Published on the living handbook of narratology (http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.

de)

Text Types
Matthias Aumüller
Created: 6. March 2014 Revised: 6. March 2014

1 Definition
The notion of text type is an abstract category designed to characterize the main
structure of a particular text or one of its parts according to its dominant properties.
It is intended to integrate common features of historically varying genres (novella,
novel, short story, etc.) and thus to reduce the complexity of the many overlapping
kinds of texts to distinct textual phenomena. In virtue of narratology’s traditional
focus on time, these phenomena are semantic properties that constitute the
temporal character of the text (passage). Thus, the text type ‘narrative’ is defined
by the property ‘change of state’ of concrete objects and the text type ‘description’,
accordingly, by the property ‘is about states’ of concrete objects. The text type
‘argument’ is defined by logical-semantic relations between abstract objects instead
of temporal-semantic properties. There are many other typologies of text types,
often including more types. But for the sake of consistency, the following account
will be restricted to these three. One requirement of the notion is that the various
text types be mutually exclusive.

The term ‘modes (or types) of discourse’, sometimes used synonymously with ‘text
type’, could be restricted to the characterization of texts according to pragmatic
properties (e.g. the speaker’s purpose). Thus any text may be used to persuade
somebody. Its mode of discourse is then persuasive, even though the text type
being used may vary (Virtanen 1992). The most appropriate text type in this case
(or the text type most often used in connection with the purpose to persuade) may
be the text type ‘argument’. But it need not be. The persuasive mode of discourse
can be instantiated by any text type, depending on pragmatic concerns. The notion
‘mode of discourse’ is thus context-sensitive; that of ‘text type’ is not.

Another category that is closely related to the notion of text type is ‘genre’.
However, text type and genre should be kept strictly apart from each other as well.
Unlike the numerous historically generated subclasses of genre (such as novel,
sonnet, recipe, homepage) that have evolved by chance, typologies of text type
include a limited number of different items and aim at a complete set of all possible
types that can make up any text. Moreover, in contrast to genre, whose members
are, by definition, entire texts, single text types mainly refer to parts of texts
depending on whether the passage exhibits the semantic profile in question or not.
As a rule, the definition of text types is based on text-internal data whereas
definitions of (non-literary) genres follow various text-external and text-internal
criteria alike (consider the letter and its many subclasses).

One important consequence that follows from this definition is that narrative as a
genre is distinguished from the text type ‘narrative’. The text type ‘narrative’
derives from the prevailing quality of texts considered to be prototypical for the
genre narrative or fiction, members of which are often not pure narratives in the
sense of text type. While any text that is called, say, a novel belongs to the genre
narrative, probably no novel is contains only the text type ‘narrative’. Usually,
novels exhibit all text types. However, any experimental literary text that is called a
novel belongs to the genre narrative, even if it is mainly characterized by the text
type ‘description’. The problem of equivocation (one term denoting different
notions) occurs in every case. This can be avoided when another term is available:
thus the term ‘ekphrasis’ denotes a descriptive genre whereas ‘description’ denotes
the text type usually dominating ekphrasis. Yet ‘description’ is by no means
restricted to this latter use, and the term ‘ekphrasis’ mainly refers to literary
descriptions depicting pieces of visual art (Henkel 1997; Klarer 2005).

