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Gary Bills
Text types


Texts can be classified according to various characteristics. There are differences both in terms of language and form.

In order to write your papers, it is not necessary that you have literary or linguistic training in analyzing and classifying different types of texts. However, it is very useful to develop a sensorium for differences.

To do this, consciously read different types of texts. Start with a journalistic piece from the tabloid press and compare it with an article from a quality newspaper and one from a popular science magazine. Read a literary work and compare it to a fiction bestseller. Specifically compare a nonfiction bestseller with a how-to book and a scientific paper.

In your comparisons, paper help pay particular attention to the complexity of the language (word choice, sentence structure, sentence length), the length and structuring of the text (including the use of visual structuring devices such as frames and boxes), the content conveyed, and the way the content is conveyed (factual, emotionalizing, clichéd, etc.).

Who am I writing for? Who is my target audience?


The question of who you are writing for is not only significant in the field of journalism, non-fiction or fiction. As a scientist, too, there are some reasons why one should try to get some idea of one's target audience (thesis supervisor, scientists from another discipline, readers of a quality newspaper, etc.) when writing a text. Even if this is always possible only with limitations, it is helpful to be able to communicate contents in the best possible way. Important differences exist especially in the language used(specialized vocabulary, sentence structure etc.) and in the length and structure of what is written.

The following questions are useful in these considerations:

(a) What (what content) do we want someone to understand?

b) How (in what form) do we want to do it?

c) To whom do we want to bring something closer?

d) Why (for what purpose) do we want to do it?

The four questions (What, How, To Whom, Why) are based on the classic process-analytic formula of U.S. political scientist Harold D. Lasswell (1902-1978).

"Who Says What in Which Channel to Whom with What Effect?"

He thought that this would make it possible to describe the communication process in a universally valid way.

Even though Lasswell's investigations in this form are no longer tenable today, because communication and research into the effects of media content have proven to be far more complex, parts of this formula still create a good basis for us in our considerations in advance of our own text production.

More information:

Education my page
The abstract in the scientific article
The functions of the abstract are

 

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Gary Bills
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