Narrative and Descriptive Language Techniques

Language in the Narrative

Lexical Features: The characteristic features of the narrative include a predominance of verbs. These can represent movement, language, and morphological thought.

Morphological Features: Narratives are predominantly written in past tense verbs, including both the perfect and imperfect. These are often used to bring historical past actions into the present context.

Syntactic Features:

• Narrative Styles: The behavior of characters is presented through direct speech (from the characters themselves) or indirect speech (through the predominance of narrated complements).
• Sentence Structure: Use of statements and circumstantial modes.
• Location and Time: There is an abundance of adverbial subordinate clauses of time, rather than cause and purpose.

Textual Characteristics: The most distinctive feature of narration is the use of discourse markers. These most commonly refer to the time frame, such as "when" and "then".

The Art of Description

The Issuer's Point of View

• Scientific or Objective Description: This reflects reality as it is. It employs denotative and precise language, typical of scientific treatises or explanatory brochures.
• Subjective or Literary Description: This has an aesthetic purpose where poetic language dominates. The sender expresses opinions and emotions regarding what is written. This viewpoint can be static (approached from a single position) or dynamic (if the issuer's position varies).

The Language of Description

Lexical Features:

• Predominance of noun phrases that include the use of adjacent adjectives, mentioned in both objective and subjective explanatory descriptions.
• The use of status verbs.
• Presence of adverbial phrases, specifically those of time, place, and manner.

Morphological Features: Description is characterized by the use of verbs in the indicative mood.

Syntactic Features: There is a predominance of simple sentences. Sentences in descriptions are generally simple, declarative, and attributional.

Textual Features: An important textual feature, especially in literature, is the use of literary figures such as metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole, simile, and personification.