Text Types, Language Functions and Stylistic Features in Spanish Texts
Text Types and Communicative Functions in Spanish
The text we will try to analyze is an opinion article, editorial or humanistic essay, and is an act of communication addressed to a receptor, with the aim of informing, criticizing and persuading. The atmosphere is characterized by a communicative distance between the reader and the author, and by an affective tone: it is formal and conditional in tone, while at certain moments the writer seeks the complicity of the readers through the expression confidencial. The topic has been established by the author without considering the immediate response of the readers.
Expressive Function
In the text, the expressive function predominates and it intends to express the sentimental, emotional or subjective state of the speaker (intensity, enumerations, exclamations, expressive words, intonation, rhetorical questions, the order of words in the sentence, diminutives and augmentatives, use of the first person).
Appellative Function
The appellative function attempts to draw the interlocutor's attention, prepare them to receive the message and elicit a determined response (for example, immediate verbs such as hear and see, questions, imperatives, second person and persuasive language).
Representative Function
Representative function is specific to its dominant role in human communication: it transmits objective information to the interlocutor (informative language, declarative syntax, denotative vocabulary, use of the indicative mood, use of impersonal forms and a linear syntactic order).
Poetic Function
The poetic function attracts attention to the form of the message itself. It uses a deviation from the normal use of language for expressive purposes, expressing itself through highly figurative and connotative language.
Phatic Function
The phatic function, also called the contact function, seeks to establish, maintain or interrupt communication, verifying that the channel is working and that the listener is paying attention.
Metalinguistic Function
The metalinguistic function refers to the language itself. From a diatopic point of view, the text does not belong to the standard Spanish variety, nor does it allow us to assign it to a specific regional area. From a diastratic point of view, the text belongs to a standard, cultivated level. Its characteristic features are: interjections, absence of phonic and morphosyntactic slang; rigor in expression through the use of complex syntactic structures; precision and clarity in verb tenses; use of sentence chaining with connectors; precise and varied vocabulary; use of technical terms and abstract nouns; and the set of acronyms.
Register and Textual Level
To reach the general use of the language in its formal and cultured register, the text imposes certain features that respond to the distinctive needs of this register. We analyze its characteristics at the textual level. The form of exposition is argumentative: the author organizes the material in an informative way, analyzing and synthesizing, linear or circular. It achieves a high degree of cohesion through the use of temporal, spatial and personal deixis, thanks to markers and connectors.
Objectivity and Subjectivity
Objectivity: editorials, essays and scientific texts use enunciative sentences and the indicative mood, impersonal forms, specifying adjectives, and the third person.
Subjectivity: opinion articles and essays use connotative vocabulary, explanatory adjectives, the first and second person, the subjunctive mood and exclamatory syntax.
Clarity and Precision
Clarity and precision: scientific texts and essays use coordination, parenthetical clauses, enumerations and explanatory connectors. They make use of technical terms and word repetition.
Stylistic Features
Style: essays and opinion articles use rhetorical figures based on word repetition, simile, metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole, personification and antithesis.
Universality: opinion articles and scientific texts use generalizing statements, impersonal present tense, abstract nouns and technical terms.
Communicative clarity: editorials use syntactic simplicity and clarify technical terms.
Public uptake: editorials use hyperbaton, exclamatory phrases, hyperboles, technological terms, foreign loanwords and euphemisms.