Text typology

Text typology

1. Text typology is concerned with the identification of the criteria leading to the classification (typology) of texts

   • Type text
     • Descriptive
       • Identifies the phenomenon to be described by providing a great deal of details about qualities and characteristics; it is mainly focused on specific participants
         • Discharge summaries -medical students; consultation letter and case report – private practitioner.
     • Narrative
       • Is an imaginative story in the sense of a spoken or written account of connected events; in its structure orientation, complication, resolution and, in some cases, evaluation and reorientation are included.
         • News reports Autobiographies and biographies Medical case reports; research papers, review articles, and editorials
     • Argumentative
       • A subject or a problem is discussed, often with no obvious solutions but tackled from different angles by comparing and contrasting, and expressing personal opinions.
         • Commercial ads
     • Persuasive
       • Non-fiction writing that aims to convince the reader to agree with the author about an issue; it relies heavily on facts that are used in an argumentative style
         • Advert asking: “Thumbs up who wants our elders to live healthier?”
   • English language writing
     • To mention a disease, its name must be in the International Classification of Diseases.
       • The names of pharmaceutical substances should be written with an initial lower case letter according to the International Nonproprietary Names (INN).
         • Trade names should be written with an initial capital letter.
           • Avoid using synonyms; if necessary, use them at the beginning of the text.
             • Minimize the use of acronyms to replace long and recurring expressions.
               • Each and every noun and adjective of the title should be written in capital letters
                 • A long document may also include a footnote explaining the meaning of a particular term
   • Spanish language writing
     • Is necessary to write interrogation and exclamation marks at the beginning and at the end of the sentence, expression or phrase
       • Only the first word of the title should be capitalized
   • Technical and scientific translation
     • Title - the strictly necessary information indicating: theme of the project, population, place it will be carried out, main objectives and variables.
       • Summary - research question, main objective, design [appropriate for knowledge level, ethical issues, etc.) and the methodology; besides an explanation of the importance of the possible findings of the study.
         • Theoretical Framework / Introduction / Background.
           • Statement of the problem and research question.
             • Justification - argument about the purpose, the relevance of the results and conclusions expected, as well as the feasibility to apply them to short, medium and long term.
               • General and specific objectives
                 • Hypothesis - the provisional or highly probable answer to the question of research summarizing the main elements of the study, the predictor variables and result and providing the basis for testing the statistical weight of the findings.
                   • Timeline, Annexes, References and conclusions.

2. Historical background

   • Highlights the work of the Council of Europe's Modern Languages Project, whose main objective has been to promote interpersonal and social communication, as well as language teaching from a functional point of view in the old continent.
   • Communicative competence
     • Speaker’s ability not only to formulate grammatically correct sentences, but also culturally appropriate
     • Elements that make up the linguistic system
       • The lexicon (or mental dictionary), followed by a computational component of linguistic expressions that distinguishes the phonetic features of the lexical units and determines syntagmatic relationships in its two interpretative levels: phonetic (articulation) and semantic (intention).