ABSTRACT
Many attempts have been made to set up a typology of texts, including some which have been used to form the basis of translators' decisions. Werlich, among others, bases a typology of texts on what he calls dominant contextual focus: Texts distinctively correlate with the contextual factors in a communication situation. The usefulness of this concept is that it helps to resolve some of the problems inherent in the multifunctionality of texts. Beaugrande and Dressier define argumentative texts as those utilized to promote the acceptance or evaluation of certain beliefs or ideas as true vs. false, or positive vs. negative. One other basic text type to be identified in the author typology is the instructional text type. Behind the systematic linguistic choices the author makes, there is inevitably a prior classification of reality in ideological terms. The content of what the author does with language reflects ideology at different levels: at the lexical-semantic level, and at the grammatical-syntactic level.
