Facebook has over 1.3 billion users who spend an average of 18 minutes per visit. However, recent studies suggest that excessive browsing of Facebook can make users unhappy. The article explores possible reasons why this may be the case, such as feelings of envy from viewing curated profiles that highlight others' seemingly perfect lives. It also notes that Facebook fulfills basic human needs for social contact but that its effects are not entirely positive. The text provides a linguistic analysis of the article and reflects on learning from the exercise.

1. Subject: Comprensión de lectura y producción textual Inglés-Español II
Teacher: Cristina Posada Vélez
Virtual session-Independent work-guide #1
Pablo Andrés Aristizábal
TEXTLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS
In this link you can find the complete article:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140206-is-facebook-bad-for-you
Article title:
CAN FACEBOOK MAKE YOU SAD?
Overview
The present text linguistic analysis has been made according to the Colombian curricular guidelines (chapter 4.2), notes taking in class
and personal research on different web sites. The news was taken from the BBC official web site.
The following table presents the respective textual analysis:

2. MICRO-STATES
INTRATEXTUALITY
LEVEL
TEXTUAL ANALYSIS –INFORMATIVE TEXTCohesion and coherence
Local coherence:Not so long ago a new form of communication swept the world,
transforming life in ways unimagined just a few years before.(two propositions)One
commentator heralded it as “the greatest means of communication ever developed
by the mind of man” while others pointed to its potential to revolutionize news,
entertainment and education. (These propositions are develop throughout the first
paragraphs)
The ideas across the text are logically organized and appropriated sequenced
Compacting patterns:
Exophoric: BBC / Future, 6 February 2014
Anaphora: It´s statistics,it has signed up…,
Cataphora: Not so long ago a new form of communication, there are several possible
explanations…
Ellipsis: The others, the social network, can it really be possible…
Transitionals: Chief among these, and yet, until recently…, yet last summer.
Topic: knowledge about online social networks
Rema: How can Facebook make you sad? I mean, this is an unexpected and unthinkable
way to conceive this theme.
MACRO-STATES
Among all the topic possibilities that BBC web site dispose, this article belongs to a section call
“Future” and its informations is consistent with the context of situation and the register used.
News´ title:
Can Facebook make you sad?
Studies suggest that browsing Facebook can make you unhappy, says Justin Mullins.
Why might that be?
The headline and intro simplified form a macro-state of the text; it allows extracting the most

3. relevant input data, just reading them.
• The correct inference of propositions give overall coherence to the news, in this we have the
following relations between these propositions:
Main event:Facebook the social network (…) Elliot and the others were writing about the television
in the early 1960s. But fast forward 50 years and you could be forgiven…
History: Chief among these is Facebook, the social network that celebrates its 10th birthday this
week.
Context (goal, expectation):In just one decade, it has signed up some 1.3 billion people, half of
whom log in on any given day and spend an average of 18 minutes per visit.
SUPERESTRUCTURE
Account for these categories:
Abstract
Approach
Complication
Resolution
Evaluation
Moral
Textual structure of the news
1. News „categories:
Answer the questions: Who, what, where, when, why and how
Strapline: BBC Future
Title: Can Facebook make you sad?
Subtitle:Studies suggest that browsing Facebook can make you unhappy, says Justin
Mullins.
Why might that be?
Intertitles: Popularity contest, Who´s better, who´s best.

4. LEXICAL
INTERTEXTUALITY
LEVEL
RELATIONS AMONG
TEXTS
EXTRATESTUALITY
LEVEL
CONTEXT ELEMENTS
Selection of vocabulary:
Generic:means of communication, news, entertainment, education
Specific: online social networks, Facebook, researches
Quantitative: it has signed up 1.3 billion people
Qualitative: benign
Passive or intensive:and yet Facebook´s effects on its users may not be entirely
benign.
Positives: Facebook is an invaluable resource for fulfilling the basic human need for
social contact.
Style: the journalistic style should be clear, concise and direct; each statement
must have its own meaning and convey an idea of the event is narrated.
• ideational function: allows the writer to organize his own experience of the
world, real or imaginary, around him in relation to other people, things, events,
etc..
• b) interpersonal function: it serves to establish or maintain social relationships
with other people around them showing a certain attitude to certain events, how
they express themselves, form, etc..
• c) textual function: ensuring the creation of a coherent self and the social
context in which the text occurs.
• References, quotes: no.
Text purpose:its intention is generate a complete view of Facebook as a social network, it
means, cover both the positive and negative ways to interact in it.
Ideological and political components:Facebook moves a lot of people, and a very single person
has its personal interest and political tendencies, so what happens inside the network has a
direct impact in government decisions and over people´s perceptions.
•Pragmatic coherence: the text is consistent with the reality of social network phenomenon and its
implications.

5. Reflection
These types of academic writing exercises are certainly quite difficult, firstly,because the act of writing and analysis itself, and second for the
huge gap that the acquisition of a new language implies. As I concern, so far I can manage and know a few thing about the English language, and
doing this activity I realized that the path to achieve this idiom is too long and tough.
As for this particular text, it captives me just reading the title, you know, it´s modern and in particular break your thoughts about online social
networks, I mean, think that Facebook can make you sad it´s an aspect rarely addressed.The importance of the balance concept seems to emerge
all over the lecture; unlike happiness a big amount of Facebook users gets sadand personality conflicts.
Moreover, I would like to remark that analyzing a text in this way both the comprehension and writing producing ostensibly improve and of
course helps to build holistic professionals. For instance, I can clearly distinguish between define and non-define relative clauses in the news,
practicing with sentences and propositions I could get the whole meaning of the text.
In any case, I can tell that I learned more than I expected doing this analysis, in addition, all the text-linguistic structures and concepts helps me
to prepare read, comprehend and write to successfully became in a good English teacher.