Genre Analysis Of Prefaces Of Academic Monographs In Linguistics

A preface or foreword deals with the genesis, purpose, limitations, and scope of the book and may include acknowledgments of indebtedness. Since 80s of the last century, studies have analyzed numerous genre of academic and specific fields. However, as an academic genre, the genre of preface of academic monographs lacks of much attention. In this regard this research is of a lot of significance, which will enable the readers grasp the key points in reading more efficiently; in teaching, which also can play a guiding role in understanding of macro and micro aspects of language in organization and academic writing. From the perspective of genre analysis, this paper analyses genre structure and linguistic patterns of prefaces of two series of academic books (from Collections of Contemporary Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics) published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.This paper combined with the techniques in ESP genre analysis and corpus linguistics, studies genre of prefaces to two series of academic monographs in collections of contemporary foreign linguistics and applied linguistics respectively published in 2000 and 2001. This study eventually focuses on 60 typical academic monographs. It studies authors' self-preface only, not including preface written by others. This paper first revealed the generic structure of prefaces of academic monographs in linguistics, and as basis tags of move/step and some language features were carried out. To get the obligatory moves and optional moves their total appearance and frequency are then calculated. After tagging representative linguistic patterns, linguistic patterns of each moves and steps are listed neatly in the form of enumeration of typical examples.The results show that the generic structure of preface of academic monographs in linguistics mainly composed of the seven moves, move 1:Justifying the book(Gap in the current research, Significance of present study); move 2:General information of the book (Origin and development of the book, Territory of the book, Referential sources); move 3: Establish credentials; move 4:Book description (Targeting the readers, Goal and theme, Organization and contents, Features &advantages); move 5:Usage of the book (Editorial arrangement, Reading suggestions, Additional words); move 6:Acknowledgements (Thanks for academic assistance, providing resources, comment and suggestion, family and friends); move 7:Future prospects (Responsibility, Expectations, Belief). The obligatory moves are move 4:Book description, move 6:Acknowledgements. The study also summarizes the genre of preface of linguistic monographs and significant typical linguistic patterns.This paper generalizes the generic structure of preface of academic monographs in linguistics, summarizes typical linguistic patterns of the preface of academic monographs. It provides examples and models for genre analysis on preface, and enriches the genre analysis field; this study gives a better understand of the structure and features of the preface of academic books for subjects in reading and writing, it also sheds light on the teaching and writing of this section.