2 Explication
There are many varying classifications and typologies, each including different types
(Georgakopoulou 2005). The text types ‘description’ and ‘narrative’, though, seem
to be part of almost all typologies (except for Fludernik 2000; see below, § 3.2). For
example, in addition to those mentioned in the definition above, exposition and
instruction are discussed as text types by Werlich (1976), van Dijk (1980) adds
scientific inquiries to the list of text types, and de Beaugrande and Dressler (1981)
include didactic texts. Sometimes, the notion of text type is meant to characterize
entire texts, sometimes not; some authors focus on semantic features, others on
pragmatic features. Heinemann’s (2000b) survey of the notion of text type in
linguistics shows that the linguistic typologies of texts follow the application of
different criteria: grammatical properties of texts, semantic properties of texts,
situational context, function, etc. This practice has brought about a huge variety of
heterogeneous concepts. There is no agreement on which notion should satisfy
which criteria. And, what is more, even the use of particular terms is not regular.
Thus linguists often use our term in the sense of what above was called a genre. For
an extremely fine-grained classification with hundreds of genres, termed “text
types,” see Görlach (2004: 23–88).
Linguistic research often aims at a classificatory system of its categories. An
exception is Virtanen’s (1992, 2010) two-fold model of discourse types and text
types, conceiving of types as functional categories. The definition above indicates
that text types in the sense suggested here are not classifying but functional or
comparative concepts, too (for this distinction, see Carnap 1950: 8; Strube 1993:
59–65). Classifying concepts are applied according to “either–or” decisions (a
proposition is either true or not true); the application of a comparative concept, by
contrast, depends on to what extent it is appropriate. Most typologies disregard the
difference between classifying and comparative concepts. This leads to the
construction of hierarchies of types and subtypes that correspond to each other in
the manner of species and subspecies.

The notion of genre is a classifying concept: either the text t belongs to the genre G
or not. In this vein, the notion of text type classifies short stretches of text
according to the temporal meaning of the predicate used in the passage. However, if
applied to a text passage exceeding the scope of a simple clause, the notion of text
type is a comparative concept because it is meant to characterize the temporal-
semantic profile of a text passage according to its dominant temporal-semantic
properties. The attribute ‘dominant’ means that in every text there are other
temporal-semantic properties of lesser intensity than the dominant property. Thus a
text (or passage) is not either descriptive or not but more or less descriptive,
depending on the extent to which it exhibits descriptive markers (e.g. verbs that
refer to states). A text is of a particular text type to the extent it displays those
properties that determine this text type.

The underlying reason for this conceptual ambiguity is that text types are defined
with regard to simple clauses that prototypically exhibit the respective properties
supposed to dominate the entire text. In the reality of texts, however, the various
properties that determine the different text types can be instantiated even by a
mere sentence. The difficulty arises because the notion of text type, meant to
characterize aspects on the level of texts, is defined in terms that are derived from
the level of sentences.

As mentioned above, the comparative concept of text type must be distinguished

from the classifying notion of genre. While genres single out entire texts according
to heterogeneous features (e.g. formal features in the case of sonnets and
paratextual information in the case of homepages), text types try to capture
semantic relations between textual surface structures (of items of discours) and
content structures (of items of histoire). In this sense, the division of text types
follows a semantic criterion. Therefore, single text types are to be distinguished
from each other by identifying not only what kind of linguistic device is used—event
verbs or static verbs (for a more fine-grained verb classification, see Vendler 1957
)—but also by what a text is about: time-bound events, states, or timeless universals
(abstract objects, relations, etc.). The reason is that words are not always used
according to their primary meaning. For example, a particular text passage may
predominantly consist of static verbs that refer to states only prima facie but
indirectly or figuratively express a change of state. As a consequence, the notion of
text type has another component that has not been mentioned so far. It depends not
only on the extent to which a text is characterized by a particular text type
according to the number of words determining this text type, but also on the degree
to which these words express their direct meaning. For example, a text is more
descriptive the more its meaning corresponds to the direct meaning of its static
verbs; conversely, the extent to which a text is descriptive curtails the function of
static verbs to indicate a change of state. This holds for elliptic contexts, for
example, where a description using static verbs refers to a change of state without
directly naming it. Take the static verb ‘to stand’: this verb refers to a state, but if it
is used in the context of, say, a murder (‘after stabbing her victim, the murderer
raised her head. Her daughter stood in the door’), the state of standing in the door
functions as (part of) an event. (Even the murder could be expressed by static
verbs.) Another example is the iterative use of event verbs (discours component)
that makes a passage descriptive from the point of histoire.

