RIASSUNTO ESAME INGLESE 2 PROF ZAGO, Appunti di Lingua Inglese

Scarica RIASSUNTO ESAME INGLESE 2 PROF ZAGO e più Appunti in PDF di Lingua Inglese solo su Docsity! ▪ TOPIC 1 - Beauty contests degrade women ▪ ENGLISH LANGUAGE 1 - Text linguistics COHERENCE AND COESION 2 – Pragmatics PRAGMATICS DEIXIS PRESUPPOSITION AUSTIN’S SPEECH ACT THEROY GRICE’S CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE 3 - Speech, writing and discourse type 4 - Language in newspapers 5 - Language in advertisements 6 - Language in literature: Stylistics FLYING CROOKED BY ROBERT GRAVES ▪ REGISTER, GENRE AND STYLE 1 - Registers, genres, and styles: Fundamental varieties of language 2 - Written registers, genres, and styles 3 - Registers and genres in electronic communication ▪ TRANSLATION 1 - What is translation? 2 - Translation strategies UNTRANSABILITY, FORM AND SENSE – JAKOBSON LITERAL AND FREE TRANSALTION TRANSLATIONESE COMPRENSHIBILITY AND TRANSABILITY 3 - The unit of translation SAUSSURE – SIGN VINAY AND DARBELNT – LEXICOLOGICAL UNIT AND UNIT OF THOUGHT 4 - Translation shifts CATFORD – FORMAL CORRISPONDENCE AND TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE VINAY AND DARBELNET – LITERAL OR DIRECT AND OBLIQUE TRANSLATION 5 - The analysis of meaning REFERENTIAL MEANING AND CONNOTATIVE MEANING 6 - Dynamic equivalence and the receptor of the message EUGENE NIDA – FORMAL AND DYNAMIC EQUIVALENCE 7 - Textual pragmatics and equivalence KOLLER EQUIVALENCE BEAUTY CONTESTS DEGRADE WOMEN: In previous times, men dominated society while women were secondary to them. A woman was considered a man’s possession and her only purpose was to be a mother, a wife, or a lover. She did not have permission to express political or economic opinions because she was considered weak. But women possess “natural abilities” equal to men. A woman can be strong, smart, brave as much as men. We can just think about years of struggle for equality or to the seventy-two-year-long battle for woman's right to vote in the United States by the Suffrage Movement. Or about many protesting Suffragettes were arrested for breaking law, many of them went on hunger strike in prison and to avoid them from becoming ill or dying Parliament introduced the “Cat and Mouse” Act. This meant that hunger-strikers were temporarily released from prison until they recovered – but then they were re-arrested. Or we can just think about Suffragette Emily Wilding Davison who died a tragic death after being trampled on by the king’s racehorse. These are just some of the things women have suffered to get the rights that we have today, but many women, today take it for granted. Women today are degraded to mere objects; they are judged mainly on their physical appearance rather than on any other qualities they may possess. Organizers of beauty contests proudly proclaim that they help promote world peace and the role of women in society. Sadly, those are empty words. Beauty contest are just commercial entertainment. If they are so important, why do the contestants always have to wear swimsuits? This is because the audience, including millions of TV viewers, enjoy seeing beautiful women in sexy clothes. the purpose of many women is to look, to show themselves, to be attractive, and many times woman are so busy to look good and attractive that they forget to show their true essence and their true soul. At the beginning it was not easy, but I tried to organize all my days. I trained every day, I spent a lot of time with my parents, I studied, cooked a lot of dishes, some of them were tasty but some of them were a failure. I discovered a lot of beautiful books; movies and I began a meditation’s course. After my graduation, I’d like to become sign language interpreter because I've been studying sign language since I was little, so I want to realize this dream. Then. I’d like to become a translator, or work for a importing-exporting company. PRAGMATICS If we consider the word lying, we can observe that it has two senses either telling untruths or the opposite of standing/ sitting. PRAGMATICS FOCUSES ON WHAT DETERMINES WHICH SENSE HAVE WORDS, MORE SPECIFICALLY IT STUDIES THE RELATION BETWEEN MEANING IN RELATION TO THE CONTEXT. In fact, pragmatics focuses on the ways in which context contribute to give meaning to words. So, pragmatics helps to understand what people mean when they use language and how we communicate and understand each other. We can identify two principal camps, one involving a narrow view and the other a broad view. - According to the NARROW VIEW, pragmatics is in strict relationship with syntax (set of rules that govern the structure of sentences) and semantics (the study of meaning in languages). But pragmatics studies the way in which context contributes to meaning. - In fact, according to BROAD VIEW pragmatics is a superordinate field. Pragmatics is important because it explains what cannot be explained through the normal ways of