Text Typology and Classification: A Comprehensive Guide
Text Typology and Classification
Introduction
Texts are organized into different units called sequences, characterized by adequacy, coherence, and cohesion. A text can be part of a larger text stream. Texts are classified in various ways based on their properties, such as communicative intention, subject matter, and linguistic resources.
Classification by Communicative Intent
One way to classify texts is by their communicative intent. This considers the sender’s purpose and how they aim to influence the reader.
- Informational Texts: These texts aim to transmit new information to the reader, resulting in the learning of new concepts and relationships between concepts.
- Persuasive Texts: These texts aim to convince the reader of a particular viewpoint, often using a structured argument with an introduction, supporting evidence, and a conclusion. Examples include propaganda and some newspaper articles.
- Managerial Texts: These texts, such as legal documents, aim to regulate the behavior of recipients.
- Literary Texts: These texts aim for an aesthetic effect. Examples include narrative texts (like novels), which are subjective and based on invented facts, and poems, which are connotative and evoke emotion.
- Recreational Texts: These texts, such as tongue twisters and riddles, aim to entertain.
- Prescriptive Texts: These texts provide guidelines or instructions for solving a problem or carrying out an action. They differ from explanatory texts by offering direct application, like a manual with step-by-step instructions.
- Explanatory Texts: Also called informational or expository texts, these provide solutions or explanations without direct application.
- Expository Texts: These texts focus on informing and explaining, often using diagrams and arguments. They typically cover technical, scientific, or humanistic content and follow a structure of introduction, development, and conclusion. They maintain an objective viewpoint and use formal language with connectors to establish logical relationships.
- Descriptive Texts: These texts describe properties, such as a landscape in a narrative, a character’s physical or psychological traits, or the parts of an item in a manual. They often follow a spatial order and use juxtaposed and coordinated sentences.
- Metalinguistic Texts: These texts teach about language itself, such as language textbooks used in schools.
Other Classification Methods
Besides communicative intent, texts can be classified based on semantic criteria (subject matter) or linguistic resources (register and style).