Лекции по теоретической грамматике английского языка для студентов

3. Textual Categories 
The textual category is a property characterizing every text, in other words, 
it is a typological feature of a text. Textual categories appear and function only in 
the text as a language unit of the highest rank. It is important to remember that the 
text is never modeled by one textual category but always by a totality of 
categories. It is sometimes regarded as a total of categories.
Today the list of textual categories is open: linguists name different textual 
categories because they approach the text from different angles. Most scholars 
differentiate between 
contensive
and 
structural
categories. However, some 
linguists draw a strict demarcation line between the two while others do not. The 
most commonly identified textual categories include: 
1) 
divisibility
– the text can be divided into parts, chapters and paragraphs 
dealing with specific topics, therefore having some formal and semantic 
independence; 

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2) 
cohesion
– formal connectedness; 
3) 
coherence
– internal connectedness (integrity, according to I. R. 
Galperin); 
4) 
prospection
(flash-forward) – anticipation of future events; 
5) 
retrospection
(flash-back) – return to events in the past; 
(Both prospection and retrospection break the space-time continuum of the 
text.) 
6) 
anthropocentricity
– the Man is the central figure of any text 
independent of its specific theme, message and plot; 
7) 
conceptuality
– any text has a message. Expressing some idea, that is, 
conveying a message is the basis of any creative work; 
8) 
informativity
Prof. I. R. 
Galperin
whose book on the text and its categories is one of the 
most authoritative and often quoted ones identifies three types of information:
- content-factual information – information about facts, events and 
processes taking place in the surrounding world; always explicit and verbalized;
- content-conceptual information conveys to the reader the author’s 
understanding of relations between the phenomena described by means of 
content-factual information, understanding of their cause-effect relations, 
importance in social, economic, political and cultural life of people including 
relations between individuals. This kind of information is deduced from the 
whole literary work and is a creative re-understanding of these relations, facts, 
events and processes; not always explicit; 
- content-implicative information is hidden information that can be 
deduced from content-factual information due to the ability of linguistic units to 
generate associative and connotative meanings and also due to the ability of 
sentences conveying factual information to acquire new meanings. 
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