Text Analysis and Linguistic Features: A Deep Dive

Posted on Jan 14, 2025 in Social Anthropology

Text Analysis and Linguistic Features

Understanding the Structure of a Text

When analyzing a text, we can follow these steps:

  1. Identify the central theme.
  2. Recognize early signs of paragraphs, ideas, and arguments.
  3. Determine the structure (parts).

Structures can be:

  • Inductive: Moving from specific details to general conclusions. The thesis appears at the end, where the author explains and draws conclusions.
  • Deductive: Starting with an initial idea or thesis and then developing reflections or conclusions.

Abstract and Characterization

To complete the initial section of the commentary, we will create an abstract. Then, we will analyze the text’s characterization, dividing it into two aspects: adequacy and cohesion.

Adequacy

  1. Genre: For example, journalistic.
  2. Textual Typology:
    • Expository: No author’s opinions (objective).
    • Argumentative: Author’s opinions, personal experiences, arguments from authority.
  3. Language Functions:
    • Appellative: The author addresses the reader to elicit a response or reaction.
    • Aesthetic: The author aims to make the text more beautiful and original using rhetorical devices.
    • Metalinguistic: The text discusses language itself, clarifying terms.
    • Referential: Objective presentation of events external to the issuer’s feelings or thoughts, or the receiver’s (e.g., about the war in Palestine).
  4. Modality Elements:
    • Declarative, exclamatory.
    • Hortatory (command), desiderative (wish).
    • Modalization: The author’s attitude towards the content (e.g., adverbs like “unfortunately,” ironies, typographic elements).
  5. Linguistic Register: Standard, colloquial, educated, technical.

Cohesion

Cohesion refers to elements that create formal and semantic coherence through repetition, opposition, and distribution.

  • Anaphora: For example, “John and Peter were coming, and this one stopped.”
  • Cataphora: For example, “In the house, there was cold.”
  • Distributive or Correlative Particles: “Firstly,” “these,” “those,” “the former.”
  • Correlation: Listing items and then developing them in order.
  • Parallels: Repetition of syntactic structures with different words but the same structure.
  • Repetition of Words, Synonyms, and Antonyms: Used for recurrence, e.g., “Boyhood and Youth.”
  • Semantic Fields:
    • Lexical Field: Related words (e.g., “snuff,” “tobacco,” “smoking”).
    • Semantic Field: Words with related meanings (e.g., “nicotine,” “cigarette lighter”).
    • Associative Field: Words associated with a concept (e.g., “defect,” “cancer,” “death,” “drug”).

Discourse Markers

Connectors that mark parts of the structure.

Aspectual Periphrasis

  • Ingressive: Indicates the beginning of an action (e.g., “go to,” “be about to” + infinitive; “I will write”).
  • Inchoative: Signals the start of an action (e.g., “begin,” “start to,” “decide to”; “start typing”).
  • Repetitive: Indicates a repeated action (e.g., “again,” “return to”; “return to school”).
  • Terminative: Marks the end or interruption of an action (e.g., “stop,” “finish,” “get to” + infinitive; “I come to have three things”).
  • Resultative: Indicates the result of a prior action (e.g., “take,” “have” + participle; “He has made several dinners,” “I’ve told you to shut up”).
  • Durative: Indicates an action in progress (e.g., “be,” “go,” “come,” “go on”; “I’m writing,” “I’ve been thinking for several days”).

Other Markers

  • Clarification or Explanation: “namely,” “that is.”
  • Exemplification or Illustration: “just as,” “for example,” “that is.”
  • Addition, Union, and Intensification: “and also,” “then also,” “it is also more,” “but still.”
  • Confirmation or Consonance: “it is indeed,” “effective.”
  • Contrast or Opposition: “but,” “no,” “however.”
  • Cause: “because,” “because of,” “as.”
  • Consequence and Effect: “consequently,” “therefore.”
  • Purpose: “to ensure that,” “in order that,” “in order.”
  • Comparisons and Similarity: “the same way,” “so that,” “rather,” “from another point of view.”
  • Time: “later,” “after.”
  • Ordination and Enumeration: “first,” “second.”
  • Recapitulation, Closure, and Conclusion: “in short,” “to summarize,” “finally,” “in conclusion.”