Understanding Text: Properties, Structure, and Linguistic Elements

Understanding Text: Properties, Structure, and Linguistic Elements

The text is the maximum communication unit, consisting of the deliberate release of statements orally or in writing, in a concrete communicative situation for a particular purpose. The text consists of a structured set of statements and has a variable extension. It is made from various levels of organization: it has a semantic structure, a syntactic structure, and finally, a communication structure. For a text to be considered as such, it must meet three conditions: it must be appropriate, coherent, and cohesive.

Appropriateness in Text

For an appropriate text, the message must fit the situation in which the text is issued and the purpose of the issuer. This requires taking into account the characteristics of the recipient, the subject matter, and the situation in which the message is received. Without considering these factors, the text is inadequate and ineffective, and the message does not serve the author’s intention. The author makes a series of decisions on the text’s features: the role of language that will prevail in the text, which depends on the communicative intention and the choice of the appropriate communication channel, the linguistic variety to be used, and finally, a variety of speech specific to the intention and the communicative situation.

Coherence in Text

Coherence is the property that guarantees the unity of meaning of a text. It presents ideas on the same theme, logically structured. For a text to be coherent, all parts must be interrelated and related to the core issue. Texts have different levels of coherence: global coherence, local linear coherence, and local coherence.

• Global Coherence: All the information contained in the text must be connected to the same subject. The statements that form the text relate to each other, subordinated to a main idea or theme that provides meaning to the text unit.
• Linear Coherence: The contents of a text form a structure: each of the parts is dependent on one another and becomes meaningful in relation to the general meaning. At this level of coherence, thematic progression takes place; each of the sentences of the text introduces information related to the topic. In this way, the subject is present, explicitly or implicitly, in all statements of the text.
• Local Coherence: The statements forming the text must satisfy three basic principles: compliance with universal standards of human knowledge, observation of the fundamental laws of logic, and adequacy for the speech frame.

Cohesion in Text

Cohesion is the property for establishing connections between the parts of a text. To establish these connections, a number of resources are used in the text:

• Recurrence: The repetition of a linguistic element throughout the discourse helps make the text a unit. There are several types: lexical, semantic, syntactic, and phonic recurrence.
• Substitution: To avoid excessive repetition of a word, proforms are used, which replace other terms in the speech.
• Ellipsis: Skipping a lexical item of a sentence because it has previously appeared in the speech.
• Constituent Order: In statements, known information precedes new information.
• Textual Markers: Depending on their function, we find several types: structural information markers, discursive connectors, conversational markers, and suprasentential markers.