linguistics. PRAGMATICS ACROSS LANGUAGES AND CULTURES Each language has its own pragmatic norms and if the pragmatic norms of two languages differ very much, native speakers of these two languages may find it difficult to understand what their interlocutor is really trying to say. If a German native speaker uses the expression "Grüss Gott!" ("Greet God!") as a greeting in English, it would not be understood as an appropriate greeting by speakers of English. Because, ‘Grüß Gott’ is widely used in Southern Germany. Differences and similarities are investigated by a subfield of pragmatics called ‘VARIATIONAL PRAGMATICS. DEIXIS Deixis is integral to the study of pragmatics, it means ‘pointing’ via language. When you notice a strange object and ask, ‘What is that?’, you are using a deictic expression (‘that’) to indicate something in the immediate context. DEIXIS REFERS TO THE WAY IN WHICH SPEAKERS ORIENTATE BOTH THEMSELVES AND THEIR LISTENERS IN CONTEXT DURING A CONVERSATION. There are three deictic categories, these are: personal deixis (I, you, we), spatial deixis (this, that, here, there), and temporal deixis (now, today, yesterday), social deixis. A deictic center is exactly THE POINT WHERE THE UTTERANCE IS MADE OR THE TEXT IS WRITTEN, THE ORIGIN OF A SENTENCE OR A CONVERSATION. In a spoken conversation the deictic center changes constantly. For example, in a sentence such as I am over here now, the speaker, the actual location and the actual time of the utterance are respectively the deictic centers. PRESUPPOSITION Presupposition is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse. A. Mary’s brother bought three horses. B. Mary exists, and she has a brother. So, a presupposition is something that we believe is true without having any proof. It refers to implicit meaning. What is presupposed survives when the sentence is negated (test of constancy under negation). - We are not glad to write this slide: it still contains the same presupposition about the fact that we wrote it. SPEECH ACTS THEORY: Traditionally, semanticists have focused on the truth value of sentences. But the speech act theory introduced by the philosopher Austin, that observed that some declarative sentences seemed not to concern about truth. In fact, he focused on a special class of verbs, performative verbs, that not only presents information, but performs an action as well, and that name the acts that they perform I apologize for the noise. Soo, according to Austin, such acts are not dependent on truth conditions, but instead are dependent on a set of contextual factors, the felicity conditions. The term felicity conditions refer to the conditions that must be in place and the criteria that must be satisfied for a speech act to achieve its purpose. When a speaker says I pronounce you man and wife: this kind of utterance are only validly recognized as a felicitous speech acts if the speaker has the condition to be able to validate the context. So, this sentence could be valid only if it was used by a priest or any other religious leader. According to Austin, speech acts can be analyzed on three levels: 1. Locutionary= the production of a meaningful expression (it is hot here.) 2. Illocutionary= the action inteded by the speaker (open the window.) 3. Perlocutionary= the effect of the expression on the hearer (a person opens the window) For example, in a hot classroom, I might articulate to the student sitting next to the window the words It’s hot in here (locutionary act), intending that they open the window (illocutionary act of request), with the effect that they open the window (perlocutionary act). Would you close the door? Locution Intention The door is open. Illocution / Meaning: Close the door. Perlocution/ effect on the hearer: It could be too noisy therefore I have to close the door. LANGUAGE IN NEWSPAPER In the twenty-first century, news and information are easily available 24 hours a day via television, the Internet, or mobile phones. However, it is still relevant to study the language of newspapers. Because, there are many different types of newspapers. PRIMARILY, NEWSPAPERS DIFFER IN TERMS OF THEIR GEOGRAPHICAL REACH AND THE READERSHIP THEY ADDRESS TO: In fact, we distinguish between regional and national newspapers and between "quality\elite" newspapers and "popular" newspapers. Until recently, in the United Kingdom, the opposition between elite and popular was also reflected in the physical size of the newspaper: popular newspapers were printed in A3 format and were known as "the tabloids", while elite newspapers were printer in A2 format and were known as "the broadsheets". All newspapers are supposed to deal primarily with "news". However, among all the events that happen, every editor make a selection based on an analysis of what will interest the newspaper’s target audience. Usually news are about: negative events; events concerning important people or important events concerning ordinary people. Other genres in newspapers are: SOFT NEWS, news about important issues such as financial problems, racism, schooling ... SPECIFIC NEWS, sport, business OTHERS: letters, advertisements, recipes. A typical newspaper article contains: 1 - HEADLINE: which may consist of a main headline and a sub-headline. Headline has some main functions: it has to attract the attention of potential readers; they indicate the topic of the story. Moreover, headlines are printed in larger characters than the body of the story. But, because of space constraints, grammatical words tend to be omitted, they combine brevity with effectiveness. 