What makes a text a text? Criteria for text functionality

Essay from the year 2020 in the subject Literature - Basics, grade: 1,3, AKAD University of Applied Sciences Stuttgart, language: English, abstract: Can sentences or words that express statements or questions by any means be accepted as a text? Must a text be informative and well-intended to its recipients to be valued as textual, or does it solely need to be meaningful and suitable for the context? Furthermore, what exactly does the word 'text' or 'textual' even mean? Although one may have an intuitive understanding of what a text is, it can be necessary to establish a clear distinction between a text and a non-text. The understanding of what makes a text a text is particularly interesting, not only for translators, interpreters or linguists, to mention only a few, but also for anyone who aims to produce comprehensible texts. The knowledge helps to produce texts, where clear references of textuality can be made visible.