Descriptive Texts: Types, Features and Procedures

Descriptive Texts

Descriptive texts present the characteristics of a person, animal, place, or object. Their function is to represent something so that the reader can picture it, whether it is real or the product of the author's imagination.

Definition and Properties

Descriptive texts are used to describe things, objects, or persons and animals.

Types of Description

• Objective Description

  An objective description seeks to provide an accurate account of its subject, explaining its parts, functions, and purpose. It describes something without expressing whether we like it or not, or whether we feel it is right or wrong.

  Characteristics:

  • It must be precise and exact.
  • It is orderly and presented in a clear, logical manner.
  • It uses language that has no room for ambiguous or different interpretations.

• Subjective or Literary Description

  What characterizes it is that it causes a feeling in the issuer or an impression similar to the one the object produced in us. It elaborates a subjective text that resorts to affective aspects and personal valuations.

Descriptive Procedure

1. Observation: It is perceiving the object from which we are going to speak, going to each one of its sensations.
2. Selection and Ordering: All the information extracted in the previous step is selected, sorting out the most characteristic traits so that the descriptive text can be constructed.
3. Presentation: Only the first descriptive linguistic expression is used, employing verbs in the present or the imperfect past indicative tense. Adjectives are included, and procedures such as comparison or metaphor are often used.

Future Descriptive Optimized Forms

• Prosopography

  Prosopography is the description of a person's physical appearance only.

• Etopeya

  Etopeya is the description of a person's inner character, that is, how the person's inside is, as opposed to appearance.

• Portrait and Self-Portrait

  The portrait is the description of a person, both physically and in personality, while a self-portrait is the examination of one's own inner and outer description.

• Caricature

  A caricature is a description of something or someone that intends to exaggerate and highlight traits with a comical objective.

• Topography

  Topography indicates the description of a place.

Literary Genres

• Lyric

  In the lyric genre, the writer expresses their own feelings.

• Fiction

  In narrative fiction, the genre tells the events that happen to characters.

• Theatre

  The theatrical genre allows events to be presented directly on stage, where the actors embody the characters to convey the argument of the work.