2 - ATTRIBUTION: This tells information about the journalist who wrote the piece and indication of time and place. 3 - LEAD: that is a paragraph that provides a summary of the story and that may be distinct from the rest of the article. 4 - MAIN BODY: the report itself. Of course, we have to consider that: - news reports are the result of the work of several different individuals, who are involved at various stages in the production of the newspaper. - Second, in news reports comment and opinion are absent or kept to a minimum. However, they are not at all neutral or objective, but reflect the general ideology of the newspaper. First-person narration is banned because this contributes to the impression that news report are written in a neutral and factual manner. - In news reports, issues and events are presented in narrative mode, as interconnected sequences of action. - In reports, stories are not in chronological order. They are ordered according to recency and perceived importance. THE GUARDIAN AND THE SUN: The main frontpage headlines of four national daily newspapers published in the United Kingdom on Tuesday, 17 July 2007. The four newspapers include two elite publications (the Daily Telegraph and The Guardian), and two popular publications (The Sun and the Daily Mirror). The news is “the diplomatic clash between Britain and Russia over the expulsion of four Russian diplomats after Russia refused to extradite the main suspect in the murder of ex agent Alexander Litvinenko”. To talk about this news, we can observe that: - The Guardian uses a more formal language than The Sun, that uses some informal words as: cops. - Another difference is that The Guardian’s newspaper article is longer than The Sun. - Moreover, The Guardian uses dramatic words to give to the headline a dramatic impact (cold war), this strategy is used to attract public attention. - We can see how the Guardian looks at the affair as a problem between two governments. While, the sun treats the affair as if it were a personal matter between Putin and Brown. LANGUAGE IN ADVERTISEMENTS The innovation and the playfulness that we often find in advertisements does not mean that the purpose of the ad is to entertain, but OBVIOUSLY AN AD THAT MAKES CLEVER USE OF LANGUAGE IS MORE LIKELY TO STAND OUT. Advertisements are texts that have been paid for in order to associate meanings with brands: they have to place the ad where the right people see it. One of the most common words seen in any ad is the pronoun “you” because, very few ads are truly directed at the whole population. An ad can cut out some readers by its form of address in order to be more effective to affirm the sense of recognition in addressing. Often advertisements allude to other texts, from literature, movies, news or even to other advertisements. They can take on almost any register, any variety of language. For examples in Skoda’s advertisement, there is a clear allusion to a mid-1990’s campaign for Body form sanitary towels and the use of specific lexis. Since ads target a specific audience for specific purposes, a lot of importance is given to the space and time where they are placed. Ads try to give us the message at just the time and place it will work. For example, Skoda’s television ads would appear in the evening during programs watched by a young, middle-class, family-oriented audience. Important in advertisements is unexpected language and stylistic choices: - Orthographic: for example, spell out a word the way it sounds and sung. - Morphological: catch attention because of huge adjectives. - Lexical: invent new words through suffixation; (Roomster) - Syntactic: While written English favours the use of complete and complex sentences, Ads tend to have more minor sentences, like conversational speech. - Pragmatic: Nearly all Ads flout Grice’s Conversational Maxims. In the Skoda’s Ad the slogan “Manufacturer of happy drivers” flouts the Maxim of Quality. The implicature is that Skoda can create cars that make drivers happy, but it says something false. 