Text types are thus determined quantitatively as well as qualitatively. First, all
texts, not only narratives, usually do not deal with only one kind of object. Even a
single sentence may contain lexical items with narrative as well as descriptive
meanings. Second, these linguistic devices may not always directly correspond to
the object they actually refer to in a given context, but may have an additional
meaning that is sometimes even opposed to its direct meaning with regard to its
temporal-semantic features. For this reason, text types supervene on texts, and this
is why the ascription of text types to texts is seldom unambiguous. Text types are
not only bottom-up abstractions of texts but also top-down structures that have an
impact on the meaning of the text, mainly with regard to the temporal
characteristics of its contents/meaning in relation to the lexical devices. Thus
narrative is a type of text that predominantly represents events featuring event
verbs; description is a type of text that predominantly represents states (of objects)
featuring static verbs; and argument is a type of text that predominantly represents
omnitemporal and logical relations (primarily between abstract objects such as
concepts), i.e. universal propositions concerning objects outside time. These three
text types do not cover all forms of texts, however since, for a starter, they may be
ascribed to assertive sentences. Features of other text levels (e.g. grammatical
mode or dialogue) are not encompassed by this typology. Among others, explanation
is one more candidate for text type (Herman 2008) as it focuses on the causal
characteristics of the represented events. No system of text types has been
generally accepted so far.

Text types makes it possible to link textual cues to interpretive ascriptions. Thus
they may help to answer questions as to how events are represented in a particular
passage: by naming the event directly or by naming it indirectly through the
depiction of related states that only hint at the event. Interpretation sometimes
benefits from the disadvantage of ambiguity. Thus the two components that
determine a text type—the level of conventionalized meaning according to the
dictionary and the level of meaning actualized in a given text—can correspond just
as they may be inconsistent with each other. Other questions with a wider
interpretive focus might bear on why certain passages of a text are composed
narratively but others descriptively and what this means for different interpretive
purposes such as the work’s aesthetic form or the reception of the text.

3 History of the Concept

The present account primarily relies on research in literary studies and narratology.
As a linguistic notion, text types are rooted in the development of text linguistics
starting in the 1960s. The preferred objects of text linguistics are functional texts,
to the effect that literary texts are often excluded from linguistic research. (For the
wide range of competing concepts in linguistics, see Heinemann 2000a, 2000b, and
Schlüter 2001: 67–144; for an overview focusing on literary studies, see Dammann
2000). While the term “text type” came in the wake of this linguistic tradition, the
notion is much older. It existed under the disguise of terms found in various
languages and was not terminologically differentiated.

3.1 Predecessors and Related Concepts

The first differentiation of notions that share features with the modern concepts of
genre and text type can be found in Plato and Aristotle. Plato divides what he calls
diegesis into three kinds (Republic, III, 392c ff.). A text of the first kind is directly
ascribed to the author, a text of the second kind to a character, and a text of the
third kind is mixed (Halliwell → Diegesis – Mimesis [1]). The underlying criterion of
the typology is the answer to the question “Who speaks?” The notions are obviously
classifiers and can be linked to genres such as drama. However, the third
kind—“mixed”—is different from the other two in that it is a hybrid, containing the
features of both. Were this conception pursued further, the first two kinds would
function within the third kind as text types in our sense.

Plato’s (and Aristotle’s) legacy is a long and complicated one (see Trappen 2001). An
influential reformulation of the division of literary genres is suggested by Goethe (
[1819] 1994
: 206): “There are only three natural forms of poetry: The clearly telling, the
enthusiastically excited, and the personally acting: Epic, Lyric, and Drama. These
three modes can work together or separately.” His understanding of the “three
natural forms of poetry” is similar to that of text types in several aspects.

Referring to a number of literary genres (termed “Dichtarten”) such as drama,

elegy, novel, parody, and satire, Goethe assumes that all genres can be reduced to
those three forms which he conceives of as a kind of deep structures (“wesentliche
Formen”) that may be observed in every literary work, independently of its genre.
Every single work is characterized by a particular compound of the three forms. In
the present context it is important to note that Goethe does not attach the three
forms to groups of texts, thereby dismissing the idea of classifying texts. Instead, he
suggests that the forms usually occur together (although he refers to Homer’s epics
as examples of pure Epic).

