Sentence Types, Communication, and Textual Analysis
Sentence Types and Communication Modes
Sentence and communication patterns reveal the issuer’s attitude towards the wording and intent with respect to the receiver.
Declarative Sentences
The issuer presents a statement, affirming or denying its content. The receiver must understand this statement as true.
Interrogative Sentences
The sender calls the receiver’s attention and prompts them to seek an answer. The predominant role is, therefore, apelativa. This also includes rhetorical questions, where the sender knows the answer but uses them to encourage reflection.
Dubitative Sentences
The issuer presents the statement as a possibility, so the receiver must validate it through reflection. This emphasizes the emotional function.
Imperative Sentences
The issuer directly influences the receiver through their statement.
Evaluative Lexis
The vocabulary used by the author in the text shows the degree of involvement of the issuer in its wording. This includes:
- Evaluative Adjectives: Adjectives with connotative value are used, often with derivational morphemes.
- Nouns: The issuer uses nouns that impact the receiver, such as love, indifference, hatred, contempt. Derivatives expressing liking/disliking, affection/disaffection are also common.
- Adverbs and Adverbial Phrases: The sender uses these to express certainty, doubt, involvement, etc. (e.g., possibly).
- Verbs: Verbs of thought, speech, and feeling are used (e.g., think, believe, feel, experience, say, speak, make, live, die, love, hate).
Rhetorical Figures
- Metaphor: A correspondence between two similar terms.
- Simile: A comparison of similar items. The terms being compared must be present.
- Irony: Saying something by stating its opposite; may involve sarcasm, criticism, or ridicule. This is usually a mild but very effective procedure.
- Hyperbole: An obvious exaggeration.
- Reticence: Ellipses are used to keep a list or idea open, leaving it to the receiver to continue.
- Asyndeton: The suppression of conjunctions (gives a feeling of speed and vividness).
- Polysyndeton: The joining of several words or sentences with unnecessary conjunctions (the opposite of asyndeton).
- Personification: The attribution of human qualities to animate or inanimate beings.
Theming
Theming encompasses everything related to the informational structure of the text: the introduction of the topic, its progression, the inclusion of new information on the subject, or the inclusion of new topics (digressions).
Deixis
- Personal Deixis: The issuer is included in the text with an explicit presence through first-person singular verbs, pronouns (I, me, my, mine), and possessives. It may also include the receiver through inclusive deixis, using first-person plural verbs and pronouns (we, us). In some cases, the indefinite pronoun one is used, giving an impersonal character to the statement but still including the issuer or anyone.
- Social Deixis: The sender establishes differences with the receiver, creating greater or lesser distance by using formal or informal pronouns (e.g., you formal/informal).
- Spatial Deixis: Demonstratives indicate the place where the issuer is located in relation to objects. Specific references can also be used (e.g., in my village, in Rwanda).
- Temporal Deixis: The issuer moves forward and backward in time from the present using adverbs (yesterday, tomorrow, today, here, there) or expressions that indicate time (e.g., since my childhood, in my old age).
Impersonality
Impersonality is used intentionally to create distance from the statement, to generalize, and to convince the recipient of the credibility of the statements. The apparent objectivity gives the text a universal character.