2 - Is flying crooked a good thing or a bad thing in the poem? The title 'Flying Crooked' seems to have negative associations. But from the line 5 things change, with the final 6 lines containing more positive associations. This becomes obvious in the reference to his flying-crooked gift (very end of the poem), where flying-crooked becomes positive thanks to the positive noun gift. In addition, the clause how not to fly (line 6) would seem negative, but when combined with the clause a just sense of it takes on positive associations because a sense of tends to have positive collocates and just, that means 'exact', 'precise', 'due' or 'accurate', is also positive. [semantic deviation]. 3- Why are honest idiocy in line 2 and flying-crooked gift in line 10 foregrounded? Like flying-crooked gift, also honest idiocy changes its associations from negative to positive through a semantic deviation. Idiocy is almost always a negative semantic attribute, but honest, which modifies it, is almost always positive. 4- What, if anything, is odd about here and here in line 7? Here and here contrast with here and there. The expression here and there is usual in terms of frequency. Here and there are adverbs which are deictic, that is, they form a constrasting pair in terms of whether they are close or remote from the speaker. In contrast, the expression here and here is much more unusual and so more foregrounded. The locations here and here are both proximal to the speaker and the unusual choice that Graves makes suggests that the 'speaker' (maybe the poet himself) has the person he is speaking to (maybe the reader) phisically close to him. 5- How is by guess / And God and hope and hopenessless in line 7 – 8 deviants? The preposition by has a list of complements and all lists are examples of grammatical parallelism, but this list is deviant because it is polysyndetic, that is, each of the items is linked to its neighbour by the conjuction and. If we put a series of items together in a list, we are presenting them as being the same as one another, even though they are different. Using the polysyndetic construction emphases the 'differentness' factor, suggesting that the manner or instrumentality of the butterfly's flight changes continuously. Another way in which the list is unusual is that it consists of two pairs of apparently constrasting nouns and this makes us discover the parallelism function of promoting the idea of opposing meanings. This is obvious enough for hope and hopenessless, while guess and God would not seem to be connected at all. However, the Christian God in the cultural tradition to which Graves belonged is all-knowing, and so would never need to guess. 6- Is the poem just about butterflies? If not, what else it is about, and why? The poem is explicitly about the flight of a single butterfly and butterflies in general, but it seems to be implicitly about people too. If so, we need an explanation for how that idea gets into the poem, and also a characterization of exactly how the butterfly's flight is relevant to the human condition. The poem is about people because... 1. As readers we expect poems to have human relevance, so we are likely to want to interpret this poem as relevant to the human condition, even though the only humans in the poem are the 'I- narrator' and possibly the reader. 2. The pronouns used to refer to the butterfly are human, so the poet anthropomorphizes the butterfly (in lines 2, 7 and 10 the poet use his and he, rather than its and it). 3. An explicit comparison is made between the butterfly and the human speaker in lines 5-6, where we are told that [ the butterfly ] has – who knows so well as I? - / A just sense of how not to fly. The retorical question makes it clear that the poet, like the butterfly, somehow possesses the Janus- faced, positive and negative at the same time, gift or flying crooked. So an interpretation of the poem meaning could be that human behaviour is apparently erratic, like that of the butterfly, and is both negative and at the same time positive. 7- In what ways could the linguistic form of the poem be said to be iconic of its content? This poem does not seem to have much in the way of onomatopoeia, which is the most obvious kind of linguistic iconicity, but it does look as if the grammar of the poem enacts the idea of flying crooked by 'talking crooked'. In fact, the poem is full of grammatical delays that are iconic and enact the butterfly's crooked flight. For example, the here and here phrase can be seen as an example of flying crooked, as the butterfly's flight does not seem to get it very far from where it starts. WHAT IS TRANSLATION? TRANSLATION IS THE ACT OF TRANSFERRING THE LINGUISTIC ENTITIES FROM ONE LANGUAGE INTO ANOTHER LANGUAGE. MORE SPECIFICALLY, A TEXT CAN BE TRANSLATE FROM THE SOURCE LANGUAGE INTO THE TARGET LANGUAGE. If we look on a dictionary, we find two definitions of translation: 1. The first of these see the translation as a process and focus on the source text (ST). 