As in the case of text types, Goethe’s notions are not meant to classify texts but to
characterize the special shape of individual texts. Like text types, Epic, Lyric, and
Drama are considered to be historically stable notions that refer to gradual
properties. Furthermore, these terms are apparently derived from the surface
structures of texts, i.e. from historically varying genres that Goethe considered
paradigmatic (such as Homer’s epics). At the same time, they are supposed to refer
to deep structures that can be observed in texts of all genres. However, while
Goethe considers only works of literary art, text types are neutral to the question of
literariness.

Goethe’s conception remained influential up to the middle of the 20th century.

Staiger (1946) develops a threefold typology of literary modes on the basis of
Goethe’s original conception. The genre triad is replaced by the
comparative/functional categories in the sense of ‘natural forms’ even though
Staiger implicitly retains the classifying genre notions. He refers to them using
nouns and to the comparative categories using adjectives. On this basis, Staiger (
[1943] 1957: 112) concludes that Kleist’s narratives, being novellas, are epics in the
generic/classifying sense, and dramatic in the comparative/functional sense, thus
blurring the conceptual shift between the two categories. While the classifying
notions, according to Staiger (1946: 8), refer to patterns that underlie constant
change and innovation, the comparative notions refer to the “tonality” or mode of
texts and are supposedly invariant. Staiger ties the comparative categories to
general anthropological attitudes such that lyric texts allegedly reveal the lyric
dimension of human nature.

Although the terms ‘natural forms’ and ‘text types’ as well as their scopes are
different, and although the criteria by which the notions are determined diverge
widely, Goethe’s idea of modifying the traditional generic notions in a
comparative/functional sense continues to be felt in the modern concept of text
type.

A related concept in recent/modern literary studies is Hempfer’s (1973) ways of

writing (“Schreibweisen”). His approach is worth mentioning because he
distinguishes what Staiger and his followers amalgamate. Ways of writing are meant
to be historically stable notions capturing deep structures while genres
(“Gattungen”) are historically varying conventions. Hempfer’s examples of ways of
writing are the narrative (“das Narrative”), the dramatic (“das Dramatische”), the
satirical (“das Satirische”), etc. The transhistorical deep structures of the narrative
and the dramatic are determined by the communicative situation. The deep
structures of satire, by contrast, are determined by different properties. While
Hempfer’s distinction of the narrative and the dramatic goes back to Plato, his
notions are different from the point of view of concept structure. Again, text types
and ways of writing have in common that they do not classify texts but characterize
them. However, in contrast to text types, Hempfer’s ways of writing, like Goethe’s
and Staiger’s, are obviously derived from generic notions and lack a unified
criterion. Hempfer’s structural approach is refined and naturalized by Zymner (2003
) who conceives of ways of writing as dispositions that can have certain effects.

What all these conceptual variants, including text types, have in common is that
they are categories aimed at characterizing aspects of style. They differ from one
another in that they focus on different aspects. While text types, as defined here,
refer to temporal structures, Goethe’s natural forms and Staiger’s styles evoke
traits of human nature; as for Hempfer’s ways of writing, they are rooted in, among
other things, communicative situations.

3.1 Narratological Conceptions

The first conception of text type in the 20th century appears to have originated
from Russian formalism. In an article on Pushkin’s “The Shot,” Petrovskij ([1925]
2009) analyzed the story’s narrative dynamics and characterized various sections of
the text according to their narrative (temporal) and descriptive (static) structures.
Similarly, Trubeckoj ([1926] 1980) used this distinction to characterize an Old
Russian travelogue by Afanasij Nikitin. However, these early examples have not had
any influence on recent developments.

Starting with Genette, the narratological discussion of text types has long been
devoted to the relation between the text types ‘narrative’ and ‘description’.
Genette’s assertion that “description is naturally […] the handmaiden of the
narration” ([1966] 1976: 6) caused much ado in narratology (e.g. Klaus 1982;
Chatman 1990: 6–37; Ronen 1997). One of the main reasons was the lack of
distinction between narrative as a generic or classifying concept covering kinds of
texts and narrative as a typological, comparative concept designed to capture deep
structures, functions, etc. Although he does not mention it explicitly and sometimes
blurs the difference himself, Genette ([1966] 1976) seems to think of narrative as a
generic concept, and his conclusion as to what description is in relation to narrative
thus entails that description is not on the same level as narrative in the generic
sense. Thus description for Genette is something like a text type while narrative is
both a sort of literary genre (in fact, “the only mode that literature knows” [4]) and
a text type (“the narration properly speaking”): “Every narrative includes two types
of representation, although they are blended together and always in varying
proportions: representations of actions and events, which constitute the narration
properly speaking, and representations of objects or people, which make up the act
of what we today call ‘description’.” (5) Here, “narration” and “description”
evidently denote text types. However, Genette does not aim at a theory of these
typological notions but looks at whether the notion of description is suitable to
limiting the generic scope of narrative (in his opinion, not at all).

