（外国语言学及应用语言学专业论文）慈善筹款信的体裁分析.pdf

1 摘要 慈善筹款信较强的劝说性至今为止还没有得到充分的研究本文主要对 b h a t i a 1 9 9 8 和 u p t o n 2 0 0 2 对慈善筹款信的体裁分析法进行调整和补充 旨在相对全面深入地分析慈善筹款信这一体裁 本文从两个方面对慈善筹款信进行分析从宏观上完善了 b h a t i a 和 u p t o n 的体裁分析法, 提出一个新的层次结构并分析具体话步是如何实现每个层次的 交际目的还对语料进行了跨领域的分析从微观上着重分析慈善筹款信的元 话语使用特征本文的研究语料来自五个不同的领域即健康和人文关怀艺术 和文化环境社区发展以及教育等共计 1 5 0 封慈善筹款信本文作者对语料 进行如上两方面的分析研究发现 第一慈善筹款信语篇的层次结构趋向于遵从如下顺序引起注意- - 建立组 织凭证- - 介绍慈善事业- - 恳请响应- - 提供激励对方接受的馈赠- - 礼貌结尾这 六个层次和其相应的话步可以实现慈善筹款信的交际目的分析数据表明层次 4 层次 2 层次 6和层次 3是慈善筹款语篇的必备要素因为这 4个层次不但 出现在几乎所有语料的语篇中 而且在同一语篇中也反复出现其他的 2 个层次 和话步的使用具有可选择性慈善筹款的语篇作者可以根据不同的交际目的有 选择地使用层次和话步来实现特定的交际目的 第二本文对慈善筹款信进行了元话语m e t a d i s c o u r s e 分析发现不同类 型的元话语存在如下的降序排列使用特征语篇标记t e x t m a r k e r s模糊 h e d g e s态度标记a t t i t u d e m a r k e r s注释c o m m e n t a r y解释 i n t e r p r e t i v e s肯定标记c e r t a i n t y m a r k e r s权威 ( a t t r i b u t o r ) 而 且人际元话语i n t e r p e r s o n a l m e t a d i s c o u r s e 的使用比例远远超过语篇元话 语( t e x t u a l m e t a d i s c o u r s e ) 的使用比例对每个类型的元话语进行分析后本 文从一定程度上揭示了慈善筹款信在语言使用方面是如何实现其较强的劝说性 的 此外本文对如何写出成功的慈善筹款信提出一些建议 关键词体裁分析 慈善筹款信 层次结构 元话语 2 abstract what makes philanthropic fundraising letters so persuasive has not been fully explored up to the present. with adjustments and supplements to bhatias (1998) and uptons (2002) genre analysis approaches, this research paper aims at giving a relatively comprehensive and thick analysis of philanthropic fundraising letters. this thesis sets out to analyze philanthropic fundraising letters form two perspectives: macroscopically, based on bhatias and uptons genre analyses, a revised move structure is proposed and steps are specified to show how these steps are used to realize the communicative purposes at the level of each move. also, a cross-field analysis of philanthropic fundraising letters is made. microscopically, the features of metadiscourse within fundraising texts are analyzed. 150 fundraising letters in this research paper are taken from 74 philanthropic organizations covering five different fields: health and human services, arts and culture, environment, community development and education. the present researcher analyzed the research data from the above two perspectives and found: the generic structures of these fundraising letters tend to display a high degree of similarities. the order of the moves tends to follow the order of “getting attention- establishing credentials of the organization-introducing the cause-soliciting responses-offering incentive-ending politely”. the six moves and steps in each move can fulfill the communicative purposes of philanthropic fundraising letters. the analysis shows that move 4, move 2, move 6 and move 3 appear to be required moves in this genre, while the other two moves and steps in each move serve as optional tools that writers of this genre can use in various ways to tailor the effect of the letter according to different communicative purposes. the most important contribution of the present research is the analysis of the metadiscourse features within fundraising texts. the study shows a descending order of the use proportion of different types of metadicourse: text markershedgesattitude markerscommentary interpretivescertainty markersattributors. the percentage of interpersonal metadiscourse 3 is much higher than that of the textual metadiscourse. a detailed analysis of each type of metadiscourse features throws some light on how the strong persuasion in philanthropic fundraising letters is realized linguistically. the research holds some fruitful implications for writing successful philanthropic fundraising letters. keywords: genre analysis, philanthropic fundraising letter, move structure, metadiscourse. 4 acknowledgements i owe a great deal to the following people. without their help, the accomplishment of this thesis would have been impossible. first of all, i would like to express my special gratitude to my supervisor, prof. wu jiangsheng. he was always ready to give me his warm-hearted instructions and encouragement throughout the whole process of my writing and provide me careful comments on all aspects, even every choice of single word of my thesis. busy as he was, he always discussed with me the problems through phone calls or in person. i benefited a lot from his wide knowledge scope. second i would like to acknowledge all the teachers who have imparted knowledge to me during the past three years. their instructions have given me a lot of inspiration. special thanks go to prof. chen sudong, my primary supervisor; prof. zhang zuocheng and prof. huang hao for their great help and concern for me during my study. my thanks also go to all my friends and classmates who have helped me collect the data and references used in the writing of this thesis. finally, i owe much to my family for their constant encouragement and support, which have given me strength and confidence. li yan april, 2005 1 chapter 1 introduction the philanthropic fundraising letters (hereinafter referred to as pfls) inform, persuade, request people to contribute to worthy causes or to underwrite philanthropic programs. the weight on these letters is enormous. nonprofit organizations depend to a large extent on fundraising texts for operating expenses or for accomplishing capital goals. an increasing interest in the pfls has heightened the need for a relatively comprehensive way to analyze pfls, in which the focus is laid particularly on the strong persuasion of pfls. bhatia (1998) claims that the discourse of fundraising represents one of the most dynamic forms or language uses. the dynamic