2. The second see the translation as a product and focus on the target text (TT). The potential tasks covered by translators are vast and complex. In fact, a translation is the compromise between respecting the source text and the need to make it comprehensible in the language you are transforming to, but sometimes it’s not easy for a translator. For example, in Portuguese, the word “saudade” is very difficult to translate because it is very specific to Portuguese culture. It is when someone you love is absent, and you get this sense of profound sadness. So, it is not easy to translate a word that does not exist in most languages. (CULTURAL UNTRANSABILITY) In English you can say “my friend is coming over”, in English is not necessary specify the gender of friend but in French that is impossible. You have specified the gender of friend. ROMAN JAKOBSON MAKES A DISTINCTION BETWEEN THREE TYPES OF WRITTEN TRANSLATION: 1. INTRALINGUAL: Translation of the same language, which can involve rewording (riformulazione) or paraphrase. Examples of intralingual translation: lift – elevator \ \ tube – subway. It depends on varieties of English. 2. INTERLINGUAL: translation from one language to another. IS CONSIDERED ‘TRANSLATION PROPER’ BY JAKOBSON. Examples of interlingual translation: sunglasses - sonnenbrille 3. INTERSEMIOTIC: transpositions between verbal and non-verbal. These are issues which became central to research in ‘Translation Studies’. TRANSLATION SHIFTS Of course, differences in translation are typical. The small linguistic changes that occur between ST and TT are called translation shifts. The term ‘translation shift’ was first used by John Catford, which he states that A ‘TRANSLATION SHIFT’ IS A DEPARTURE FROM FORMAL EQUIVALENCE IN THE PROCESS OF GOING FROM THE SL TO THE TL. On some international trains in Europe there used to be a multilingual warning notice displayed next to the windows, we can hear the sentence Do not lean out of the window in different languages, but it change in every languages. 1 - “Nicht hinauslehnen, Doich “German use a negative infinitive construction (‘not to lean outside’). 3 - “È pericoloso sporgersi” Italians use a statement (‘[it] is dangerous to lean out’). 4 - “Do not lean out of the window” The English is the only one to actually mention the window, and they use a negative imperative. In all translations, the pragmatic function is the same: that of warning/these are all correct translation of the concept of warning. However, on a formal and textual level, there are some differences. Saussure proposed a theory of language which assumes that we have a perfect and complete template (modello) of our language in our head, and he referred to this template as LANGUE. LANGUE is our innate knowledge of the system correspondences between sound and meaning of our language. While, PAROLE refers to the way in which we actually use language. CATFORD, harking back to (rifacendosi alla) Saussure distinction between ‘langue’ and parole’, distinguishes formal correspondence from textual equivalence: 1- FORMAL CORRESPONDENCE where the translation corresponds to the form or maintain the same form. For example, the noun ‘fenêtre’ occupies a similar place in English translation of the noun ‘window’. Tree – àrbol 2- TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE two sentences may be equivalent, but the form can change. For example, the expression ‘golden daffodils’ in Wordsworth’s poem must be translated in Italian as ‘narcisi dorati’. This translation conveys Wordsworth’s idea that daffodils are as precious as gold, but it does not preserve the form (the form is lost because the line does not end with ‘daffodils’). VINAY AND DARBELNET IDENTIFY TWO PROCEDURES OF TRANSLATING: LITERAL OR DIRECT TRANSLATION occurs when THERE IS AN EXACT STRUCTURAL, LEXICAL, AND EVEN MORPHOLOGICAL EQUIVALENCE BETWEEN TWO LANGUAGES. According to Vinay and Darbelnet, this is only possible when the two languages are very close two each other. The literal translation procedures are: Borrowing: one language borrows an expression form another language. sandwich Calque: is a word translated literally word for word into another language skyscraper – grattacielo - OBLIQUE TRANSLATION occurs when word for word translation is impossible. We have four types of oblique translation procedures: Transposition: replacing one-word class with another without changing the meaning of the message After he comes back – dopo il suo ritorno Modulation: is a variation of the form of the message It is not difficult to make – è facile da fare Adaptation: it involves changing the cultural reference when a situation in the source culture does not exist in the target culture. Adaptation is used in those cases where the type of situation being referred to by the SL message is unknown in the TL culture. Sobremesa: The moment after eating a meal when the food is gone but the conversation is still flowing at the table. THE ANALYSIS OF MEANING In the early 1960s the American Eugene Nida, co-ordinated the translation of the Bible from English into a variety of African and South American languages, some of which had no written tradition. For Nida, analysis of meaning was a major problem because his inexperienced translators, some of them non-native speakers of English, were sometimes confused by the complexity and ambiguities of the ST. Meaning plays an important role in translation. It is closely influenced by the grammars, context, situation and society culture. Nida and Taber classify meaning into two classes, referential meaning, and connotative meaning. 