Comparative Genre Analysis Of Chinese And English Residential House Information Texts

In the past thirty years, Chinese real estate industry sees a booming development. House price is continuously going up. Real estate experts believe that the residential house market in China will continue to expand in the foreseeable future. It brings about the heat of Chinese and foreigners' investment in residential house. Residential house information texts (hereinafter RHIT), as a direct media between residential house agents and potential customers, play a more and more important role in publicity.With the approach of genre analysis, many linguists have studied the textual structure of a specific genre on a certain problem within one language, but few studies touch upon the comparative analysis between two languages. Even if they do, they seldom analyze the similarities and differences from a social and cultural perspective. By combining the theories of genre analysis and cross-cultural communication, the study analyzes and summarizes the similarities and differences of Chinese and English RHIT in the aspects of structural moves and linguistic features. Meanwhile, it probes the internal reasons why each text is composed as it is from a social and cultural perspective. It can not only help people know well how the text is organized and why it is organized in the way it is, but also instruct people how to compose the similar professional genres in two different languages successfully.Based on the theoretical framework of genre analysis, a corpus of sixty RHIT (thirty in Chinese and thirty in English) are examined. The study analyzes and compares the structural moves and the specific linguistic features in Chinese and English RHIT, and explains the similarities and differences from social and cross-cultural perspectives with the aim to increase people's consciousness on cross-culture communication and produce quality English RHIT.First of all, based on the integrated theoretical framework of Swales, Bhatia and Hasan, the study finds that there are nine structural moves altogether in Chinese and English RHIT. According to the occurrence frequency, six moves are considered obligatory and three moves are optional in Chinese and English texts. The six obligatory moves in Chinese texts are Name in Native Language, Location, Name in Foreign Language, Community Sketching, Peripheral Facilities, and Contact Information. The three optional moves in them are Community Facilities, Home Models and Brand Advantages. While in English texts, the six obligatory moves are Name in Native Language, Location, Community Sketching, Peripheral Facilities, Home Models and Contact Information. And the three optional ones are Names in Foreign Languages, Community Facilities and Brand Advantages.Then, a cross-cultural comparison is made on the similarities and differences in move choices and linguistic forms between Chinese and English texts. The similar choices of moves and communicative strategies to realize the moves lie in the similar purposes of RHIT, as a branch of promotional genre. Chinese people advocate the high quality life in western culture, which leads to the move of "Name in Foreign Language" an obligatory one in Chinese RHIT, while an optional one in English RHIT. The great difference of the occurrence frequency in the move of Brand Advantages is due to the Chinese group identification vs. westerners' individual identification. Chinese and westerners' different conceptions of "home" together with the different understandings of the relationship of humankind to nature also bring some differences in English and Chinese RHIT. Regardless of the differences in move choices, some values are shared by people across the world, such as the pursuit of pleasure and friendship, the need for safety, dignity and success. Both in English and Chinese texts, the tendencies are clearly shown.By doing the comparative genre analysis of Chinese and English RHIT, the paper demonstrates how RHIT, under different social and cultural contexts, achieve the communicative purpose with different choices of moves and linguistic forms. Finally, the paper concludes the study with the implications on similar professional genres cross-culturally.