Understanding Language Forms, Communication, and Text
Language Forms
Representative forms seek to mimic reality or to transmit information about it:
- The story concerns actions that develop over time: news, stories…
- The description reproduces the reality around the space: landscape, environment…
- The dialogue is based on direct information exchange: conversation…
- The lyric verse expresses the inner feelings of the person.
Reflexive forms dominate the analysis of reality and the communication of ideas:
- The exhibition reflects on a topic in orderly and logical reports…
- The argument seeks to persuade by reasoning: debates…
- Prescriptive attempts to influence the conduct of persons: laws, notices…
These forms of expression can occur in combination.
Narrative Texts
Narrative texts are those in which a narrator recounts what happened to them or other characters in one place and at any given time:
- Narrator telling the story
- Actions are what the characters make
- Fictional characters are people who perform actions.
- Space and Time
Information and Communication
Communication comes from information, a physical or abstract message, which is called the referent.
The message is a code of signs that represents reality. The sign is the signifier and the signified.
The linguistic sign is:
- Referenced: each language chooses its own signifier for the same meaning.
- Items: because the units are combined to form larger gatherings; phonemes (indivisible and meaningless) form words (meaningful units), and sentences (full sense) which form the text.
- Referential function: when reporting objectively on reality
- Poetic function: if we embellish the message.
- Emotive function: when it reflects the feelings
- Appellate function: of the message if the intention is to draw attention of the recipient.
Issuer is what produces the message; receiver is who receives the information.
Text communication units are independent, have full meaning and have a theme, sub themes and three properties:
Coherence: a text which makes sense because their contents are:
- Appropriate selection of topics
- Interdependence
- Order and development
Cohesion: is the outward manifestation of coherence and its mechanisms are:
- Grammatical matches
- Reiterations of concepts
- Connectors and textual organizers
Correctness: oral language must be careful and avoid slang pronunciation; written language and spelling rules must be respected.
Language Levels
Religious or cultural language level: We express oral or written information by people of certain information. It must accomplish this:
- Intonation and spelling carefully
- Rich and precise vocabulary
- Consistency in the exposure
The formal language is a variant of the standard less demanding worship and respect the rules of propriety, was used in conversations, writings and media.
Vulgar Level: It is used by people of little education and is characterized by poverty of vocabulary and slang: inaccuracies in pronunciation, in the form and meaning of words or sentence construction.
Regional dialect or slang: The use of language in conversation does not depend on culture, but of the situation: the place and time, mood… and its features are:
- Partnership in which partners must work to fit the role
- Corruption is where the speaker uses short sentences, the minimum strives…
- Spontaneity where participants improvise
- Subjectivity where partners express their feelings through indirect means (pet names, interjections, exclamations)