The essay is a literary genre that is characterized mainly by the proposal and defense of a personal and subjective point of view on a given topic which can refer to the following areas: political, philosophical, religious, sporting, historical, social, cultural, without relying on any theoretical framework, but on the will of wanting to communicate or express one's own opinion.
In general, it is widely used in academic settings, such as universities, organizations or study or research centers. Of all the “academic” texts, we can undoubtedly argue that the essay is the most “free”, “personal” and that it is not as tied to the empirical and systematic demonstration (of reality) as the monograph or the article does. research.
Although as a genre its origin is quite modern, its equivalent can be found in the ancient Greco-Roman oratory, in which Menander "the Rétor" was known to be a very prominent figure, who even expounded in his Discourses on the Epidictic genre some characteristics of what we know today as an essay and which quite coincide with those that this one keeps: free and random theme, simple, colloquial and natural language; subjective determinations and conclusions, introduction of elements such as personal anecdotes, quotes or proverbs to give it a more vivid character, and also does not keep or respect a pre-established order as a story does, for example. Finally, the essay is also short and is aimed at a heterogeneous audience, mostly.
Obviously it follows from this that the essay finds an opposite in the news, belonging to the news genre. On the one hand, because of the subjectivity that takes over the essay, and then because the intention of the one who proposes an essay is to persuade and convince, rather than to inform about a subject in question.
Among the press texts, perhaps the interpretive genre and the opinion genre are the ones that are most closely related to the essay, and we can say that it takes some characteristics from both: opinion, because it is a vision from where the writer stands, it is “your” vision about this or that central theme or topic that the essay deals with. From the interpretive genre, it takes the intention of persuasion through elements such as comparison, exemplification or contrast.
The newspaper article, the miscellany, the epistle, the dissertation and the dialogue, among others, are some of the other genres known as didactic and that are something like first cousins of the essay.
An essay is composed as follows: introduction, where the topic will be presented with its corresponding hypotheses and thesis. It will be followed by the enunciation of a phrase that is generally related to the subject and is the essayist's own authorship. After this, the development will come, where the thesis will be deepened through an argumentative expository modality and finally in the conclusion it will try to delve further into the thesis explaining why it supports it from the beginning.
It is in the development where the author must choose between different writing “techniques” that we mentioned earlier. For example, in the comparison, you will expose the main characteristics of the object / topic, in relation to others. Example: comparison of the increase in GDP (Gross Domestic Product) between two or more countries. Surely here, it will be speaking as a central issue of the economic development of one of the countries in question. Another technique is exemplification, where the author looks for examples of empirical reality to support theories or macro visions, such as explaining the economic theories of dependency and development through historical events in relation to the political and economic facts of a country in particular. Finally, the contrast is very similar to the comparison, although in this case, emphasis is placed on two different realities or characteristics between two or more objects, for example, in the case of implementation of public policies that favor education, it can be taken as It refers to the reality of a country that is very different from the one we are describing or treating in the central theme of the essay.