nature of philanthropic discourse is due to the fact that it is designed to be quite persuasive. the studies on the pfls have never ceased. most of the studies of philanthropic fundraising discourse used a qualitative approach, analyzing features such as communicative functions (bhatia, 1997; connor, 1997), linguistic/rhetorical analysis (mann crismore, 1997; lauer, 1997), social contexts (bazerman, 1997; myers, 1997), metaphors (mccagg, 1997), and cultural differences (connor graves, 1997). however, these qualitative descriptions are based on a small number of pfls in one nonprofit organization. so we dont know whether these qualitative characteristics can represent the general features of pfls as a whole. in the field of quantitative study of the pfls, connor a clear illustration and analysis of steps in each move is given to show how these steps are used to realize the communicative purposes at the level of each move. also, a cross-field analysis of the pfls will test whether letters from different fields show the same characteristics as those of the whole corpus. (2) microscopically, at the lexico-grammatical level, metadiscourse features of pfls are 3 analyzed in order to review how the strong persuasion in philanthropic fundraising texts is realized linguistically. this thesis is organized as follows: chapter 1 introduces the background and the purpose of the research and the significance of a genre analysis. chapter 2 reviews the theoretical backgrounds on which the present research is based, especially swales and bhatias approaches. chapter 3 presents the theoretical framework of the present study and describes the corpus in detail. chapter 4 presents a macroscopical analysis of the generic structure of the pfls. a revised move structure is proposed and steps are specified in light of data being analyzed. also, a cross-field analysis of the pfls is made. chapter 5 gives a microscopical analysis of metadiscourse features of pfls in an attempt to show how the strong persuasion is realized lexico-grammatically. chapter 6 summarizes the findings in the present research and also holds implications for the writing of pfls. 4 chapter 2 theoretical review 2.1 genre and genre analysis 2.1.1 definition of genre genre is a controversial concept. different scholars have different views on the definition of genre. therefore, any study on genre should first recognize the variety of definitions. the term “genre” stems from the latin genus, a fundamental concept in aristotles logic and his system of classifying entities. aristotle applies genus to define a species, that is, a group of entities possessing several common features. genus is the most general kind under which a species falls, and the differences in the species characterize the species within its genus (peticc thus 6 genres can be thought as “typified rhetorical actions based on recurrent situations” (miller, 1984). kress (1994:19) proposes “genre have specific forms and meanings, deriving from and encoding the functions, purposes and meanings of the social occasions. genre therefore provide a precise index and catalogue of the relevant social occasions of a community at a given time.” martin (1984) describes genre as “a goal-oriented, purposeful activity in which speakers engage as members of our culture” and highlights the goal-orientation of genre as well as the communicative stability which they create. genres are referred to as social processes because members of a culture interact with each other to achieve them; as goal-oriented because they have evolved to get things done. like all semiotic systems, genre have evolved in such a way that they introduce stability into a culture at the same as being flexible enough to participate in social change. (martin, christie and rothery, 1987:59) the foregoing brief survey of how genres are perceived in folklore studies, literary studies, linguistics and rhetoric indicates something of a common stance. its components can be summarized as follows: (1) a distrust of classification and of facile or premature prescriptivism; (2) a sense that genres are important for integrating past and present; (3) a recognition that genres are situated within discourse communities, wherein the beliefs and naming practices of members have relevance. (4) an emphasis on communicative purpose and social action; (5) an interest in generic structure (and its rationale); (6) an understanding of the double generative capacity of genres-to establish rhetorical goals and to further their accomplishment. 7 swales (1990:45) clarifies his definition of genre in the following way: (1) a genre is a class of communicative events. (2) the principle criteria feature that turns a collection of communicative events into a genre is some shared set of communicative purposes. (3) exemplars or instances of genres vary in their prototypicality. (4) the rationale behind a genre establishes constraints on allowable contributions in terms of their content, positioning and form. (5) a discourse communitys nomenclature for genres is an important source of insights. within the field of english for specific purposes, there are numerous definitions on genre (swales, 1990; bhatia, 1993; holmes, 1997). based on the above characteristics, swales (1990:58) provides an all-round view of genre as follows: a genre comprises a class of communicative events, the members of which share some set of communicative purposes. these purposes are recognized by the expert members of the parent discourse community, and thereby constitute the rationale