Textual Analysis: Functions, Features, and Linguistic Levels
The text under discussion is an act of communication in which the issuer addresses the reader about a specific item. The communicative atmosphere is characterized by emotional distance between author and reader, and this circumstance determines the formal tone of the letter, although at times the writer becomes an accomplice of their readership. This topic has been predetermined by the author without addressing the immediate response from readers. In the text, the following functions predominate:
- Scientific-technical: Referential
- Administrative Law: Appeals and referential
- Humanistic essay: Referential, appellate, aesthetic, meta
- Journalism:
- Journalism of information: Reference
- Journalism of Opinion: Appellate, expressive, aesthetic
Features
- Expressive: Allows expression of emotions, opinions, and thoughts of the writer. This includes exclamatory intonation, verbs and pronouns in the first person, evaluative adjectives, suffixes and prefixes, and interjections.
- Appellate: Aims to persuade, prohibit, or elicit a reaction from the reader. This is achieved through verbs and second-person pronouns, constructions of obligation, imperatives, vocatives, and interrogations.
- Referential: Aims to provide pure information. This involves factual messages, verbs and pronouns in the third person indicative mood, and a denotative lexicon.
- Phatic: Checks the communication channel.
- Metalinguistic: Used to talk about the code itself.
- Poetic: Focuses on the beauty of the message.
Diatopic and Diastratic Considerations
From a diatopic point of view, the text belongs to standard Spanish since there is no feature that allows us to ascribe it to a particular geographical area.
From a diastratic point of view, the text belongs to a standard, formal register. The features that characterize it are:
- Absence of slang phrases and interjections
- Phonic and morpho-syntactic rigor in expression through appropriate syntactic constructions
- Accuracy and richness in the use of tenses
- Sequence of sentences using appropriate links
- Precise and varied vocabulary
Characteristics of Different Text Types
The set of all the circumstances seen so far requires the use of language in its written, formal, and cultured form and imposes distinctive characteristics, of which we will consider the following:
- Technical-scientific: Objectivity, accuracy, clarity, and universality.
- Journalism of Information: Objectivity, brevity, conciseness, clarity, communication, and capturing the interest of the public.
- Journalism of Opinion: Subjectivity, stylistic intent, universality, precision, and clarity.
- Essayist: Objectivity, subjectivity, accuracy, clarity, stylistic intent, and dialogical character.
Breakdown of Linguistic Features
- Objectivity:
- Morphosyntactic level: Use of the indicative mood, third-person singular, impersonal verb forms, plural of modesty, nominal constructions, and adverbial subordinate clauses.
- Lexical-semantic level: Denotative vocabulary, monosemic terms, and technicalities.
- Subjectivity:
- Morphological level: Presence of a grammatical person, use of evaluative adjectives, adverbial phrases, paraphrases of obligation (have to), and use of verbs in the subjunctive and conditional.
- Lexical-semantic level: Connotative vocabulary and expression of the author’s personal opinion.
- Universality:
- Morphological level: Presence of the article with generalizing value and use of the timeless present.
- Lexical-semantic level: Abstract nouns and technical terms.
- Accuracy and Clarity:
- Morphological level: Use of coordination between commas, paragraphs, lines or parentheses, and enumerations.
- Lexical-semantic level: Use of jargon, definitions, restrictive adjectives, and repetition of words.
- Stylistic Intent:
- Lexical-semantic level: Rhetorical figures, explanatory adjectives, and learned vocabulary.
- Clarity of Communication:
- Morphosyntactic level: Syntactic simplicity.
- Lexical-semantic level: Avoidance of technical terms or clarification if they appear.
- Capturing the Interest of the Public:
- Morphosyntactic level: Use of hyperbole and idioms.
- Lexical-semantic level: Neologisms, foreign loans, and euphemisms.
Textual Structure and Cohesion
Regarding the textual level, the letter adopts an expository-argumentative form in which the information field is arranged in the following ways:
- Analytic: Idea presented first, then developed.
- Synthetic: Explanation first, then the idea.
- Parallel: Several successive ideas.
- Circular: Idea, explanation, then the idea again.
The text achieves a high degree of cohesion through sentences connected by various linguistic procedures that allow each phrase to be interpreted in relation to others.