Interdiscursivity and Promotional Discourse:A Corpus-Assisted Genre Analysis of About Us Texts on Chinese University Websites

The debate on the marketization of discourse in higher education has sparked and sustained interest among researchers in discourse and education studies across a diversity of contexts.While most research in this line has focused on marketized discourses such as advertisements,little attention has been paid to promotional discourse in public institutions such as the About us texts on Chinese university websites.The goal of the present study is twofold:first,to describe the generic features of the university About us texts in China;and second,to analyze how promotional discourse is interdiscursively incorporated in the discourse by referring to the broader sociopolitical context.Findings have indicated five main moves:giving an overview,stressing historical status,displaying strengths,pledging political and ideological allegiance,and communicating goals and visions.Move 3,displaying strengths,has the greatest amount of information and can be further divided into six sub-moves which presents information on campus facilities,faculty team,talent cultivation,disciplinary fields construction,academic research,and international exchange.The main linguistic and rhetorical strategies used in these moves are analyzed and discussed.

A genre analysis of medical abstracts by Chinese and English native speakers

This study presents statistical results of a comparison between English abstracts in a leading intemational medical journal and those in a Chinese one. With a genre analysis and discussion of linguistic features of these abstracts, the paper points out the weak points in the abstracts by Chinese writers and provides some suggestions for writing abstracts of medical research articles

A genre analysis of the B2B website

The advent of the Intemet has witnessed a revolution in the business world. One typical example is the emergence of the B2B website. The present paper looks at the B2B website, a conventionalized digital text, in terms of its communicative purposes, move features as well as linguistic specialties, with the aim of presenting the generic structure of the B2B website and its principal linguistic features contributing to the realization of its communicative purposes. It is demonstrated that the B2B website is one instance of the promotional genres and it has a lot in common with advertisement English and ＂netsneak＂ in the aspect of lexico-grammatical features.

Exploring Generic Features in China-Africa Corporate Advertising:A Critical Genre Analysis

China-Africa corporate advertising is emerging as an example of the corporate advertising genre in response to the specific rhetorical context of China-Africa win-win cooperation.Drawing on Bhatia’s Critical Genre Analysis(2017),this study explores the text-internal and text-external generic features of China-Africa corporate advertising by analyzing 50 collected samples.The analysis of text-internal prominence shows that China-Africa corporate advertising is unique in its frequent use of win-win-oriented and sector-dependent technical lexicons to indicate the promotional intent.It is also found that move structures vary across different sub-types of ChinaAfrica corporate advertising.Text-externally,the findings reveal a mixture of different discourses within the discursive space of China-Africa corporate advertising.In addition,the results suggest that Chinese companies invest more rhetorical efforts in enhancing the China-Africa community than African counterparts who tend to perceive China-Africa cooperation as the main avenue to attract worldwide partnerships.The findings have some practical implications for discourse construction in the Belt and Road Initiative context and shed light on the evolving nature of advertising discourse,particularly in the China-Africa win-win business context.

Genre Analysis in an Asian Academic Setting

This study is a genre analysis carried out on postgraduates＇ theses and dissertations in Iran as an Asian academic setting. The researchers seek to uncover： （1） the generic structure of MA theses, （2） the generic structure of Ph.D. dissertations, （3） any probable differences between these two groups. ＂statement of the problem＂ section of 48 MA and Ph.D. dissertations from 2001 to 2008 in Teaching English as a Foreign Language （TEFL） at Mazandaran, Tehran and Allame Tabatabaee universities was selected. For the quantitative method of data analysis, frequency counts, and for the qualitative method, genre analysis was used. Samples were categorized both according to the year they were written and the university they belonged to. The study enjoyed a second rater with inter-rater reliability about 0.93. Results revealed that there was a significant difference in writing ＂statement of the problem＂ in different time periods and different universities in the sense that students in different degrees, time periods, and universities employed quite different generic structures for writing. However, postgraduates in recent years （especially 2005-2008）; regardless of their degree and university, seem to use much more similar generic structures which indicates a general genre awareness.

A Pragmatic Genre Analysis of Job Application Letters

The search for a promising career position is very difficult and highly competitive and an appealing well-written job application letter is its crucial first step. This paper is to apply the latest genre analysis approach to 40-job-application-letter corpus. The analysis is essentially pragmatic-oriented in that its findings will not only benefit those who try to teach students how to write job application letters, but also offer genre analysis practitioners some valuable insights into the latest development of their research focus.

A Brief Introduction to Genre Analysis

This paper first discussed the concept of genre,and then introduced three schools to genre analysis which are Systematic Functional Linguistics(SFL),English for Specific Purposes(ESP) and New Rhetoric.The characteristics and general description of them were given.Finally,the paper introduced the seven ways to analyze unfamiliar genres proposed by Bhatia(1993).

