Both the author of a (written or spoken) text as well as its addressee are taken into consideration in their respective (social and/or institutional) roles in the specific communicative context.
In general it is an application of discourse analysis[1] at the much broader level of text, rather than just a sentence or word.
(Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981: 63)[4] "[A term] used in linguistics to refer to any passage- spoken or written, of whatever length, that does form a unified whole [….]
(Fowler, 1991: 59)[6] "[Text is] a set of mutually relevant communicative functions, structured in such a way as to achieve an overall rhetorical purpose."
This is the meaning that the social actions and the engagements of the participants are giving to the understanding of the text.
Thereby, cohesion is the result of "semantic ties", which refers to the dependent links between items within a text.
Most linguists agree on the classification into five text-types: narrative, descriptive, argumentative, instructive, and comparison/contrast (also called expositive).
For efficient communication to take place there must be interaction between cohesion and other standards of textuality because the surface alone is not decisive.
Coherence concerns the ways in which concepts and relations, which underlie the surface text, are linked, relevant and used, to achieve efficient communication.
The nearness and proximity of events in a text will trigger operations which recover or create coherence relations.
However, a text receiver is likely to assume that the locations of all three events are close to one another as well as occur in a continuous and relatively short time frame.
One might also assume that the actions are meant to signal the attributes of the agents; the Queen is skilled in cooking, the Knave is dishonest and the King is authoritative.
Cohesion and coherence are text-centred notions, designating operations directed at the text materials.
However, depending on the conditions and situations in which the text is used, the goal may still be attained even when cohesion and coherence are not upheld.
This is more effective than an explicit version of the message that informs receivers the full consequences of digging without calling, because receivers are left with great uncertainty as to the consequences that could result; this plays to people's risk aversion.
Informativity concerns the extent to which the contents of a text are already known or expected as compared to unknown or unexpected.
No matter how expected or predictable content may be, a text will always be informative at least to a certain degree due to unforeseen variability.
The processing of highly informative text demands greater cognitive ability but at the same time is more interesting.
Conversely, the level of informativity should also not be so low that it results in boredom and the rejection of the text.
Pedestrians can tell easily that the text is not directed towards them because varying their speeds is inconsequential and irrelevant to the situation.
If the road sign was "Motorists should reduce their speed and proceed slowly because the vehicles ahead are held up by road works, therefore proceeding at too high a speed may result in an accident', every possible doubt of intended receivers and intention would be removed.
However, motorists only have a very short amount of time and attention to focus on and react to road signs.
Robert-Alain de Beaugrande was a text linguist and a discourse analyst, one of the leading figures of the Continental tradition in the discipline.
Writing skills can be improved by familiarizing and duplicating specific text structures and the use of specialized vocabulary.