[原创]Two approaches to genre analysis

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Two approaches to genre analysis: Three genres in modern American English

Richard Xiao and Tony McEnery

This article compares two approaches to genre analysis: Biber’s (1988) multidimensional analysis (MDA) and Tribble’s (1999) use of the keyword function of WordSmith. The comparison is undertaken via a case study of conversation, speech, and academic prose in modern American English. The terms conversation and speech as used in this article correspond to the demographically sampled and context-governed spoken data in the British National Corpus. Conversation represents the type of communication we experience every day whereas speech is produced in situations in which there are few producers and many receivers (e.g., classroom lectures, sermons, and political speeches). Academic prose is a typical formal-written genre that differs markedly from the two spoken genres. The results of the MDA and keyword approaches both on similar genres (conversation vs. speech) and different genres (the two spoken genres vs. academic prose) show that a keyword analysis can capture important genre features revealed by MDA.

http://www.corpus4u.org/upload/forum/2005052210254440.pdf
 
Your genre analysis is more similar to Biber's register variation studies. Bhatia (1993) and Swales (1990) limited genre analysis to the structural and functional studies of some academic and professional genres, research articles introductions, abstracts, conclusions, lecture presentations, promotional letters, legal documents, etc.
 
This paper compares Biber's MDA approach and the WordSmith keyword approach. the first part is actually a register analysis of three genres using Biber's approach. Clearly the less demanding WordSmith approach can achieve Biber's effect.
 
回复: [原创]Two approaches to genre analysis

Genre analysis has been an established field of inquiry for over ten years. One strand of research is headed by John Swales and V. J. Bhatia, the other is led by R. Hasan and Jim Martin. But neither uses Genre Anlysis as D. Biber does (as literal register variation studies).

Those two schools of researchers might be very interested in your research as well.
 
回复: [原创]Two approaches to genre analysis

Are there any alternative ways to genre analysis apart from the approaches mentioned above?
 
回复: [原创]Two approaches to genre analysis

Hyon, S. 1996. Genre in three traditions: Implications for ESL [J]. TESOL Quarterly 30(4):693-722.

Bhatia, V. K. 1993. Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings [M]. London & NY:Longman.

Swales, J. M. 1990. Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings [M]. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
 
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