Language and Literature Review: A Comprehensive Guide
Language and Literature Review
First Review Assessment
1. The Essay
An essay is a generally brief text written in prose. It has an educational or interpretive objective, in which the writer provides a personal and subjective perspective on any subject, in a clear and pleasant style.
Reflective essays explore various subjects freely, with informative or interpretive intent. The approach to the issue is personal and subjective. The essay offers a vision of reality or human experience in which the author doesn’t remain on the sidelines but intervenes with their opinion. A crucial characteristic of the genre is originality in the treatment of content, reflected in the variety of subjects and the use of diverse tones and styles.
The author is mindful of the reader, employing an entertaining, careful, personal, and engaging style. Due to its flexibility, the essay is used in the humanities and in the press, in the form of articles.
Depending on the subject or content, essays can be literary, philosophical, artistic, cinematic, etc., and according to the tone, more or less subjective, ironic, satirical, humorous, lyrical, etc.
1.1. Typology and Structure
Exposition and, especially, argumentation are the predominant types in essays. The overall structure follows the pattern of introduction, development, and conclusion, although it is a genre with significant structural freedom. Sometimes, a phenomenon known as digression occurs, which is a break in the discourse to discuss unrelated matters.
Essays use quotations from authorities and make explicit references to other texts to establish a connection with cultural tradition.
1.2. Linguistic Forms
Subjectivity is expressed through the use of the first-person singular or plural when the author wants to involve the reader. Declarative sentences are common, but combined with interrogative or exclamatory sentences, creating a rhetorical effect.
The personal and entertaining style is achieved through rhetorical devices that engage the reader. Vocabulary may include technical terms, abstract nouns, or evaluative adjectives.
2. Vocabulary and Semantics
2.1. Mechanisms of Word Formation and Origin of the Lexicon
- Loanwords: Taking words from other languages.
- Cultisms: Words taken directly from Latin and unchanged. E.g., polygamy, harmful, optimal.
- Germanisms, Gallicisms, Italianisms, Luisismos, Vasquismos, Americanisms, Galicianisms, and Catalanisms.
- Neologisms: Recently created words.
- Calques: Adaptations of compound words or expressions translated from a foreign language, keeping their original meaning. E.g., basketball, honeymoon.
- Xenisms: Loanwords maintaining their original form. E.g., hardware, software.
- Derivation: Using prefixes and suffixes. E.g., anti-body.
- Composition: Combining two or more words.
- Parasynthsis: Combining a prefix, a lexeme, and a suffix. E.g., enlighten. Or simultaneous union of two lexemes and a suffix. E.g., stonemason.
- Acronyms: E.g., RENFE, WHO, smiley.
2.2. Meaning of Words
Denotative meaning is the objective and stable meaning of a word.
Connotative meaning is the set of subjective values or meanings associated with the original meaning, which can vary among speakers.
2.3. Semantic Relationships
- Synonymy: Can be total (words are interchangeable in all contexts) or partial.
- Polysemy: Words with multiple related meanings.
- Homonymy: Words with the same spelling but different origins and meanings. E.g., browse (navigate), browse (feed on leaves).
- Antonymy: Three types: complementary (incompatible meanings), reciprocal (mutually dependent meanings), and gradable (admitting degrees of opposition).
- Hyponymy: An inclusion relation between two words where the meaning of one is included in the other. The included term is the hyponym, and the broader term is the hyperonym. When a hyperonym has several hyponyms, they are called co-hyponyms.
3. Scientific and Technical Texts
Scientific and technical texts convey factual knowledge about reality, explaining it so the recipient gains knowledge. They require language that expresses concepts with precision and clarity, so their vocabulary tends to be denotative and unequivocal.
3.1. Typology and Structure
Argumentation and exposition predominate, followed by description. Narration may appear in chronological or historical approaches. Technical texts often feature instruction, teaching the recipient how to do something.
Deductive structures analyze, while inductive structures synthesize. Both methods can be combined in framed structures.
Most scientific texts follow the basic outline of introduction, development, and conclusion.
3.2. Linguistic Forms
Technical and artificial language features are common. Both resources avoid the ambiguity of common language in the pursuit of precision and clarity.
Morphological and Syntactic Level:
- Objectivity: Expressed through impersonal constructions like passive voice without an agent. Declarative intonation and the indicative mood predominate, often with a timeless value.
- Clarity: Achieved with well-constructed sentences. Noun phrases are often expanded with appositions, adjective clauses, or other supplements.
- Cohesion: Textual markers distribute, order content, and establish relationships between ideas. Repetition is used for precise understanding.
Lexical Level:
Unambiguous terms with denotative meanings are preferred. Neologisms are generated through loanwords from classical and modern languages (xenisms, calques, eponyms), derivation, composition, and acronyms.
4. Humanistic Texts
4.1. Linguistic Forms
Similar trends to scientific language are observed at the morphological and syntactic level. Nominal style predominates, and sentences are usually long.
Cohesion is achieved through discourse markers that indicate order, progression, and relationships between ideas, establishing connections between paragraphs, the units of content organization in these texts.
Lexical features include terminology of Latin origin, terms from modern languages, xenisms, abbreviations, acronyms, and words formed by composition and derivation. Many technical terms are abstract nouns formed from adjectives and verbs.
Some technical terms undergo semantic change due to social use and acquire connotative values, becoming loaded with ideology. Typographic resources like italics, bold, or quotation marks highlight and clarify the interpretation of technical terms.
5. Legal and Administrative Texts
5.1. Linguistic Forms
Legal and administrative texts are based on natural language but require clarity and precision.
Morphosyntactic Level:
- Nominal Style: Emphasizes concepts through nominalization (e.g., “take action” becomes “take into account”) and omission of articles (e.g., “the file will be processed” becomes “file will be processed”). Preposed adjectives are also common.
- Long and Complex Sentences: Featuring subordinate clauses, quotations, references, and clarifications. Prepositions or conjunctions are sometimes replaced by prepositional phrases (e.g., “for the purpose of” becomes “to the effect of”). Slashes (/) are used in printed forms and documents.
- Special Verb Use: Reflects the impersonal nature of these texts. Gerunds, participles, and infinitives are frequent. Impersonality is also achieved through various structures. The prescriptive nature leads to forms expressing obligation: periphrasis with “oblige,” future verbs of obligation, and verbs meaning “to do.”
- Formal Address: Distance is expressed through the official plural, third-person in place of first-person, etc.
Lexical Level:
Vocabulary is denotative and formal. Archaisms, set phrases, clichés, and formulas are common. Acronyms are also frequently used.