2.3 Text

Text refers to any stretch of language that conveys meaning. It is a semantic unit realized, or encoded, in words, phrases, clauses, sentences, or other grammatical units. According to Halliday and Matthiessen (2014), text is "any instance of language, in any medium, that makes sense to someone who knows the language" (p. 3). It can be conceived of as the human experience mediated through language, or, in the words of Halliday and Matthiessen (2014), "a process of making meaning in context" (p. 3).

A text can be oral or written. It can be as short as one word, such as the "STOP" sign on the road or the utterance "ouch" when someone gets hurt, or as long as a book, such as the 786-page volume titled An Introduction to Functional Grammar (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014) or the hour-long sermon pastors usually deliver in church congregations on Sunday mornings.(https://www.daowen.com)

According to Halliday (2002), a text has structure, coherence, function, development, and character at the same time. Each text has a generalized structure with obligatory and optional elements. These elements are determined by the function, or purpose, that the text serves. For example, a narrative text typically contains three obligatory elements (i.e., an orientation that provides the setting for the story, a sequence of events with complication, and a resolution), but can also include optional elements such as synopsis, evaluation and/or coda (Rothery & Stenglin, 1997). A text also has coherence, meaning that it forms a unified whole that is more than the sum of its parts. Moreover, because each text unfolds in a particular context of situation, it has a semantic flow, which is carried forward through a series of rhetorical moves. Finally, each text has the generic features characteristic of a particular way of using language that corresponds with features of a specific context of situation.