Discourse Genre Bhatia 1993 2002 l register analysis

Discourse & Genre

文本视角本身的四个阶段－Bhatia, 1993, 2002 l 语域分析（register analysis） l 语 法 -修 辞 分 析 （ grammatical-rhetorical analysis） l 互动分析（interactional analysis） l 话体裁型分析（genre analysis） Genres, it will be seen, are difficult to define, but at a general level ‘Genre comprises a class of communicative events, the members of which share some set of communicative purposes’ (Swales 1990).

l Register analysis in its early state divorced linguistic features from their context and studied language only at the level of the sentence - the approach was unable to say why language occurred where and when it did. There was also an almost total concentration on written language.

l Early research into discourse analysis arose from a discontent with the register analysis approach of sentence level analysis. In a key article in 1974, Allen & Widdowson criticised the register analysis approach, saying that courses taught in this way did ‘little more than provide exercises in the manipulation of linguistic forms’ (1974/1985: 74).

l Allen & Widdowson (1974/ 1985: 74) went on to say that: l We take the view that the difficulties which the students encounter arise not so much from a defective knowledge of the system of English, but from an unfamiliarity of English use.

l They then summarised their views as follows: l One might usefully distinguish two kinds of ability which an English course at this level should aim at developing. l The first is the ability to recognise how sentences are used in the performance of acts of communication, the ability to understand the rhetorical functioning of language in use.

l The second is the ability to recognise and manipulate the formal devices which are used to combine sentences to create continuous passages of prose. We might say that the first has to do with the rhetorical coherence of discourse, and the second with the grammatical cohesion of text. (Allen & Widdowson 1974/1988: 74)

l This was a useful distinction to make and the first pieces of research covered here in Business English were concerned with the second of these two factors - cohesion.

Cohesion l Cohesion was studied by Johns (1980), who conducted a small study into the use of cohesion in business letters, reports and academic textbooks of business and economics. She began by dividing Business English or English of Business and Economics (EBE) into two main classes: the English of applied business and the academic English of business and economics. l Her aim was to see if she could find constellations - or groups - of cohesive elements that would occur repeatedly in the discourse types selected (1980: 36).

l She used a corpus of twenty letters, twenty reports and ten textbooks. Her results showed that lexical cohesion is the most common type of cohesion in letters and reports - similar findings were also made for the textbooks. She was, however, unable to find the constellations she was looking for in the major classes of literature (applied or academic business literature) but she did find that there were constellations of features within the genres of letters, reports and textbooks respectively.

l Dudley-Evans & St John (1996: 6) point out that this might suggest it would be more worthwhile ‘establishing the distinctive linguistic features of key Genre of business communication than in trying to develop a detailed linguistic description of the variety of Business English’.

l Work on cohesion also included analysis of conjuncts (Morrow 1989). His study on the use of conjuncts within written Business English used news stories from the Wall Street Journal and articles from Economic Enquiry to try and discover if conjunct use in the two discourse types differed. l He found higher conjunct use in the academic journal texts as opposed to the business news stories. He attributed the differences in conjunct use, for example, to the need for greater explicitness in the academic articles.

l There is much to be lauded/praised in the approaches used in these two studies. Both relied on authentic material and both were addressing questions that are of potential difficulty to business students when using English. l Both finish their articles with implications for teaching and both realise the limitations of their studies and suggest that larger studies should be forthcoming that could benefit from a larger corpus of authentic material.

l Thus any discussion on the limitations of these studies is built into them already and recognised by the authors themselves. A further limitation of these works (although it must not be seen purely as a criticism) is that, again, they are concerned only with written text.

l A second band of discourse studies grew up along the lines of the first point made by Allen & Widdowson above (Lenz 1987, Micheau & Billmyer 1987, Maier 1992)-- looking at how language was used in communication and how different discourse strategies can be used in business situations. l This time, studies were also carried out into spoken language.

l Bhatia (1993: 8) termed grammaticalrhetorical analysis the writer’s discourse - in that analysis is carried out from the point of view of the writer - and it considers how certain language choices are made by them. l Interactional analysis, the next stage, he therefore terms the reader’s discourse (1993: 8), where discourse is viewed as an interactive process between reader and writer.

l Bhatia’s concern here was to summarise previous approaches to the study of discourse, criticise them and lead the way to his definition of Genre analysis. This became clear in his criticism of interactional analysis, saying that it fails to pay enough attention to ‘the socio-cultural, institutional and organizational constraints and expectations that shape the written Genre in particular settings, particularly in the case of highly specific academic and professional genre’

l Dudley-Evans & St John are also critical of discourse analysis (1998: 89), highlighting the fact that a failing of discourse analysis is that it still, like register analysis, isolates texts from the environment from which they come.

