Text categories the notion of text categories and their classification

“The Gift of the Magi” can serve as an illustration. The semantic prototype of this story is a biblical legend about the Magi who came to Bethlehem to worship newly born Jesus Christ.
The story tells us about a poor young couple who on the eve of Christmas presented each other with the gifts which, though appeared useless, became a symbol of their love, sacrifice and wisdom. The title of the story serves as a hint to a parallel between the young couple and the Magi who came from the East, brought out their gifts and presented them to the child. True love is equalled here to the wisdom of the Magi as has explicitly been shown in the text:
The magi as you know – were wise men – wonderfully wise men – Who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their presents were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi (O’Henry, The Gift of Magi, p.36).
Intertextuality is a very important, though optional, category of belles-letters and publicistic texts. There are texts which are devoid of any references, both explicit and implicit, to other texts. In other words, there is no ground to speak about intertextuality if there are no discernible links between the two texts: the precedent and recipient one.
Things are quite different with scientific texts. Here intertextuality is a universal principle of text production. This fact is accounted for by the onthological nature of scientific cognition. Therefore the category of intertextuality is obligatory here. It should be underlined, however, that there must be a distinctive borderline between the two texts: the precedent and recipient one. It follows then that scientific texts are supposed to use explicit intertextual markers: graphically designed quotations, indirect speech, references, notes, etc.
So, the study of intertextual relationships makes it possible to penetrate into deep-lying levels of the text and get a deeper insight into the author’s intention.
SUMMARY

Text category is a common property of the text inherent in all its types. It is a twofold entity formed on the basis of both semantic content and its formal means of expression.Text categories can be semantic dealing with the semantic structure of the text, and structural securing its formal structural organization. For example, such categories as coherence, informativity, modality belong to the semantic group, whereas cohesion, segmentation, completeness are mainly of a structural character. Besides, text categories are subdivided into obligatory which being basic, are common for all the text types, and optional, relevant only to certain text types. Such categories as cohesion, coherence, informativity, intentionality are obligatory; they constitute the essence of the text. As for implicitness, imagery, subjective modality, the author’s image, they may be referred to the optional type of categories because they are mostly relevant to the fictional texts.

The category of informativityis one of the basic and obligatory text categories. There are different types of information. I.R.Galperin differentiatesbetween factual, subtextual and conceptual. Factual information contains data about facts, events, actions, objects, ideas, etc. Subtextual information is implicit, it is embodied in some text fragments on the basis of stylistic resources used in the text. Conceptual information, being an essence of literary communication, reflects the author’s conceptual world picture, his understanding of people’s social, economic, political and cultural life.
Besides, there are stylistic categories, expressing emotiveness, evaluation, imagery, and pragmatic types of information, containing knowledge about the communicants’ social, professional status, role relations, cultural background, psychological characteristics, etc.
Intertextuality is an optional text category denoting a special quality of certain texts to correlate with others on the basis of intertextual markers such as epigraph, allusion, quotes, etc. Intertextuality is regarded as a cognitive process of interaction of two texts: the precedent and the recipient text. The precedent text is the source referred to in the process of intertextual correlation. The precedent text is a well-known text of axiological significance relevant both to the world and national cultures. The sources of precedent texts are mostly: myths, legends, religious text, fiction, phraseological units, aphorisms, the titles of famous books, films, quotations, etc. The recipient text is the text containing intertextual inclusions or signals of intertextuality, presenting the intertext itself. Intertext in its turn is expressed by epigraphs, citations, allusions, reminiscence, quotations, periphrasis, etc. The most frequent intertextual inclusion is allusion.