that is, the relation of one text with other
ones, similar to the intertextuality notion mentioned when talking
about the standards of textuality.

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- The Intratextual context; in other words, cohesion and coherence,
that have been aforementioned in the last section.

As we can observe, text and context are related concepts, since

we can not talk about text without a context.

4. TEXT TYPOLOGY.

As we have seen, the assignment of a text to a type clearly

depends on the predominant functions of the text in communication.
For example, “The Declaration of American Independence” contains
descriptions of the situation of the American colonies, and brief
narrations of the British actions. However, we can say that the main
function is the argumentative one, that is, to induce opinion in favour
of independence.

Text typology is concerned with the identification of the

criteria leading to the classification (typology) of texts. Depending on
the criteria adopted, there are several possibilities of classifying texts.
We are going to talk about narration, description, argumentation and
explanation.

The strategic classification deals primarily with the topic and the
ways of its expansion: narrative, descriptive, and argumentative.

Narration, considered to be the most common and culture-universal

genre, in its basic way of presentation follows a series of structural
steps (Labov 1972): a) abstract providing a ´title´ for a story, b)
orientation giving information on the time, setting, characters and
their roles, c) complicating action presenting a ´problem´ which must
be overcome by characters in order to attain their goal, d) resolution,
signaling the attainment of the goal and e) coda bringing the story

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´back´ to the beginning by providing a moral, summary, relevance,
etc.
The narrator, on the other hand, may interrupt the thread of the
story, by addressing to the reader. Let us take these Kipling’s words
taken from one of his tales as an example: “You must not forget
the suspenders, beloved”, addressed to the hearer, in this case
children, or in the same tale, a few lines later: “Now, you know
why you weren’t to forget the suspenders”

Description of a static type lists typical features of an object or

topic described in an orderly fashion: from more to less important
features, from a whole to its parts, from the outside to the inside or
vice versa, etc. In dynamic (processual, procedural) descriptions a
temporal order of procedures is binding (e.g., recipes for making a
food dish, instruction manuals). Static descriptions make frequent
use of presentatives (there is/are), relative clauses, descriptive
adjectives, prepositional and adverbial phrases, purpose clauses,
etc.

Argumentation, a process whereby a disputable position is

supported. Hatch (1992) offers the following stages of a classical
model of argumentation: introduction, explanation of the case under
consideration, outline of the argument, proof, refutation and
conclusion.

Some authors identify explanation as a specific strategy

whereby the nature of phenomena is explained, and information,
which provides a simple list of relevant features regardless of their
mutual relations.

5. REGISTER.

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 Once we have seen the great variety of criteria for the
classification of text, we can ask ourselves: in what type of language
can we have a text? The concept of register is very important for our
students in order to be able to understand and produce a text. We
can say that register is a semantic concept. It is what an individual
is speaking at the time, depending on what he is doing and the
activity in which language is functioning.

As the concept of register is closely associated to the

context of situation, it is closely related to the field, mode and tenor.
- The concept of field refers to the need of using different
words to talk about different activities. For example: board, chalk,
desk belong to the register of school.

- Personal tenor refers to the relationship between the

participants. When talking about the register, the tenor refers to the
degree of formality of any piece of language.

- Functional tenor refers to the function that language tries to

achieve. If language function is comical, the text will include
elements to achieve it.

- Mode: it refers to the channel: written / spoken,

spontaneous / non-spontaneous.

But, how many kinds of register are there?

- We can talk about a Closer register when the register use is
limited. For example, the once used by surgeons, pilots, etc. is
closer.
- We will talk about an open register when it is used in
informal or spontaneous conversations and there is not a high level

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of specification of words or terms. For instance, the language used
in postcards is open.

However, there are not totally open-ended registers,

because we always make predictions about what the other person is
about to say, which is feature of any text, spoken or written.
On the other hand, it is also very important the
difference between slang and jargon, related concepts to register.
Let us see them now in detail:
Slang is the non-standard or non-dialectal use of words in a
language of a particular social group, and sometimes the creation of
new words or importation of words from another language. It is a
type of neologism. Slang has two functions :the creation of new
language and new usage by a process of creative informal use and
adaptation, and the creation of a secret language understood only
by those within a group intended to understand it.
There is not just one slang, but very many varieties of slang.
Different social groups in different times have developed their own
slang.
Originally, slang designated the speech of people involved in
the criminal underworld, hooligans, bandits, criminals, etc.
Therefore, their vocabulary carried very vulgar connotations, and
was strictly rejected by speakers of "proper" language. Other
groups, generally those on the margins of mainstream society who
were excluded or rejected by it, developed their own slangs.

A famous current example is Cockney rhyming slang in which, in the

simplest case, a given word or phrase is replaced by another word or
phrase that rhymes with it. Examples of rhyming slang are apples
and pears for stairs and trouble (and strife) for wife; bottle and glass
for arse (ass). This was reduced to bottle,

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As such, slang is a type of sociolect aimed at excluding certain people
from the conversation. Slang terms are often particular to a certain
subculture, such as musicians, skateboarders... Slang generally
implies playful, informal speech. Slang is distinguished from jargon,
the technical vocabulary of a particular profession, as jargon is (in
theory) not used to exclude non-group members from the
conversation, but rather deals with technical peculiarities of a given
field which require a specialized vocabulary.

Jargon is used for instance in sports, where technical sportsman

terms but also sport-related metaphors for other events in life are
used by sports fans for the aforementioned purposes. Jargon is used
in technical professions.. The rise of information technology and the
Internet created many overlapping jargons used by nerds, geeks and
hackers to communicate, the very proper usage of these words being
a major prerequisite for inclusion in these groups. Some of them are:

 Chinook jargon
 Computer jargon
 Corporate jargon
 Law enforcement jargon
 Mathematical jargon....

6. CONCLUSION.

We should teach our students how to be competent speakers,

listeners, readers, and writers of the foreign language and how to
interpret the different texts, so that they could deal with them in an
appropriate way. For this, they will have to learn the different
functions of a language and how to manage with them using the
appropriate formulae and expressions.

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7. BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Cook, Guy. Discourse. OUP.1995
Austin, J. How to Do Things with Words. OUP. 1975
Halliday, M. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. Arnold. 1985
Searle. Speech Acts. CUP. 1969
Leech. Principles of Pragmatics. Longman. 1983
Beaugrande and Dressler. Introduction to Text Linguistics. Longman.
1981.
Halliday and Hassan. Cohesion in English. Longman. 1985.
Halliday and Hassan. Language, text and Context. OUP. 1990

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