l It also highlights another inherent problem with the whole movement -- its concentration on written text. The implication of the word discourse, though intended to include speech discourse, is largely used only in terms of writing and, indeed, largely scientific writing and the world of EST.

l A further serious problem with discourse analysis approaches has been that of defining the moves and steps that the said discourse is comprised of. l The naming and analysis of steps and moves have been done on an intuitive level by the researcher and there is also the further problem of the sequencing of these steps.

l Two further key problems need to be highlighted here: the limited size of data gathered in the studies; and the lack of transfer of results to the classroom. l A brief survey of some of the work reviewed reveals the emphasis of work done in this field with some examples of the corpus size used in the investigation.

l It can be seen from Table III below that discourse (and indeed genre) approaches tend to fail in these two respects: the corpora used are not large enough and transferral of results into the classroom, at least in Business English, has been very limited.

TABLE: Examples of Discourse/Genre Studies In Relation To the Size of the Data Gathered and the Transfer of Results to the Classroom Author Size & Representativenes Applied Element Johns X -20 letters/20 reports Mention Morrow X - 31 news stories/9 journal articles Mention Lenz X - 6 meetings No mention Micheau & Billmyer X/? - 6 NNS/ 45 NS Mention Maier X - 8 NS / 10 NNS Mention Jenkins & Hinds X - corpus size not stated Mention Lampi (1992) X - 6 Fin/6 UK Annual Reports Later materials Yli-Jokipii + - over 200 letters Mention O’Brien & Jones X - English 22, 603 words / French 12, 217 No mention Neu + Materials Garcez + - four days of meetings Mention Charles + Later materials Barbara & Scott X/? - five IFBs (Invitation for Bids) No mention l + = Good X/? = Satisfactory X = Not satisfactory

Sample size l It was already noted in Section 3. 6. 1. 1, that the two studies into cohesion in written texts, Johns (1980) and Morrow (1989) both suffered the same limitations - that of taking data from a small and therefore not potentially representative corpus. Johns used twenty letters, twenty reports and ten textbooks, whilst Morrow used a corpus from the Wall Street Journal of 23, 095 words and from the journal Economic Inquiry of 33, 925 running words. Thus, these studies can be seen as interesting and useful but limited in their potential application.

l The authors, as was noted earlier, do in fact mention these limitations and also do stress the importance of transferral of these results to the classroom. Similar criticisms of corpus size can also be levelled at all the other researchers mentioned with the exception of Yli-Jokipii, Neu, Garcez and Charles.

l However, in fairness it should also be noted that the corpus size for the works presented was probably sufficient for the stated aims. Indeed, in some cases, small amounts of data have been deliberately chosen, for example, Mauranen chose texts from a single discipline from a much larger bank of data in order to ‘focus on differences between national rather than disciplinary cultures’. (1993: 7)

Strategies l Turn-taking strategies were very much at the heart of 1980 s analysis of discourse in the field of Business English. This trend is exemplified by work done by Lenz (1987) and Micheau & Billmyer (1987). Lenz (1987) carried out a discourse analysis on a corpus of six technical meetings. He was interested in the turn-taking rules operating in these kinds of meetings. He utilised the conversational system of Sacks et al. (1978) and later on Sinclair & Coulthard’s (1975) model of classroom interaction. Lenz believed that

l As long as discourse analysis neglects the turn-taking rules in operation, it cannot show consistent results as the discourse structures evolving at different phases of the speech event are dependent on the turn-taking rules employed by the participants. (Lenz 1987: 162)

l Lenz found both similarities and also significant differences in the turn-taking patterns of the participants, as compared to the models of both Sacks et al. and Sinclair & Coulthard. There was little silence in the technical meetings, meaning that the discontinuous talk (silence) idea of Sacks et al. was not to be found as ‘The chairman seems to feel responsible and takes over before a discontinuity could arise. All we find in our data are short gaps between two turns’ (Lenz 1987: 163). Also found were significant differences in turn size, with multi-unit turns being common.

l Retrospectively, we can say that the participants in Technical Meetings rely on the same selection mechanisms as in conversation, but they use additional techniques to introduce and terminate extended turns. (Lenz 1987: 167)

l Lenz summarised by saying that turntaking strategies have a great effect on the pragmatics of a meeting. This finding was re-iterated in the often-quoted study of Micheau & Billmyer (1987), who studied the differences in discourse strategies between native and non-native speakers in a case study simulation exercise. They had two main objectives in doing this.

l Firstly, to gather empirical evidence about native speaker speaking and patterns of interaction, in an attempt to identify patterns of how they did what they did. l Secondly, to gather those discourse strategies used by non-native speakers and to identify those that did not conform with the native speaker patterns. Once these had been identified they could then be used as a base for teaching them how to fit in better with native speakers. The results showed that non-native speakers (NNS), had serious problems with both frequency and quality of participation. The findings are summarised below:

