What is a descriptive text and how is it made? Explanation and examples of descriptive text, structure and characteristics.
What is descriptive text?
Descriptive text is one in which the author, through words, paints an image of an object, person, animal or place, highlighting its characteristics and qualities to offer a detailed representation. It can have various purposes:
- informative : to make someone aware of something;
- persuasive : to induce the recipient to evaluate the described object positively or negatively (in advertising texts they omit a lot of information regarding the object, focusing attention only on the aspects that can influence the reader and that can induce him to evaluate the thing described in one way rather than another);
- expressive : conveying emotions through a particular use of language that frequently uses figurative expressions and comparisons.
Descriptive text: features
Descriptive text is used in all those textual forms in which there is a need, precisely, to describe something: technical treatises, scientific brochures, guides, descriptive sequences of literary works.
The description can be made according to two different criteria :
- objective (impersonal): the author does not express personal opinions or impressions, but simply presents a thing (or a person, or an animal) through a series of objective data, without any emotional participation;
- subjective (personal): the author presents the object of the description by depicting it as he sees and feels it, and then filtering it through his own opinions and emotions, to arouse similar emotions in the recipient.
Descriptive text: structure
As regards the structure of the descriptive text , we have three different “ protagonists ”:
- referent (object of the description);
- parts (elements of the referent); qualities (particular aspects of the referent).
As for the language , we have:
- verb tenses (present and imperfect);
- short sentences;
- spatial indicators;
- richness and precision of terms;
- decisive presence of adjectives;
- use of figurative language and rhetorical figures.
Descriptive techniques
Descriptive techniques establish the way in which the words of the language are organised to give body to the description , that is, to reproduce the object described.
- Selection criteria :
– relegate to the end or omit the name of the referent;
– list only some qualities or parts of the referent;
– reduce or omit the qualities of the referent;
– reduce or omit the list of parts of the object. - Arrangement criterion , from general to particular or spatial type:
– from outside to inside;
– from top to bottom;
– from central point of view to surrounding elements;
– from foreground to background;
– from left to right or vice versa;
– from east to west etc. - Sensory criterion : the description uses different sense organs.
- Point of view criterion : fixed point of view or from different angles.
- Comparative criterion : comparisons or contrasts.
- Variations : object to be described, recipient and purpose.
The expository text
Different from the descriptive text, but equally connected to it, is the expository text . This type of text is nothing more than a text in which the speaker or writer provides his interlocutors with information, data and news to increase their knowledge on a certain topic .
It is mainly used to give substance to encyclopedic entries, school texts, scientific reports, essays, press releases, signs, banners, chronicles, summaries, reports, minutes, objective stories. The purpose is to transmit information in a way that:
- clear ;
- coherent ;
- complete .
Descriptive techniques
The description in the expository text is always objective , the structure rigid.
The descriptive techniques used are:
- information organization criteria;
- chronological order;
- enumeration;
- causal succession;
- comparison;
- definition.
As regards the use of the language , we have:
- simple syntactic structures;
- specialized vocabulary;
- verb tenses: present indicative;
- division into paragraphs;
- photographs, drawings, maps, sketches and graphs;
- variations:
- lexicon: specialized or general;
- scope;
- communicative situation: place where it is published (school textbook, scientific essay, encyclopedia, newspaper) and recipient (student, curious, specialist).
