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    What Is A Text: Speech

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    Jurg Carol
    A text is a written or printed work that conveys information without requiring an author. It contains grammatically cohesive sentences but is non-interactive. In contrast, a discourse is an interactive communication between agents that can be conveyed through spoken, written, visual or audio means. The key difference is that a text does not require an agent while an agent is essential to a discourse. Both involve the transmission of information through sentences, but a discourse analyzes the social aspects of the communication between agents while a text focuses only on grammatical and structural elements.

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    What Is A Text: Speech

    Uploaded by

    Jurg Carol
    375 views5 pages
    A text is a written or printed work that conveys information without requiring an author. It contains grammatically cohesive sentences but is non-interactive. In contrast, a discourse is an interactive communication between agents that can be conveyed through spoken, written, visual or audio means. The key difference is that a text does not require an agent while an agent is essential to a discourse. Both involve the transmission of information through sentences, but a discourse analyzes the social aspects of the communication between agents while a text focuses only on grammatical and structural elements.

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    Definition of text and discourse

    Original Title

    What is a Text

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    A text is a written or printed work that conveys information without requiring an author. It contains grammatically cohesive sentences but is non-interactive. In contrast, a discourse is an interactive communication between agents that can be conveyed through spoken, written, visual or audio means. The key difference is that a text does not require an agent while an agent is essential to a discourse. Both involve the transmission of information through sentences, but a discourse analyzes the social aspects of the communication between agents while a text focuses only on grammatical and structural elements.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    375 views5 pages

    What Is A Text: Speech

    Uploaded by

    Jurg Carol
    A text is a written or printed work that conveys information without requiring an author. It contains grammatically cohesive sentences but is non-interactive. In contrast, a discourse is an interactive communication between agents that can be conveyed through spoken, written, visual or audio means. The key difference is that a text does not require an agent while an agent is essential to a discourse. Both involve the transmission of information through sentences, but a discourse analyzes the social aspects of the communication between agents while a text focuses only on grammatical and structural elements.

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    What is a Text

    A text includes some information, specifically in the written form or printed form. Thus, it
    is noteworthy that the agent of a text is not crucial: there may or may not be an agent.
    And the agent has no direct impact of the content to the reader. For example, consider
    the text in a subject textbook, an essay, or a press release where the information is merely
    reported with or without an agent or the speaker. The information present in a text is
    usually non-interactive, or it does not contain an indication of conversational speech.
    Thus, the reader only reads and becomes aware of the facts presents. As defined by the
    Linguistic glossary terms, text is “a sequence of paragraphs that represents an extended
    unit of speech.” Therefore, the grammatical cohesion is a fundamental factor in a text.
    In order to analyze the content of a text, one should be aware of the linguistic and
    grammatical categories of the language, and the information provided according to the
    meaning, grammatical devices used, structure, meaning, etc. Therefore, by analyzing the
    overall structure of the text, one is able to grasp the meaning of the text. Thus, textual
    analysis, in brief, is the analysis of these grammatically cohesive sentences, imparting
    some information.

    However, in literary studies, there are several text types: narrative texts, descriptive
    texts, expository texts, etc. in which discourse can be included as well.
    What is Discourse
    A discourse is necessarily interactive, which means there is always an agent to the
    information in discourse. In simple terms, discourse is often conversational
    communications between people. Therefore, under linguistics and literary theory,
    discourse is defined as “a social event of multi-layered communication in a variety of
    media: verbal, textual, visual and audial, that has an interactive social purpose.”
    Thus, interactive quality is a primary requirement in discourse. In other words, the
    existence of an agent to the information defines what discourse means. Therefore, unlike
    a text, a discourse can have cohesive sentences as well as utterances of the
    communicating agents. In other words, discourse depicts the usage of language in for
    social purposes. This is the basic difference between text and discourse.

    Therefore, to analyze a discourse, one should study the persons or the agents involved in
    the communication (who to whom), the purpose of them (the social purpose), and
    medium used (verbal, written, audio or visual). Thus, to grasp the meaning of discourse,
    one should analyze all these three basic elements in the discourse.
    Similarity Between Text and Discourse
     Both text and discourse usually consist of sentences which communication
    information.

    Difference Between Text and Discourse


    Definition
    Text is usually a written form of communication information, which is a non-interactive
    nature. In contrast, discourse can be from spoken, written, visual and audial form,
    communicating information that is interactive in nature.

    Agent
    The agent is not crucial for the text. However, the agent is crucial, and it is that what
    makes up a discourse. This is the main difference between text and discourse.

    Nature
    Also, the text is non-interactive in nature; on the contrary, discourse is interactive in
    nature.

    Analysis Parts
    In a text, the grammatical cohesion and the structure of sentences are analyzed whereas,
    in discourse, the agents involved in the communication, the social purpose and the
    medium utilized are analyzed to comprehend the meaning of it. This is an important
    difference between text and discourse.

    Medium or Form
    Furthermore, the text is usually in written form whereas discourse can be either in
    written, verbal, visual or audio form.

    Examples
    Examples of texts include press reports, street signs, documents, etc. whereas discourse
    can be dialogues, conversations, interactions in audio-visual programmes, etc, anything
    that depicts the social usage of the language.

    Conclusion
    Text and discourse create varied confusion due to the interchangeable use of these two
    terms in varied contexts. However, these two are distinctive aspects of linguistics and
    communication studies. A text is necessarily non-interactive while discourse is necessarily
    interactive. Therefore, a text does not necessarily indicate an agent whereas the agent is
    a crucial element in a discourse. This is the main difference between text and discourse.

    Reference:
    1. Hardison, Karen P.L. “Text And Discourse.” Enotes.com, Enotes.com, 6 Aug.
    2011, Available here.
    Image Courtesy:
    1. “535803” (CC0) via Pxhere
    2. “@onepercentyello Critical Discourse Analysis – BIG D, little d. [viz notes]” by Giulia
    Forsythe (Public Domain) via Flickr

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