Problems related to NNS discourse patterns l 1. Violations of turn-taking l - inability to predict end of turn l - insertion of attention-getting devices e. g. 'excuse me' l 2. Problems with turn allocation strategies l - reluctance to bid l - pauses after nomination l 3. Problems with turns l - significant intra-sentential pausing l 4. Use of 'high-considerateness' frames - over politeness did not help get a turn

l Native speakers, it was found, used such devices as latched utterances - phrases used to ensure smooth transition from one speaker to the next - and showed an ability to build up a strategic argument over a period of time. It was also noted that native speakers placed high value on the quality of the interaction, and not the quantity of it.

l Other studies on discourse strategies comparing native and non-native speakers have found similar mis-matches of native speaker and nonnative speaker behaviour. l Maier (1992), in her study into the differences in politeness strategies used by native and nonnative speakers of English, used Brown & Levinson’s (1987) model of politeness strategies, gathering data from eighteen writers, eight native speakers and ten non-native.

l As with Micheau & Billmyer, she found significant differences in the strategies used where ‘Several of the non-native speaker letters gave the impression of being somehow too casual, too desperate, too personal or too detached’ (Maier 1992: 194). l She also found that ‘The native speakers used more negative politeness strategies to preserve the addressee’s face: they mitigated their apologies more, they expressed thanks more often, they were more pessimistic and less direct’ (Maier 1992: 202).

l These last two studies both compared strategies used by native speakers of English to non-native speakers. This leads to the next section, where the influence of culture on the language of business is discussed.

l A body research has already been carried out into how inter-cultural factors can affect language and discourse or, more specifically, how the language use of one culture is interpreted by the other in business meetings and negotiations. l This next section therefore reviews some of the numerous examples of these studies, starting with intercultural studies of written discourse, followed by a look at research into spoken discourse.

(4) 体裁分析(genre analysis)。 l 话语分析文本视角的第四阶段是话体裁型分析 l 秦秀白（2002）称做体裁分析, 方琰（1998）称做 体裁分析。 l The aim of genre studies into Business English is to present a rounded view of Business English and what is really known about it.

l Saville- Troike (1982) 认为: 语言体裁指的是 the type of communicative event(交际事件的 类型)，e. g. jokes, stories, lectures, greetings and conversation. l 多数学者都从“交际事件”(communicative event) 或“言语事件”(speech event) 的角度考 察语言运用中的体裁问题。

l West notes the difference between Genre and discourse analysis by referring to a study done on business telephone calls saying that ‘while discourse analysis identifies the functional components of the calls, Genre analysis enables the materials writer to sequence these functions into a series to capture the overall structure of such texts’ (West 1997: 36).

l The key feature of Genre analysis is that it places the discourse into the communicative context within which it occurs and takes account of aspects such as culture and situation in a way that earlier discourse analysis was unable to do. l Accordingly, Genre analysis has been considered a very important development in ESP (Dudley-Evans & St John 1998: 31).

Key communicative events l There is more of a consensus on the key communicative events of business. Some of the results of needs analysis and current published materials identify seven core events. l The five events requiring primarily oral language are referred to are: telephoning, socializing, making presentations, taking part in meetings and negotiating; those that require the written form are: corresponding and reporting. (Dudley-Evans & St John, 1998: 63 -64)

Swales, John M. (1990)的详尽概括 5) Swales 认为, 人们对交际行为的组织是否 得体和成功, 部分地取决于对体裁掌握和运用 的纯熟程度。下面所引的对话片断来自地面 控制人员和飞机驾驶员之间的无线电通讯对 话(Swales: 1990: 60). l Control: Sierra Fox 132 , correction , Sierra Fox 123 , what is your flight level? l Pilot: Flight level 150 , Sierra Fox 123. l Control: Say again flight level , Sierra Fox. l Pilot: Flight level 150 , Sierra Fox 123.

