Text Analysis: Capability, Characteristics, and Appraisal

Posted on Feb 24, 2025 in English Studies. Language, Literature, and Culture

Capability Analysis and Synthesis

1. Capability Analysis and Synthesis (3 points PAU)

  • 1.1. Theme and Summary (1.5 points):
    • Identify the theme (0.5 points).
    • Provide a brief summary of the text’s contents (1 point).
  • 1.2. Organizational Structure (1.5 points):
    • Divide the text into paragraphs and identify the main ideas.
    • Define the text’s parts (introduction, development, conclusion).
    • Determine the organizational structure (expository, argumentative, narrative sequences).
    • Identify the argumentative strategy (analytic, synthetic, framed thesis) and arguments (authority, experience, quality, quantity, scientific, data, justice, moral, exemplification, tradition, utility, etc.).

Text Characteristics

2. Characteristics of Text (3 points PAU)

  • 2.1. Adequacy of the Text (1.5 points):
    • a) Type of text: (column, editorial, opinion article, essay, book excerpt).
    • b) Purpose: (inform, persuade, literary).
    • c) Genre: (expository discourse, argument).
    • d) Communicative situation:
      • Scope of Use: (Journalistic, Literary, Academic, etc.).
      • Register: (colloquial, standard, formal, cultivated).
    • e) Intentionality of the text, related to:
      • The dominant language function:
        • 1st person: Expressive.
        • 2nd person: Appeals.
        • 3rd person: Referential.
        • Other (phatic, poetic, metalinguistic).
      • The form of the sentence (declarative (to show objectivity and credibility), interrogative (to appeal to the receiver), etc.).
      • Modalization (the author’s level of subjectivity):
        • Presence of the author in the text (1st person pronouns).
        • Evaluative lexicon (adjectives, use of suffixes, etc.).
        • Rhetorical figures (metaphor, irony, hyperbole, rhetorical questions, etc.).
  • 2.2. Text Cohesion (1.5 points):
    • a) Grammatical cohesion:
      • Deixis:
        • Personal (marks of participants).
        • Temporal (time stamps).
        • Spatial (place markers).
      • Anaphora (previously mentioned item) and cataphora (item not yet named).
      • Ellipsis (omission of concepts).
      • Connectors (links):
        • Addition (and, also, furthermore, etc.).
        • Exclusion or opposition (or, but, however, although).
        • Cause-consequence (because, so, therefore, etc.).
      • Punctuation (use of quotation marks, bold, italics, colons).
      • Temporal relations (predominant tenses).
      • Style (cohesive/segmented) and narrative sequence (if applicable).
    • b) Lexical Cohesion:
      • Recurrence and Substitution (repeating an element within the text).
      • Semantic relationships (synonymy-antonymy, hyperonymy-hyponymy, etc.).
      • Conceptual field and irony.

Note: Provide examples from the text for all indicated features and linguistic markers. It is helpful to use the plural of modesty (“We now observe…”), passive sentences (“It is often commented…”, “It is considered that…”), and rhetorical questions (“Is it not true that…?”).

Critical Appraisal

3. Critical Appraisal (1 point PAU)

  • Critical Appraisal of Content:
    • Is it current? Does it have social interest?
    • Does it present compelling, high-quality arguments? Is the author achieving their goal?
    • Is the title related to the topic, or does it merely attract attention?
    • Is it a coherent text? Is the linguistic register appropriate?
  • Personal Opinion of the Student:
    • Write a short essay on the topic, using your own arguments to convince the reader of the validity of your opinion.
    • Choose to defend or refute the thesis.
    • You can state whether the text is genuinely of interest to you or has nothing to do with your social environment.

Additional Questions

Questions:

  • Identify three lexical morphemes and segment them into lexemes (nouns, periphrasis).
  • Perform a parsing analysis: break down and explain sentences.
  • Semantic Level (5 words): contextual meaning and value.
  • Discursive-pragmatic level: connectors, use of quotation marks, italics.