The textual microstructure It scans one of the main ideas (also known as propositions) that, semantically related to each other, manage to support the general idea of a text. A good understanding and use of connectives and punctuation marks is crucial for its elaboration..
The term textual microstructure was brought to the plane of linguistics by the philologist Teun Adrianus van Dijk. The renowned intellectual from the Netherlands wanted to give another vision to the study of written discourse, organizing it by structures, to facilitate its understanding and elaboration.
Van Dijk proposed to appreciate the texts from three perspectives: a general organizational one, called the superstructure; another global hierarchical and functional nature, called macrostructure (subject to the previous structure, and which gives it meaning); and microstructure, the most basic but not least.
The textual microstructure relates successions of thoughts linking them in a logical and coherent way, allowing us to clearly conceive each of the parts that make up an argument.
If we want to see this concept in a simple way, we can imagine a 12-story building. The construction is the superstructure; each floor, arranged hierarchically, are the macrostructures; and the partitions, beams and other elements joined by the rivets and the concrete (which are the bonds that give cohesion) are the microstructures.
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They allow a logical relationship to exist between the words that make up a sentence and, in turn, between the different sentences that make up a text. This allows an assimilation of the pursuit of ideas and responds to the presence of the agreement of number and gender in the textual plane..
Cohesion also seeks to enrich the perception around ideas. To expand cohesion and meaning in a text, reiteration is used, and within this there are several very useful literary resources. Among these we will highlight five of the most used:
Use words of the same meaning or similarity. For example: car, car, car.
Through a conclusion regarding a phenomenon, we can infer that others will behave the same. For example: “That snake killed that man with its poison. It is certain that all snakes of that species are poisonous ".
Use repeatedly, and in various parts of the speech, a main term to achieve the fixation of the idea in the speaker. For example: "Gato Negro rechargeable batteries are the best on the market, because Gato Negro lasts like no other".
An element of the speech is suppressed without damaging the sense of the idea. For this, what is eliminated is presumed through contextual logic. For example: “Juanito arrived tired. I was very thirsty ".
They are all those discursive elements that allow joining ideas from the text. For example, the copulative conjunction "and" stands out: "this and that".
Upon achieving cohesion in each of the propositions present in a text, the argument becomes conceived as an integral whole that can be understood and assimilated by the speaker.
This quality is intimately associated with cohesion and all the resources it offers. Without the semantic relationship between ideas there is no sequence and the communicational thread breaks.
Let us remember what was raised previously: microstructures are the partitions that, intelligently linked, support and give meaning to the text.
An important part of a good argument is to cut to the chase, put the fillers aside, and get your ideas as polished as possible. This facilitates their understanding and communication gaps are eliminated..
As we saw previously, textual microstructures are lexical organizations that contain a series of propositions that seek to strengthen in the speaker the perception of a general idea within the text. In order to achieve this, inter and intra-sentence relationships must be used.
To construct them in the most adequate way, it is necessary to create links between the propositions, preferably causal and / or referential links..
A clear example of how to properly build a textual microstructure will be presented below:
- "The tenth spinel is a poetic form born in the 16th century".
- "The tenth spinel has 10 verses".
- "The verses of the tenth spinel are perfect eight syllables".
- "The verses of the tenth spinel rhyme as follows: abbaaccddc".
- "The tenth spinel is a poetic form born in the sixteenth century, it has ten eight-syllable verses what rhyme as follows: abbaaccddc ".
The comma after the "XVI" allowed to suppress the subject, which is "the tenth spinel", in addition to linking the first proposition with the second.
The word "verses", being repeated, allows suppressing the excess, while the relative pronoun "that" serves as a link with the last proposition, and also facilitates the suppression of the second subject; in this case, "the verses of the tenth spinel".
The study of textual microstructures provides a greater understanding of the linguistic fact to the speaker, broadening the horizons around the important role that each of the elements of a text play. In addition, this philological element gives other perspectives, improving the argumentation in the writing.
Among the most important contributions we can highlight the fact that textual microstructures allow speakers to conceive the tiny communicative particles that give way to great argumentative ideas. It is going to the depths of the language, but in a simple and didactic way.
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