In the wake of Genette’s article narratologists and other literary scholars began to
investigate description and its manifestations and functions in literary discourse
(e.g. Hamon [1972] 1982, 1993). For Hamon, description is a way to insert
knowledge in narratives. He is less interested in a theory of text types than in
literary devices that implement knowledge in narratives. Hamon’s model for
descriptions is an encyclopedia entry which literary descriptions expand in many
ways. Adam (1992) develops Hamon’s approach further and combines it with text
linguistics. Much of what is published on the subject is devoted to differentiating
description and its functions (e.g. Lodge 1977; Gelley 1979; Beaujour 1981; Kittay
1981; Mosher 1991). While Hamon investigated the role of description in 19th-
century prose, Scherpe (1996) and Pflugmacher (2007) focus on the practice of
description in modern writing. Ibsch (1982) contrasts examples of the two periods. A
recent study that uses other text types to explain a peculiarity of a literary text is
Abbott (2011).

One of the major contributions to the theory of text types is made by Chatman (1990
). He considers not only fiction but also film in terms of a theory of text types. His
first step is to modify the meaning of the term ‘text’ according to the premise that
narrative is a structure existing independently of the medium. Chatman’s notion of
text is not restricted to pieces of spoken or written discourse but comprises “any
communication that temporally controls its reception by the audience.” (1990: 7,
original emphasis) For Chatman, films and literary works are both texts. His
criterion, which has its roots in Lessing ([1766] 1984), is that works of literature and
films, contrary to pictures, are deployed in time.

Chatman defines three text types: narrative, description, and argument. However,
he does not distinguish these types from each other by using one and the same
criterion. The text type ‘description’ is said to “render the properties of things” with
the subject as criterion while the text type ‘argument’ is defined on the basis of the
communicative goal that a producer of a text pursues, namely, “to persuade an
audience” (9). Furthermore, “Argument is the text-type that relies on ‘logic,’ at least
in the informal sense.” (10) Finally, Chatman explicitly conceives of text types as
macro genres to which the known literary genres are subordinated. “[…] Westerns
are generic subclasses of the Narrative text-type. A Theophrastian character is a
subclass of Description. A sermon is a subclass of Argument” (ibid.). He clearly
considers text types to be generic categories. Implicitly, however, his conception of
text types aims at a functional, not a generic account.

The problems of definition aside, Chatman’s idea is that “text-types routinely

operate at each other’s service.” (ibid., original emphasis) The principle underlying
this idea is that many texts display another structure on the textual surface than
they do on a deeper level. Thus a fable is a narrative on the surface level. However,
it is not only a narrative but essentially something more because it includes a moral
and as such displays the underlying text type ‘argument’ at the service of which the
narrative structure at the surface operates.

It is clear, then, that Chatman investigates the functional relations between generic
ascriptions and ascriptions of underlying meaning structures conceived of as text
types. His is a fruitful approach in that it helps to map interpretive ascriptions of
meaning onto a system of interrelated notions that can be used to lay bare semantic
properties of texts. More implicitly than explicitly, Chatman shows that the notion of
text type in the narratological sense is a Janus-faced thing. On the one hand, text
types capture semantic properties of texts according to lexical distribution (level of
single words); on the other hand, they are meant to link the results of this
procedure to the overall meaning of the text. This is what Chatman seems to have in
mind when he models text types on two levels. Sometimes the two levels
correspond to each other (a descriptive wording resulting in a description without
any other function), and sometimes they do not (descriptive wording resulting in a
narrative: in Chatman’s terms, the text type description “operating at the service
of” narrative). Similarly, Genette ([1966] 1976: 7) considers Robbe-Grillet’s nouveau
roman “an effort to constitute a narrative (a story) by the almost exclusive means
of description.”

