ABSTRACT
What exactly is a text? I have used the term several times already in previous chapters, and if you are a mature entrant to teacher training – and possibly even if you are not – it may not be a term that you remember from your school days. The word ‘text’ in this book is being used to refer to complete and coherent passages of spoken or written language which come about because people live in social groups or communities and language is essential to them in living their lives.1 Each time someone, or a group of people, sets out with the intention of carrying out a job of work which involves making or sharing verbal meaning in some way, they are creating a text. They might include:
Texts fulfil our purposes by allowing us to explore and express aspects of meaning in subjects we are concerned with or interested in. Sometimes the making of the text is an end in itself: we create it for the pleasure of the making and sharing. This probably applies to most stories and poems, or to the gossip I mentioned just now. Sometimes reading or writing a text is a means to something else – getting a new job, or having pancakes for dinner. Texts are produced with audiences or readers in mind, although, as for example in the case of a private diary, these readers may be the creators of the texts themselves. We shall see later that the image we have of the people who are to receive our texts exerts some influence on the ways in which we go about constructing the meaning in them.
