Text commentary II: linguistic and stylistic analysis
This question asks you to describe how the text is built and to connect each linguistic choice with meaning. The usual prompt is «Comente los aspectos lingüísticos y estilísticos más relevantes», sometimes limited to morphosyntax or to lexis. Answers that list features without interpretation score poorly, however many terms they contain.
Morphosyntax
- Segment words into lexema plus morfemas derivativos (prefijo, sufijo, infijo) and flexivos (género, número, persona, tiempo, modo, aspecto).
- Word formation: derivación, composición, parasíntesis, siglas, acrónimos, acortamiento, préstamo. Say what the procedure contributes: «el sufijo -azo en portazo intensifica la acción».
- Note modality markers: first person, periphrasis of obligation («hay que», «debemos»), interrogative and exclamatory sentences, evaluative adjectives, apreciative suffixes, inverted commas for irony.
- Sentence syntax: short simple sentences (agility, emphasis) versus long hypotactic periods (reasoning); passive and impersonal constructions (detachment, hidden agent); noun phrases with many complements (density of information).
Lexicon and semantics
- Register (standard, colloquial, cult), campo semántico dominante and campo asociativo, denotation versus connotation.
- Semantic relations: sinonimia, antonimia, hiperonimia/hiponimia, polisemia, homonimia.
- Figuras: metáfora, metonimia, símil, personificación, hipérbole, antítesis, paradoja, ironía, anáfora, paralelismo, enumeración, interrogación retórica, aliteración. Always add the effect: «la antítesis leer/comprender subraya la paradoja central del texto».
Text properties
- Adecuación: purpose, addressee, register, variety.
- Coherencia: one topic, progresión temática, order of information.
- Cohesión: repetition, synonymy, hyperonyms, deixis, anaphora/cataphora, ellipsis and above all the conectores (aditivos, adversativos, causales, consecutivos, organizadores): quote two or three and explain the logical link they create.
Worked example
Sentence: «Los jóvenes, que leen poco, apenas comprenden los textos que se les exigen.»
- «que leen poco» is an explicative adjective clause (between commas, it adds information about the whole group) and therefore generalises a reproach instead of identifying a subgroup.
- «que se les exigen» is an especificativa adjective clause working as complemento del nombre of «textos», with «se» pasiva refleja and «les» as indirect object.
- The two commas carry the whole argument: without them the sentence would only accuse some young people.
Traps
Naming a figure without its effect; confusing campo semántico with familia léxica; calling every «que» a relative pronoun; confusing pasiva refleja with impersonal «se»; answering the level the question did not ask for.