In an alternative approach, Fludernik (2000) suggests a threefold system intended to

cover not only literary but also conversational/oral discourse. She distinguishes
three levels: macro genre, genre, and discourse mode. Her macro genres prima
facie correspond to the notion of text type in three ways. They are intended to
systematically cover all texts; they are mutually exclusive; and they are derived
from linguistic text typology. Fludernik adds three types and excludes description
from her list: in addition to narrative and argumentative, she enumerates
instructive, conversational, and reflective macro genres. She criticizes the
assumption of the text type description “as a general text type, since description is
very rarely a unitype text type, i.e., there are extremely few purely descriptive
texts around” (2000: 280).

Aside from the question as to whether there are any texts at all that display pure
macro genres, Fludernik obviously conceives of macro genres as classifying
concepts. Texts either belong to one of the macro genres or not. Hence she assigns
particular genres of the second level to the macro genres: novel, drama, and film
are subordinated to narrative, scientific text and historiography to argumentative
text, and philosophy to the reflective macro genre, to name but three of them. She
also refers to this second level as “text types,” a term not to be confused with the
notion of text type as explicated above. Neither this nor the first level notion has
anything to do with text types in our sense.

On the third level, “discourse modes” are determined by “the surface structure of
texts and the specific functional correlates within specific genres” (281). Thus, for
instance, exhortations (a discourse mode) are subordinated to the genre of sermons
which, in turn, are subordinated to the macro genre of instructive texts. It is the
notion of discourse mode that corresponds to the notion of text type. This third level
comes in response to the need for a non-generic category that is more flexible in
order to capture the manifold typological heterogeneities within one and the same
text, let alone within one and the same macro genre. Conversely, this notion
explains the fact that different macro genres may display one and the same
discourse mode; for instance, a narrative, understood as macro genre, may contain
evaluative clauses typical for the argumentative macro genre, while argumentative
texts may contain event phrases typical for the narrative macro genre as an
illustration of an argument. The similarity between Fludernik’s discourse modes and
text types is that both are comparative notions. Also, discourse modes refer to
passages of texts instead of entire texts and exhibit a functional relation. However,
they are derived from heterogeneous textual phenomena and are not mutually
exclusive. Fludernik’s enumeration of discourse modes is an open list (of thirteen
items) that lacks a unified criterion. Her main interest concerns not discourse modes
but macro genres.

4 Topics for Further Investigation

The main problems with the notion of text type are that there are so many
competing approaches and terms with similar but not identical meanings and that
text types, as presented here, are not expressed by a stable term. Basically, the
theory of text types suffers from general disagreement as to what text types are.
Arguments are drawn to advancing ever more suggestions for putative text types
that have yet to be considered. As a result, no explication of text types has been
achieved to cover all aspects of the notion. What is required instead is that text
types should be explicated with regard to the purposes they are supposed to serve.
Are text types meant to describe the particular dynamics of a text, its profile
according to the represented temporal structure of the histoire, of the discours, or
of both?

Another problem is the discrepancy between the definition/explication of the

concept and its application. Text types as explicated here are derived from the
properties of sentences. In what kind of relation to textual properties do sentence
properties stand? Even if text grammars have studied this question in quite some
detail, agreement has not been achieved. Are concepts capturing those sentence
properties appropriate means to capture properties of texts? In other words: what
exactly does it mean when properties supervene on texts?