1 REFERENTIAL MEANING A set of definitions that people has about this word. For example, the word "spirit" has two senses, including liquor, and ghost. The correct task of the translator is determined the meaning by analyzing the whole sentence or the context. 2 CONNOTATIVE MEANING The connotative meaning of a word includes the feelings and ideas that people may connect with that word. For example, consider the words "group," "clique" and "club." All three have basically the same denotative meaning: a set of more than one person. Each of these words has a different connotative meaning, however. • "Group" has a neutral connotation because it simply describes a number of people. It does not inspire either positive or negative feelings. • "Clique," also means a group of people, but it carries a negative connotation. This is because "clique" is typically used in circumstances where the group is known for excluding others. • Likewise, "club" also refers to a group of people, but this word has a more positive connotation because a club is a collection of people that voluntarily come together for a shared passion or purpose. TEXTUAL AND PRAGMATICS EQUIVALENCE Werner Koller gave the answer to the question “What are the preconditions that we must meet on a text to be classified as a translation proper?” Koller proposes a definition that says: that exist a relationship between the Target and the Source Language which he calls Translational or equivalence relation. In order to explain the notion of equivalence, Koller takes in consideration the definition given by Saussure of LANGUE and PAROLE. (La langue is the whole system of language that makes speech possible. Parole is the concrete use of the language) Koller affirms that a translation could be proper classified as translation proper when it provoke in target language public the same effect tried by source language public. According to Koller equivalence is a process influenced by a variety of conflicts between Target and source language which might be linguistic, textual and extratextual but could be also conflicts about the historical-cultural conditions (double linkage). He proposes a hierarchy of five types of equivalence according to the communicative situation: 1)Formal Equivalence the rare case in which SL/TL signifiers happen to have same orthography or phonology: café French /Italian. 2)Referential Equivalence, when SL /TL words refer to exactly same thing in real world. But it’s not the right choice for the translation, because if we consider the Arabic culture the translation of "sexy" is offensive. So we need to choose the next level of equivalence because some concepts are culturally specific. 3)Connotative Equivalence For the Arabic culture is better because we try to translate sexy as attractiveness, but Is not sufficient because in the Arabic culture even this translation would seem inappropriate because of the sexual referring, and our communicative purpose is not this, so we have to pass in the next level of equivalence 4)Text normative- equivalence Is the right choice in this case, because with this level we succeed in explaining our communicative purpose with an adaptation to the Arabic Culture. With this type of equivalence, we give at the Word sexy the meaning of feminine attractiveness without sexual ambiguations. 5)Dynamic equivalence: Is the full pragmatical equivalence REGISTER, GENRE AND STYLE If we think about all the different kinds of texts that we encounter over the course of a normal day, we can notice that exist different types of text (spoken or written). For example, a conversation with a housemate is different from a radio announcer. Or a conversation with friends, is different form a conversation with a teacher. We can talk about variability because people use different linguistic forms on different occasions, and different speaker of a language will say the same thing in different ways. Speaker of a language make choices in pronunciation, morphology, word choice, the relationship between speaker and hearer, the context and the social characteristics of the speaker. We use the terms register, genre, and style to refer to three different perspectives on text varieties. - Register perspective: In linguistics, the register is the way in which a speaker use language differently in different circumstances. We of course behave very differently chatting with a friend than we would at a formal dinner party or during a job interview. The register perspective