is to enable the reader what something looks like. It attempts to paint a picture with words. In this sense, the description also attempts to put the reader directly in
touch with the physical world within the readers‟ senses. Description helps the readers visualize a scene or a person and understand the related sensation or an
emotion.
2. The Characteristics of Descriptive Text
As we have already discussed, a descriptive text is a text which lists the characteristics of something. So, in descriptive paragraph, we must make very
clear the location of the objects being described. It must be exist the attributes of a thing to present the topic and the forms which are used.
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According to Harry H. Crosby, to understand the descriptive text, we need to know the characteristics as following:
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a. Communicative Purpose: to describe a particular person, place, or thing
b. Generic Structures
- Identification, to identify the phenomenon will describe
- Description; to describe the items, the qualities, subject features, whole
attitude, and adjectives. c.
Linguistic Features focus on specific participant, for example my house, my cat, the museum, etc.
When you set out to describe a person, an object, or a scene, you have got to decide at the outset how you are going to arrange the details. Sometimes the
natural contours of the objects; themselves suggest a way of proceeding. Description is also a powerful strategy, one that allows the writer to exercise a
great deal of control over the reader‟s perceptions. In addition, it is a strategy we use in our daily interaction. In our daily interaction, we may describe different
kind of things, place, and person.
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Regina L. Smalley, Mary K. Ruetten, Refining Composition SkillsRhetoric and Grammar Fourth Edition, San Francisco: Heinle Heinle Publishers an Internasional Thompson Publishing Company
ITP, 1997, p.73.
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Harry H. Crosby - Duncan A. Carter, The Commited Writer Mastering Nonfiction Genres, Boston: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1996 p. 7.
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Donald Pharr Santi Buscemi, Writing today, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005 p. 136.