5 Bibliography
5.1 Works Cited

Abbott, H. Porter (2011). “Time, Narrative, Life, Death, & Text-Type Distinctions:
The Example of Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year.” Narrative 19.2, 187–200.
Adam, Jean-Michel (1992). Les textes: types et prototypes. Récit, description,
argumentation, explication et dialogue. Paris: Nathan.
Beaujour, Michel (1981). “Some Paradoxes of Description.” Yale French Studies
61 (“Towards a Theory of Description”), 27–59.
Carnap, Rudolf (1950). Logical Foundations of Probability. Chicago: U of Chicago P.
Chatman, Seymour (1990). Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction
and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP.
Dammann, Günter (2000). “Textsorten und literarische Gattungen.” K. Brinker et al.
(eds.). Text- und Gesprächslinguistik. Berlin: de Gruyter, vol. 1, 546–61.
de Beaugrande, Robert & Wolfgang U. Dressler (1981). Introduction to Text
Linguistics. London: Longman.
Dijk, Teun A. van (1980). Macrostructures: An Interdisciplinary Study of Global
Structures in Discourse, Interaction and Cognition. Hillsdale: Erlbaum.
Fludernik, Monika (2000). “Genres, Text Types, or Discourse Modes?” Style 34.2,
274–92.
Gelley, Alexander (1979). “The Represented World: Toward a Phenomenological
Theory of Description in the Novel.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 37.4,
415–22.
Genette, Gérard ([1966] 1976). “Boundaries of Narrative.” New Literary History
8, 1–13.
Georgakopoulou, Alexandra (2005). “Text-Type Approach to Narrative.” D. Herman
et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge,
594–96.
Görlach, Manfred (2004). Text Types and the History of English. Berlin: Mouton de
Gruyter.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang ([1819] 1994). “Naturformen der Dichtung.” J. W. Goethe.
Sämtliche Werke. Briefe, Tagebücher und Gespräche. Bd. 3.1: West-östlicher
Divan. H. Birus (ed.). Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 206–08 [“Natural
Forms of Poetry.” H. B. Nisbet & C. Rawson (eds.). The Cambridge History of
Literary Criticism, Vol. 4: The Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge UP
1997, 125].
Hamon, Philippe ([1972] 1982). “What is a Description?” T. Todorov (ed.). French
Literary Theory Today. A Reader. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 147–78.
Hamon Philippe (1993). Du descriptif. Paris: Hachette.
Heinemann, Wolfgang (2000a). “Textsorte – Textmuster – Textmuster.” K. Brinker
et al. (eds.). Text- und Gesprächslinguistik. Berlin: de Gruyter, vol. 1, 507–23.
Heinemann, Wolfgang (2000b). “Aspekte der Textsortendifferenzierung.” K. Brinker
et al. (eds.). Text- und Gesprächslinguistik. Berlin: de Gruyter, vol. 1, 523–46.
Hempfer, Klaus W. (1973). Gattungstheorie: Information und Synthese. München:
Fink.
Henkel, Nikolaus (1997). “Descriptio.” K. Weimar et al. (eds.). Reallexikon der
deutschen Literaturwissenschaft. Berlin: de Gruyter, vol. 1, 337–39.
Herman, David (2008). “Description, Narrative, and Explanation: Text-Type
Categories and the Cognitive Foundations of Discourse Competence.”
Poetics Today 29.3, 437–72.
Ibsch, Elrud (1982). “Historical Changes of the Function of Spatial Descriptions in
Literary Texts.” Poetics Today 3.4, 97–113.
Kittay, Jeffrey (1981). “Descriptive Limits.” Yale French Studies 61, 225–43.
Klarer, Mario (2005). “Ekphrasis.” D. Herman et al. (eds.). Routledge Encyclopedia
of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge, 133–34.
Klaus, Peter (1982). “Description and Event in Narrative.” Orbis Litterarum 37,
201–16.
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim ([1766] 1984). Laocoön. An Essay on the Limits of
Painting and Poetry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP.
Lodge, David (1977). “Types of Description.” D. L. The Modes of Modern Writing.
Metaphor, Metonymy, and the Typology of Modern Literature. Ithaca: Cornell UP,
93–103.
Mosher, Harold F. (1991). “Toward a Poetics of ‘Descriptized’ Narration.” Poetics
Today 12, 425–45.
Petrovskij, Michail ([1925] 2009). “Die Morphologie von Puškins Der Schuss.” Wolf
Schmid (ed.), Russische Proto-Narratologie. Texte in kommentierten
Übersetzungen. Berlin, 67–89.
Pflugmacher, Torsten (2007). Die literarische Beschreibung. Studien zum Werk
von Uwe Johnson und Peter Weiss. München: Fink.
Ronen, Ruth (1997). “Description, Narrative and Representation.” Narrative 5,
274–86.
Scherpe, Klaus (1996). “Beschreiben, nicht Erzählen! Beispiele zu einer ästhetischen
Opposition.” Zeitschrift für Germanistik 2 [N. F.], 368–83.
Schlüter, Sabine (2001). Textsorte vs. Gattung. Textsorten literarischer
Kurzprosa in der Zeit der Romantik (1795–1835). Berlin: Weidler.
Staiger, Emil ([1943] 1957). Meisterwerke deutscher Sprache aus dem
neunzehnten Jahrhundert. Zürich: Atlantis.
Staiger, Emil (1946). Grundbegriffe der Poetik. Zürich: Atlantis
Strube, Werner (1993). Analytische Philosophie der Literaturwissenschaft.
Untersuchungen zur literaturwissenschaftlichen Definition, Klassifikation,
Interpretation und Textbewertung. Paderborn: Schöningh.
Trappen, Stefan (2001). Gattungspoetik. Studien zur Poetik des 16. bis 19.
Jahrhunderts und zur Geschichte der triadischen Gattungslehre. Heidelberg:
Winter.
Trubeckoj, Nikolaj (Troubetzkoy, Nicolas) ([1926] 1980). “Une Œuvre littéraire:
Le Voyage au-delà des trois mers d'Athanase Nikitine.” L’Ethnographie 76, 116–34.
Vendler, Zeno (1957). “Verbs and Times.” Philosophical Review 66.2, 143–60.
Virtanen, Tuija (1992). “Issues of Text Typology: Narrative – a ‘Basic’ Type of Text?”
Text 12.2, 293–310.
Virtanen, Tuija (2010). “Variation across Texts and Discourses: Theoretical and
Methodological Perspectives on Text Type and Genre.” H. Dorgeloh & A. Wanner
(eds.), Syntactic Variation and Genre. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 53–84.
Werlich, Egon (1976). A Text Grammar of English. Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer.
Zymner, Rüdiger (2003). Gattungstheorie. Probleme und Positionen der
Literaturwissenschaft. Paderborn: mentis.

