ABSTRACT
The importance of texts is self-evident when we remember that all language occurs in communicative units usually larger than single words or sentences. All the same, texts have proven to be the hardest units to describe, perhaps because of the seemingly endless variations texts present us with. Nevertheless, this chapter shows that a number of meaningful things can be said about texts. The phenomenon text will be treated from two points of view. The first half of the chapter defines (in 6.1 and 6.2) what qualities linguists have in mind when they speak of texts and then attempts a classification of text types (6.3), which is applied to the discussion of a concrete example (6.4). The second half of the chapter (6.5-6.7) deals with ESP, which is the use of English in a restricted set of social and thematic areas chiefly for the unambiguous transfer of technical information. Here we give special attention to one particular genre of written texts, that of English for science and technology (EST).
