Alex Henry

A NARROW-ANGLED CORPUS ANALYSIS OF MOVES AND STRATEGIES OF THE GENRE: LETTER OF APPLICATION

Abstract Nowadays, the term ‘genre’ is thought of as sociolinguistic activity through which members of a discourse community achieve their communicative goals. A genre approach to language teaching attempts to teach learners the main parts, ‘moves’, of a genre and the most common linguistic features associated with the moves. To date, many genre analyses have been carried out in academic and ESP settings. Some of these studies have shown that writers or speakers can realise moves through different rhetorical options which following Bhatia [(1993). Analysing genre: language use in professional settings . London: Longman], we call ‘strategies’. None of these studies, however, has made full use of computer analysis to obtain exact linguistic information on the moves and strategies of a genre. This paper reports on a genre analysis, complemented by the Wordsmith suite of computer programs for corpus analysis (Scott, M. (1996). Wordsmith tools [computer program]. Oxford University Press, Oxford. (Internet: http://www.oup.co.uk/elt/software/wsmith )), of the moves and strategies of the Letter of Application. The results show striking differences between the different levels of analyses and from ‘general’ English. The paper concludes that this type of analysis provides language teachers with essential information that can make teaching and learning more effective.

An investigation of the functions, strategies and linguistic features of the introductions and conclusions of essays

Abstract All students in schools and higher education frequently have to read and write “essays”. However, if we consider Bruffees view (Bruffee, K. A. (1980) A Short Course in Writing , Winthrop, Cambridge, MA) that the purpose of an essay is to present an idea and then defend or explain it, this type of writing encompasses a much wider range of discourse. Despite the obvious importance of the essay, little research has been carried out into its rhetorical features. The aim of this research was to use a genre-based research methodology to determine the rhetorical organization of the introductions and endings of essays, and to identify correlations between linguistic features and the functions they perform. A corpus of 40 essays was created and following the procedure of Hasan (Hasan, R. (1989) in Language, Context, and Text: Aspects of Language in a Social-Semiotic Perspective , eds Halliday and Hasan), the obligatory and optional moves, and the allowable move order were identified. The strategies chosen by the writers to “do the moves”, and the linguistic features which characterised the realisations of each of the moves were investigated using the method described in Henry and Roseberry (Henry, A. and Roseberry, R. L. (1996) in Research in the Teaching of English 30, 472–489). It was found that although the essay includes an exceedingly wide range of topics, styles and text lengths, essay introductions and conclusions exhibit many clearly identifiable generic discourse and linguistic features.

Introducing Genre Analysis Using Brunei Malay Wedding Invitations

Despite a significant increase in the number of published genre analyses and a continuing refinement of genre theory, little research has been done to determine the effectiveness of genre-based pedagogy. Research that has been carried out has shown mixed results. One problem that has been identified is that a genre approach requires language learners to become genre analysts in a foreign or second language while having to learn the new language itself. One suggested solution is to prime learners for this dual approach by providing an opportunity for them to study a well-known genre in their mother tongue in order to stimulate access to their subconscious knowledge of their own language and culture. This paper aims to evaluate this solution by determining to what extent Bruneian students in a tertiary context were able to identify and explain the linguistic features of the Brunei Malay Wedding Invitation. The results show that while the students were able to accurately describe the surface linguistic features of the genre, they were less successful at explaining the use of these features in terms of the communicative purposes of the genre.

Raising awareness of politeness in business writing

Abstract By concentrating on the surface linguistic features at the expense of context, ELT materials present the relationship between a form of the language and its function as invariable. This paper shows how a language matrix can be used to raise awareness of the role context plays in determining language choice for a given communicative function. Using the example of making a request in a business setting, the paper describes how a language matrix can make learners aware of how the filling of syntagmatic slots in lexical phrases results in different degrees of politeness depending on the business relationship between the addresser and the addressee. The paper suggests how the matrix can be used in language awareness and consciousness‐raising activities to provide opportunities for contrastive analysis and discussion of politeness strategies across cultures.