5.2 Further Reading

Adam, Jean-Michel (2011). Genres et récits. Narrativité et généricité des textes.

Louvain-la-Neuve: L’Harmattan Academia.
Bonheim, Helmut (1991). “Systematics and Cladistics: Classification of Text Types
and Literary Genres.” C. Uhlig & R. Zimmermann (eds.). Anglistentag 1990 Marburg.
Proceedings. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 154–65.
Chaefer, Christina & Stefanie Rentsch (2004). “Ekphrasis. Anmerkungen zur
Begriffsbestimmung in der neueren Forschung.” Zeitschrift für französische
Sprache und Literatur 114, 132–64.
Fishelov, David (1995). “The Structure of Generic Categories: Some Cognitive
Aspects.” Journal of Literary Semantics 24, 117–26.
Gülich, Elisabeth & Wolfgang Raible, eds. ([1972] 1975). Textsorten.
Differenzierungskriterien aus linguistischer Sicht. Wiesbaden: Athenaion.
Sternberg, Meir (1981). “Ordering the Unordered: Time, Space, and Descriptive
Coherence.”
Yale French Studies 61, 60–88.
Werlich, Egon (1975). Typologie der Texte. Entwurf eines textlinguistischen
Modells zur Grundlegung einer Textgrammatik. Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer.
Yacobi, Tamar (1998). “The Ekphrasis Model: Forms and Functions.” V. Robillard & E.
Jongeneel (eds.). Pictures into Words. Theoretical and Descriptive Approaches to
Ekphrasis. Amsterdam: VU UP, 21–34.

To cite this entry, we recommend the following bibliographic format:

Aumüller, Matthias: "Text Types". In: Hühn, Peter et al. (eds.): the living handbook
of narratology. Hamburg: Hamburg University. URL = http://www.lhn.uni-
hamburg.de/article/text-types
[view date:12 Feb 2019]