combines an analysis of linguistics characteristics with analysis of the situation. - Genre perspective: it’s similar to the register perspective but, usually, when it comes to analysing a text, the genre perspective, takes the whole text into consideration, while the register perspective can consider any kind of text or only excerpts of a text (ex. the conventional way in which a letter begins and ends). - Style perspective: similar to the register perspective, but style is generally based on aesthetic preferences not functionally motivated by the situational context and it can analyze also a text excerpt. Genre, register, and style are different approaches for analyzing text varieties, they’re not different kinds of texts or different varieties. In fact, a text can be analyzed from register, genre, and style perspectives. WHAT IS A TEXT? We use the term text to refer the natural language used for communication, whether it is realized in speech or writing. We make a distinction between a complete text and a text excerpt. A complete text: is an instance of extended discourse that has a clear start and finish, such an article. While, a text excerpt is a segment of discourse from a larger complete text. We can consider texts at a different level of generality. A chapter of a book might be considered as a complete text, but the entire book might also be considered as a complete text. So, the boundaries of a complete text are not always clear-cut, especially in speech. We can distinguish between dialect and variety. 1. The term dialect is used to refer to the way of talking — the slang, the accent (pronunciation), people who live in different geographic regions— used by a group of people. (Geographical dialects, social dialects, belonging to different social classes) 2. The general term variety is used for a category of texts that share some social or situational characteristic. For example, a national variety of English (British English, Australian English, Indian English, etc.). REGISTER VERSUS DIALECTS: Dialect differences are conventional because they express a person’s identity within a social group. Linguistic differences among register are actually more extensive than linguistic differences among dialects. When speakers switch between registers, they are using language in relation to the context. In contrast, dialect differences are conventional, because it express a person’s identity. Ex. the use of don’t with a third person singular subject is typical in working-class conversation. REGISTER ANALYSIS: The authors believes that registers can be used to analyze and describe all text varieties of any type because they are more specialized. Registers are described for their linguistic features (lexical and grammatical characteristics), but their situational contexts are also important (if they are written or spoken, if they are interactive or what their communicative purpose is) and the functional relationships between the first two components (formal, informal). We can make a simple example of the register analysis process considering face-to-face conversation. 1. Analyze the characteristics of the conversation. Face-to-face conversation requires direct interaction between at least two people who are together in the same place at the same time. Both participants must speak. It is generally appropriated for participants to discuss about events, thoughts and opinions related to their personal lives or something in the immediate context. 2. Describe the typical linguistic features of conversation. Three linguistic features more common in conversation: first person pronouns (I, we); second person pronouns (you); questions. 3. Interpret the relationship between situational characteristics and pervasive linguistic features in functional terms. The characteristics of any individual register become much more apparent when it is compared to other registers. • both typically convey personal feelings, interest and other. The differences are: • conversation is spoken, while e-mail is written and sent electronically • e-mail is also slower than conversation • e-mail has the potential to be more carefully planned, revised and edited • in a normal face-to-face conversation, both time and space are directly shared, so the speaker can use “deictic” expressions such as “right now” and “over there”. While, we can receive an email today, but answered to it tomorrow. But, in some cases, if both writer and reader are on-line at the same time, messages can be exchanged in rapid succession. • e-mail enables direct interaction with people in almost any part of the world VARIATION IN ADDRESSEE AND PURPOSE IN E-MAIL MESSAGES It’s possible to distinguish among different types of individual e-mail messages, we classified all e-mail messages into three sub- categories: • E-mails from friends and family or non-professional topics (tend to be much shorter than e-mails on professional topics) • E-mails