A Critical Review of “Genre Analysis:Structural and Linguistic Evolution of the English-medium Medical Research Article(1985–2004)”

This paper critically analyzes the article"Genre analysis: Structural and linguistic evolution of the English-medium medical research article(1985–2004)". It presents critique from three aspects: the data, the analysis method, and the conclusion part.

Design and Reflection on Genre Analysis in Junior Middle School English Reading Teaching

In order to better promote students’English learning ability and interest,this paper expounds the general process of junior middle school English reading teaching by using genre analysis,for the reference of relevant personnel.

Genre Analysis and Comparison of Chinese and American Presidents＇ New Year Messages

New Year messages offered by political leaders are important media events every year. However, as a special political discourse, the New Year message is a scarcely explored area. Adopting a genre approach （e.g., Halliday, 1978; 1985; Halliday ＆ Hasan, 1989; Martin, 1984; Martin ＆ Rose, 2003; Paltridge, 2006）, this study systematically analyzed a small corpus of six New Year messages given by Chinese and American presidents in the years 2007, 2008 and 2009 at three levels： sociocultural context, discourse structure and language features. This study shows that New Year messages do form an independent genre because of their shared communicative functions, relatively fixed generic structure and salient lexical-grammatical features （Bruce, 2008）. It also reveals similarities and differences between New Year messages given by the two presidents from different cultures and political systems. This study argues that despite their respective features, all these New Year messages, as a special political discourse, target a large audience and aim to promote public relationships and obtain political support. It also demonstrates that the genre approach is a very powerful tool to uncover a discourse＇s communicative functions and the rhetorical strategies and linguistic resources available to realize these functions.

A generic analysis of English Research Article abstracts and the use of modal verbs for financial economics

This paper is a generic study of schematic structures and the use of modal verbs of 50 English Research Article （RA） abstracts. With Bhatia＇s （1990） model as the framework, three other move patterns were obtained besides the normal move order. The density of modal verbs varies greatly from move to move with significant differences in the frequency of occurrence in different moves. The use of modal verbs is much more move-determined than discipline-determined.

A Genre-based Approach to the Writing of the Introduction Section of an ESL/EFL Academic Paper

For many years, the lack of English for Specific Purposes （ESP） classes and training has led to many difficulties in Chinese college students＇ writing English academic papers. This paper is designed to offer genre-based methods to Chinese teachers of English concemiug teaching the college-level writing of the introduction for academic papers. It argues that genre-based teaching approaches can teach students to write in terms of move structures or conventional sections of academic papers （Swales, 1990） and its underlying motivation which not only makes students aware of the stylistic features of introductions but provides them with the strategies to reproduce these features in their own writing. The teaching approaches proposed in this paper include modes for teachers to present the findings of generic analysis of research article introductions as well as task-based activities for students＇ practice.

Cultural Pattern of Rhetorical Move in Indonesian Students＇ Speeches

In analysing a speech genre, genre analysis is applied. Genre analysis is a recent trend in discourse analysis. It combines socio-cultural and psycholinguistic aspect of text construction and interpretation. This analysis aims to show what extent surface linguistic forms align with given standardized communicative events. To construct a text, a speaker should master its schematic structure. The schematic structure consists of organizing the rhetoric. It covers the macro-stages which can be classified into introductory stage, body stage, and concluding stage. The rhetorical organization/structure （micro moves） of a speech genre includes ＂opening marker＂, ＂gambit＂, ＂narration＂, and ＂marker＂ in the introductory stage; ＂claim＂, ＂confutation＂, ＂confirmation＂, and ＂concession＂ in the body stage; ＂marker＂, ＂appeal/recommendation＂, and a closing in the body stage. By studying the schematic structure, it can be recognized how the students construct the genre, whether they follow the linear pattern offered or their construction of speech is influenced by their native cultural way of thinking. In sequencing the micro moves, the students followed the sequence offered in the framework of speech genre. Although there was a slight difference in sequencing the moves, in general the students have conformed to the proposed sequence. The variety of sequencing the moves was prompted by the native language and cultural background （Javanese and Chinese）. Since rhetorical organization varies from culture to culotte, it can be tolerated that the students have a variety in sequencing the moves.

Dialogic Awareness in English Academic Writing Course for Chinese Graduate Learners

Genre analysis has been a very effective pedagogy in English Academic Writing course,while how it is applied in real classroom setting,little has been done to examine its effectiveness in English Academic Writing course.Using dialogue from Bakhtin’s polyphony theory,the present study investigates significance of dialogic awareness and how it serves in teaching-learning process in English Academic Writing course.The findings show that with awareness of equal dialogue applied in seven stages,it is possible to enable students to understand basic organization and corresponding moves in English Academic Writing.The study calls for greater attention to the implementation of real dialogue in the writing classroom.