Types de texte

Différents types de texte, correspondant à différents buts, encouragent le choix d'éléments grammaticaux différents :

Narration

Une séquence dynamique d'événements, avec un accent particulier sur les verbes d'action ou, pour l'anglais, les verbes passepartout suivis d'un nom ou d'une particule ("he made an appearance", "he burst in"). Le temps caractéristique de la narration est le prétérit simple à la voix active.

The old man dropped the line and put his foot on it and lifted the harpoon as high as he could and drove it down with all his strength, and more 
strength he had just summoned, into the fish’s side just behind the great chest fin that rose high in the air to the altitude of the man’s chest. 
He felt the iron go in and he leaned on it and drove it further and then pushed all his weight after it. — E. Hemingway: The Old Man and the Sea.

She took another step, her weight came on the rope and the next moment she was away - sliding down the slope completely and at great speed - the rope 
had broken ! Ruth shot down fifty feet ... until she crashed into a half-embedded boulder which effectively stopped any further progress.  
Harry and I dropped our packs and sprinted across the hundred yards or so to Ruth. – E. Hillary: Nothing Venture, Nothing Win.

Description statique

Ici, l'accent est mis sur les verbes copules suivis d'adjectifs ou de noms dans la fonction attribut. Les groupes nominaux sont composés de noms qualifiés par des adjectifs, participes ou groupes prépositionnels:

Now she looked him full in the face and smiled. Her teeth were white in her brown face and her skin and her eyes were the same golden tawny brown. 
She had high cheekbones, merry eyes and a straight mouth with full lips. Her hair was the golden brown of a grain field that has been burned dark  
in the sun but it was cut short all over her head so that it was but little longer than the fur on a beaver pelt. She smiled in Robert Jordan's face  
and put her brown hand up and ran it over her head, flattening the hair which rose again as her hand passed. She has a beautiful face, Robert Jordan   
thought.  — E. Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls.

A little terrace, three concrete pots with laurel and a dusty cypress, a sagging, sun-faded blind, a scatter of battered tables and chairs, a wooden 
figure of a chef holding the day's menu, a drawing-pin through his pink, upheld hand.  The paint had been scabbed from his face, but the menu, 
in violet ink, immaculately written, was attractive, if simple. (...) My room itself was pretty bare: a huge Napoleon bed in mahogany, a small table
in the window, a couple of straw-bottomed chairs, a wardrobe of immense size, one lithograph of Jesus baring his heart and looking heavenwards,
a smaller picture of kittens with goldfish in a bowl.  — D. Bogaerde: Jericho.

Description dynamique (de processus)

La description dynamique est employée dans les instructions et la description de mecanismes en mouvement. Le texte est organisé à raison d'un stade à la fois, et souvent le format reflète cette organisation. Les impératifs et autres expressions (modales) d'obligation sont caractéristiques pour les instructions, tandis que les descriptions proprement dites emploieront plus facilement les verbes d'action au présent simple. Il peut y avoir pas mal de répétition d'éléments lexicaux par souci de clarté.

The first step is to remove the transparent foot. First detach the arm from the main plate in the usual way, and turn it over. Next remove the grey 
half-circle cover plate - there is a small opening at the peak of the circle to release the clip, or you could gently lever it from from the ends.
Next step is release the foot from its main pivots, being careful not to tug it too far, since there is a cable attached, and watch out for the 
counter-weight rod and spring. The last step is to release the plug and cable, but this needs to be done carefully so as not to put too much
tension on the spring, or you will break its anchor point. With the tension released, the spring can be detached from the foot. (...)  The bottom
needs some subtle but careful modifications.  — "Modifying the i1i0 table for the i1pro2".

Le texte suivant est assez technique, mais on peut facilement y reconnaître les caractéristiques du genre. Ici, l'impératif est remplacé par you + (can) + indicatif présent :

The formats for objects and text you add to a layout are based on the current theme’s default formats. You can customize formats after adding
objects to a layout, if you want.  You can no longer set custom default formats (such as text and border style) in Layout mode. You must select 
a layout object before you can set options in the Inspector.
Objects placed in tab controls (or portals) stay with the tab control when the tab control is copied, moved, or deleted even when the objects on the  
tab control are locked. In addition, objects must be explicitly added to or removed from tab controls. Sending an object on a tab control to the back
places it in back of all objects on the tab control, not behind the tab control.
FileMaker Pro manages layouts using points instead of pixels. On most computer screens, 1 point equals 1 pixel. On some high-resolution displays 
(such as the Retina display on iPhone), FileMaker Pro manages the display conversion to ensure proper screen rendering. By default, layout objects 
can be moved in one-point increments. You can use the Inspector to place objects at intermediate values for precise sizing and placement of 
printed output. — Layout mode changes and improvements for FileMaker Pro.

Discussion

Ce type de texte se caractérise par les noms (concepts) abstraits, des verbes traduisant des pensées et des activités mentales ("consider", "argue", des marqueurs d'argumentation logique, notamment des connecteurs adverbiaux.

If my arguments (...) are valid, it seems that as a rule people are unaware of the powerful implications of the skill they have mastered, language.
I have suggested that this lack of awareness is pârticularly unfortunate. (...) I shall argue in the rest of this book that some basic knowledge of 
the principles of general linguistics is of definite value in our dealings with practical language matters. – D. Crystal : Linguistics.

I would suggest, then, that the significance of the distinction between motivated and unmotivated desires is that it sharpens our conception of the 
debate between the Humean and the rationalist.  Interpreting this distinction as I have done, we see that the real burden of the Humean is to defend 
a claim about the rationalizing explanation of desires, the claim I have called the desire-out, desire-in principle.  It is because the teleological 
argument by itself lends no support to this principle that it fails to settle the issue between the Humean and the rationalist. — R. Jay Wallace: How
to Argue about Practical Reason.

Comparaison

La comparaison peut prodéder point par point, en passant d'un sujet à l'autre (voir l'alternance d'arguments parallèles direction / travailleurs dans le premier exemple) ou réunir toute l'information relative à un sujet dans un bloc, et les contre-arguments dans un autre, et juxtaposer les deux en laissant au lecteur le soin d'effectuer lui-même la comparaison (voir la comparaison de l'apprentisage littéraire vs. l'apprentissage de la chimie organique dans le second exemple). Les deux textes sont construits sur le schéma "topic sentence + specific details". On observera aussi l'emploi de parallèles lexicaux, qui aident à comparer ce qui est comparable.

Television is generally biased against the workers. You can observe this any night by watching the news. When a strike is reported, a management 
representative will be interviewed in favorable surroundings (e.g. in his office). The strikers, however, will be interviewed all together out in 
the open. The manager will emerge as a polite, responsible , authoritative person, whereas the workers will emerge as impolite and aggressive 
people who shout and who all speak at the same time. — Smartsheep: The Writing Process

All learning depends upon motivation, perception and exercise. The language learner’s most important task is to internalise the basic patterns and 
to acquire a new system of language habits so that he/she can react automatically to the structural signals of the second language. This can be 
accomplished only by drill. Theoretical study of a language does not necessarily improve your ability to speak. All this applies equally well to 
organic chemistry learning. Structure recognition and structure drawing must be automatic and accurate. The eye must learn to assemble all cues,
and size up just what has gone on in a given reaction — quickly, as a matter of habit. Obviously achieving this proficiency will also require drill.
— Smartsheep: The Writing Process