from colleagues on professional topics • E-mails from strangers on professional topics (tend to be the longest, because the writers need to introduce themselves, state the reason for writing, provide any necessary background, and frame the whole discussion in a polite manner; tend to be more like standard written documents; attributive adjectives and nominalization are common) • E-mails between friends and family on social topics (tend to be more similar to conversation in their linguistic characteristics, activity verbs and time/place adverbs) GENRE MARKERS For opening and closing messages there is a variation in the use of the genre markers, conventions depending on the role relation between the sender and the receiver. E-mails to friends and family begin with a simple greeting (such as “Hi” + first name, or fist name only), other e-mails are without greeting. Professional e-mail messages to strangers almost always identify the recipient in the salutation (using Title + last name, for example “Dr. Biber”), these e-mails have an additional reflection of the formality and distance between writer and receiver: the use of the salutation “Dear” (Dear + title + last name). E-FORUM POSTINGS Forums are websites where users post messages about a certain topic. The posts are all available for public and any participant can respond. Forums are designed to be a place where people with similar interest (usually called “the community”) can discuss about that interest. They are a new way to discussing something, made possible by computer technology, forum do not have a leader but there’s usually an admin who make sure that discussions remain on topic and civil. Administrators have the power to deny access to anyone who does not follow the rules of the forum. For example, Apple’s handheld device was set up to discuss issues related to the iPhone, the website has a “user discussion” section where you can participate about various products and topics, find solutions to help you resolve issues, ask questions, get tips and advice, and more. After a free registration process, anyone can post a message on the forum, it has 5 status level, depending on how often another user has rated a poster’s answers as helpful SITUATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF E-FORUM POSTINGS Posting to a forum are similar to e-mail in that they are written, senders can take as long as they want for planning and revising their messages before they post them. But the postings present some interesting differences from e-mail: • In e-forum postings information about each person and their place in the “community” is visible to all participants • In e-forum postings there’s also information about the number of postings the user has made to the forum, the country the user is in, when the user first registered, information about the equipment they are using and the user’s level rating. • An individual post message can be answered by one or more other individuals and can be read by everyone who looks in the website, so is more like a multiple conversation, it can’t be personal • In the e-forum, responses usually come quickly and often the participants are online at the same time LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF E-FORUM POSTINGS • A first difference from an e-mail is the number of words per message, the e-forum postings are shorter than emails. • They tend to be focused on a specific problem and they are quickly than emails. • e-forum postings follow the traditional rules for grammar and punctuation (is occasionally used in non-standard ways to express feelings, also to create an emoticon), there is also some ellipsis, particularly skipping subject pronouns • E-forum postings have short clauses, higher frequency of verbs, adverbs, slightly fewer nouns and adjectives and almost the same frequency of pronouns, third person TEXT MESSAGES Also called SMS, short messaging services, are written messages sent electronically to the recipient’s cell phone from other cell phones, it is now also possible to send them from computers. Text messages have some situational differences from the other e-registers; the messages were sent from one individual to another, all of whom had some personal relationship. • Text messages are expected to be interactive, much more immediately so than e-mail • A disadvantage of texting is not knowing for sure if the message was received if they get no response • Texting is a highly interactive form of communication, closer to conversation • Like e-mail and e-forum postings, text messages are in the electronic medium and are written, they have the possibility of being planned and edited by the writer • Length can be constrained by the cost There are a variety of communicative purposes for text messages: • Social organizing: looking for someone to get together with • Staying connected while on the move or to inform someone about current situation • Information sharing