Virtanen 1992

Reference:

Under construction

Review

Excerpts

'I shall deal with some of the criteria that have been used in the study of language to group texts for various purposes. I shall then briefly touch upon the notion of prototype, before proceeding to a discussion of a two-level typology of texts. To round off, I shall consider the status of narrative among the different types of text' (293-4).

Domains: Under construction |

Key Terms: | criteria | language | narrative | notion | status | study | text |



'The present article is concerned with text types that are characterizable with the help of text-internal criteria. Such criteria are connected with the form or content of texts' (294-5).

Domains: Under construction |

Key Terms: | content | criteria | form | text |



'The three typologies referred to above apply to both fiction and non-fiction' (295).

Domains: Under construction |

Key Terms: |



'Taken too far, an attempt to find discrete categories may result in every text requiring a category of its own' (296).

Domains: Under construction |

Key Terms: | category | result | text |



'The resulting multi-level model has to be viewed in terms of recursive choices at its various levels....Decision processes probably work in much the same fashion irrespective of what kinds of parameters are inserted in them and at what level of text production' (298).

Domains: Under construction |

Key Terms: | level | text |



'The two-level typology outlined in Section 3 suggests that text types can be ranged on a scale according to the ease with which they may serve different types of discourse' (302-3).

Domains: Under construction |

Key Terms: | discourse | text |



'Narratives, for example, can be used for argumentation, or descriptions for instruction. Such an apparent mismatch of discourse type and text type may be accounted for in terms of the suggested two levels. Any discourse type may surface in the form of a narrative: Narratives may be used to instruct ... explain things ... describe activities or circumstances ... The ease of the indirect or secondary usage manifested by this type of text, and its potential to realize the widest array of discourse types may, indeed, be regarded as arguments for the "basic" status of narrative among the different types of text' (306).

Domains: Under construction |

Key Terms: | discourse | form | narrative | status | text |



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