Journalistic and Humanistic Textual Characteristics

Journalistic Texts and News Structure

Classification of Journalistic Genres

• Informational: Interview, news, and reportage.
• Opinion: Editorial and article.
• Background.

The Anatomy of News

The news consists of a holder (headline), entry, and body. The holder may be accompanied by an antetitulo and subtitle, and should achieve a conative function through concision and wit. When the news is long, there may be intermediate holders. The entry is a brief summary of the news, often highlighted in bold or italics.

The Inverted Pyramid and Page Hierarchy

The body develops the introduction following an inverted pyramid structure, ordered according to importance. For a journalist, the hierarchy of importance is as follows:

• The 1st page is the most important.
• The last page is second in importance.
• Odd pages are always more important than even pages.

Thus, a notice placed on the 1st page will have the greatest importance. If it appears on the 3rd page, the paper gives it more importance than the 2nd or 4th pages. Furthermore, news placed at the top of a page holds more importance than news placed below.

Journalistic Style and Language

Common features include the use of short phrases and sometimes elliptical verbs. There is a high frequency of acronyms, abbreviations, and foreign words, along with a trend toward metaphors.

Humanistic Texts and Their Features

Defining Humanistic Disciplines

Humanistic texts relate to disciplines concerned with man, including spiritual, social, historical, and cultural aspects. These texts use abstract terms with connotative and ideological weight, maintaining a tendency toward rigor and precise terminology.

Modes of Discourse: Exposure and Argumentation

Exposure involves explaining and developing a theme in an objective manner. Argumentative texts are articulated in an orderly manner around the defense of one or more ideas by providing a number of reasons.

Key Characteristics and Functions

Features include freedom in theme, style, and structure, a didactic nature, and a subjective or literary quality. Brevity offers an original reflection on certain concrete aspects. There is an abundance of brief quotations and exemplification.

The dominant functions include:

• Referential: For providing information.
• Appellate: Seeking an effect on the reader's consciousness in doctrinal texts.
• Metalinguistic: Used when explaining the concepts within the text.
• Expressive: Reflecting a personal vision in essays.

Linguistic Mechanisms

The language is dominated by abstract names created through derivation mechanisms, where abstract nouns are formed from adjective or verbal lexemes. Technicalities, synonyms, abbreviations, acronyms, metaphors, and metonymy are also prevalent features of these texts.