Genre Analysis On English Self-made Prefaces In Linguistics Works

Preface, as a crucial factor which influences the publication and sale of books, has specific generic structure and linguistic features as an independent genre. However, little study has been done on this genre. Based on Swales's move-step theory and Bhatia's move-strategy theory, this thesis explores the generic features of prefaces under the influence of communicative purpose. The data for the study consist of forty English prefaces from the recent publications in the field of linguistics and they are all written by the authors themselves. This thesis tries to answer the following questions:a. What are the structural characteristics of English self-made prefaces in linguistics works?b. How the communicative purposes are achieved by Moves and Steps?c. How the communicative purposes are realized in linguistic level?In order to answer the above questions, the research will follow the following steps. Firstly, a qualitative study of the collected data is to be done to carry out a hypothesized model for English preface. Secondly, a quantitative study is proceeded to see the frequency of each move in the samples and check the hypothesized model. By studying the frequency of the moves and accounting for the communicative purpose, obligatory moves and optional moves can be identified and explanations for the identification are given. Thirdly, as the moves have been identified, study of the realization of the communicative purpose in linguistic level is to be proceeded and by the discovery, the communicative purposes can be clearly identified. Through the analysis, this thesis concludes that:1. A genre usually takes on a conventionalized generic structure which reflects its communicative purpose. For English preface, its main purpose is to introduce the book and persuade its potential readers to take action. Eight moves and their steps are identified through the analysis, among which five moves like "Establishing a territory", "Establishing a niche", "Introducing the book", "Establishing Credentials" and "Expressing Gratitude" are considered as obligatory moves, while moves like "Targeting the readers or market", "Stating features or novelty of the book", "Signature" are considered as optional moves. In order to achieve certain communicative purpose, authors adopt different steps to realize the moves.2. The distinctive linguistic features of the moves in achieving the communicative purpose are mainly as followings:at graphological level, paragraph headline in bold type is used to attract readers'attention and signature of the author at the end of a preface is employed to shorten the distance between the author and the readers; at lexical level, positive words serve as a boost to encourage readers to take action. Modal verbs with low or median value are employed to low their status and get close to readers; at semantic level, the use of definite sentences could strengthen authors'mood in convincing readers for they have to be authoritative about what they intend to convey, and the use of parallelism could enhance the language rhythm effect; at grammatical level, both passive voice and active voice are employed to achieve different communicative purpose.This thesis, as a practice of applying genre analysis theory to analyzing practical text, expects to enrich the genre analysis research and give suggestions to writers and publishers in preface writing.