交际能力应包括 (Canale & Swain, 1980) l 语法(即语言) 能力( Grammatical Competence) l 社会语言能力(Sociolinguistic Competence) l 话语或篇章能力(Discourse Competence) l 对策能力(Strategic Competence) l后三种能力的培养均与“体裁分析”的宗 旨密切相关。

语篇分析(文本视角本身）的四个阶段 l register analysis l grammatical-rhetorical analysis l interactional analysis l genre analysis 话体裁型/体裁/体裁分析)

l Genre analysis in ESP began with Swales’ pioneering work (1981 & 1990) on the introduction to an academic article. l Swales notes that there is a regular pattern of “moves” and “steps” that appear in a certain order in the majority of introductions investigated.

l A “move” is a unit that relates both to the writer’s purpose and to the content that s/he wishes to communicate. l A “step” is a lower level text unit than the move that provides a detailed perspective on the options open to the writer in setting out the moves in the introduction.

l Swales’ work led to parallel research into other sections of the research article such as the Results, Discussions of Results and Abstract, e. g. Hopkins and Dudley-Evans (1988) adopted a similar approach to the discussion sections of both articles and dissertations. The fullest description comes from Dudley-Evans(1994) shown below:

l Move 1 Information Move l Move 2 Statement of Result l Move 3 Findings l Move 4 (Un)expected outcome l Move 5 Reference to Previous Research l Move 6 Explanation l Move 7 Claim l Move 8 Limitation l Move 9 Recommendation

l The moves are essentially options to the writer who will build his or her argument through careful choice and ordering of there moves into cycles.

l In the EOP area, Bhatia (1993) has shown that the techniques of genre analysis developed originally for the study of academic text can be applied to business letters and legal documents. l He looks at two types of business letters which he calls promotional genres--the sales promotion letter and the job application letter--and finds that they use a virtually identical pattern of moves:

Sales Promotion Letter Move 1 Move 2 Move 3 Move 4 Move 5 Move 6 Move 7 Establishing Credentials Introducing the offer Offering Incentives Enclosing Documents Soliciting response Using Pressure Tactics Ending politely Job Application Letter Establishing Credentials Introducing Candidature Offering Incentives Enclosing Documents Using Pressure Tactics Soliciting response Ending politely 确定任职凭证--提出或陈述候选身份--提出足以激 励对方接收申请的凭证--附寄有关文件--采用施压策 略--索求回音--礼貌收尾

l One of the main advantages of genre analysis is its ability to relate textual findings to features of the discourse community within which the genre is produced. Swales (1990) lists six defining characteristics of a discourse community:

Characteristics of Discourse Community --Swales (1990) l 1) A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals; l 2) A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members; l 3) A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback;

Characteristics of Discourse Community --Swales (1990) l 4) A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furthance of its aims; l 5) In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis; l 6) A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.

l In the area of ESBP, the trend toward finding out how discourse communities operate is increasingly essential. A concern for biz English research is to discover how the language and discourse used in biz communication relate to the context– the biz relationship--in which it takes place. l The discourse and thus the language stem from the relationship. The concern is to go beyond textual studies to investigate how the discourse is affected by the relationship. l Three factors seem particularly significant: whether the relationship is new or old; where the balance of power lies; and cultural values and attitudes.

l 方琰 argues (1998) that there exist two points of view on the concept of genre , one of which defines genre as a “type of discourse” (Hasan 1977) , and the other as“ a staged , goal-oriented social process realized through register” (Martin 1992).

方琰 summarized three features of genre l 1) genre is closely associated with culture, possibly being as a plane at the stratum of the context of culture; l 2) any genre would have an ultimate purpose or goal; and l 3) the realization of a certain genre may be related to its contextual configuration (CC) / its register configuration , which can predict the GSP ( Generic Structure Potential) of that genre.

对体裁的预测 l 根据Hasan 的理论, 分析了语篇的语境配置, 知道了语 篇的交际目的, 可预测出语篇的必要成分和体裁。 l 比如, 从个人简历的语境配置, 就可预测出它属于 “resume”体裁, 它的必要成分为“personal information ^ objective ^ education ^ working experience ^ skills / strength ”(如果是学生working experience 可以是 非必要成分) 。 l 体裁结构潜势为“personal information ^ objective ^ education ^ working experience ^ skills/ strength^ (interests)^ (references) ” l 这可作为求学用.

Another example l 假定语篇的语场--写作目的: “Applying to Study in a University in a Foreign Country”； l 语旨：“writer and unknown foreign reader”； l 语式：written to be read。 l 其语境配置为“Writing an application letter to an unknown person for studying in a foreign country”, 就决定了它的体裁为“Writing an Application Letter”,

l 要求的语篇结构必要成分应该包括: l applicant’s address ^ date of writing ^ a proper form of addressing the receiver ^ stating target field and degree ^ educational background ^ asking for consideration ^ a proper form of closing (e. g. yours sincerely) ^ name of the applicant

l 非必要成分可能包括: working experience , other qualities, requirement for application form。 l 它的体裁结构潜势为: a proper form of address ^ stating target field and degree ^ educational background ^ (working experience) ^(other qualities) ^ (requirement for application form) ^ asking for consideration ^ a proper form of closing ^ name of applicant 。 l 非必要成分将决定所写文章的多样性，产生属于 同一个体裁的变异现象。