A genre analysis and corpus based study of university lecture introductions

[摘要] This thesis reports a study using a corpus of lecture introductions to explore the generic features of the language used. The main research questions: What are the main communicative functions of this sub-genre? How are the functions realised? Are there any disciplinary differences in university lecture introductions? are explored using two complementary methods of analysis; genre analysis and corpus analysis. Analysis of eighty-nine lecture introductions from the BASE corpus1 resulted in a Lecture Introduction Framework which posits a two-level classification which first differentiates lecture content orientation (Thompson, 1994) versus listener orientation (Dubois, 1980). This yields three main functions, with additional sub-functions original to this study. The study reveals differences in the frequency of different sub-functions in the four disciplinary domains, reflecting different disciplinary cultures and knowledge. The corpus analysis generated a word frequency list for lecture introductions, giving a rich linguistic description of the lexis used. Further analysis on one of the three main functions; the Set Up Lecture Framework Function uses WordSmith Tools 5 to analyse the linguistic realisations of the three subfunctions, which are also the top three most used sub-functions in the corpus. Analysis of pronouns and keywords further supports the finding that there are disciplinary variations in lecture introductions.

[发布机构] University:University of Birmingham;Department:School of English, Drama and American & Canadian Studies, Department of English Literature

[关键词] P Language and Literature;P Philology. Linguistics