for the genre. this rationale shapes the schematic structure of the discourse and influences and constrains choice of content and style. communicative purpose is both a privileged criterion and one that operates to keep the scope of a genre as here conceived narrowly focused on comparable rhetorical action. in addition to purpose, exemplars of a genre exhibit various patterns of similarity in terms of structure, style, content and intended audience. if all high probability expectations are realized, the exemplar will be viewed as prototypical by the parent discourse community. the genre names inherited and produced by discourse communities and imported by others constitute valuable ethnographic communication, but typically need further validation. as can be seen, the defining approach to genre by swales is basically functional in which genres are envisaged as social or communicative events. furthermore, the definition tries to 8 set up a relationship between the purpose accomplished by a genre and the structure of the genre by suggesting that “the communicative purpose of a genre shapes the genre and provides it with an internal structure-a schematic structure” (askehave and swales, 2001:197). although the definition of professional and academic genres proposed by bhatia (1993) owes its debt to swales work (1990), it differs from swales work in the way it brings in the psychological, particularly cognitive, level of genre construction. swales offers a good fusion of linguistic and sociological factors, thus undermining the importance of tactical aspects of genre as a dynamic social process as against a static one. bhatia expands swales definition from the following aspects (1993:13-15) (1) genre is a recognizable communicative event characterized by a set of communicative purpose(s) identified and mutually understood by the members of the professional or academic community in which it regularly occurs. (2) genre most often is highly structured and conventionalized communicative event. specialist members of any professional or academic community are generally credited with the knowledge of not only the communicative goals of their community but also the structure of the genres in which they regularly participate as part of their daily work. (3) various genres display constraints on allowable contributions in terms of their intent, positioning, form and functional value. this means that although the writer has a lot of freedom to use linguistic resources in any way s/he likes, s/he must conform to certain standard practices within the boundaries of a particular genre. (4) these constraints, however, are often exploited by the expert members of the discourse community to achieve private intentions within the framework of socially recognized purpose(s). 9 from the above elucidation, it is revealed that the communicative purpose(s) shapes the genre and gives it an internal structure. any mismatch in the use of generic resources is noticed as odd not only by the specialist community, but also by the good users of the language in general. the proper use of genre may be the result of the use of some specific lexico-grammatical resources, certain kinds of meanings associated with specific genres, the positioning of certain rhetorical elements or even special meanings realized through certain expressions typically associated with only a restricted number of genres. it is often found that the members of the professional or academic community have greater knowledge of the conventional purpose(s), construction and use of specific genres than those who are non-specialists. thats why expert genre writers often appear to be more creative in the use of genres they are most familiar with the conventions of the genre before one can exploit them for special effects. for non-specialists, including a majority of discourse analysts, this lack of knowledge often presents serious difficulties, not only in the interpretation of the genre-content but also in the validation of analytical findings. it is for this reason that it needs to involve a specialist informant or to seek his or her reactions on various aspects. to sum up, each genre is an instance of a successful achievement of a specific communicative purposes using conventionalized knowledge of linguistic and discoursal resources. 2.1.2 genre analysis in order to study genre, an attempt should be made towards establishing a systemic approach to analyzing genre. bhatia (1993) notes that discourse analysis can be conducted using at least four levels of description. the first is by focusing on surface-level linguistic description, noting for example the frequency of certain syntactic features of different varieties of english. the second is the use of functional language description. here the aim is to investigate the relationship between grammatical choice and rhetorical function. the third approach is using interactional analysis which highlights the interactive nature of discourse between the text and the reader. bhatia (1993) finds these first three approaches inadequate on two fronts. first, they lack “adequate information about the rationale underlying various discourse-types,” 10 including “insufficient explanation of socio-cultural, institutional, and organizational constraints and expectations that influence the nature of a particular discourse-genre”. second, they pay “little attention to the conventionalized regularities in the organization of various communicative events”. instead, bhatia argues that when analyzing text discourse, a fourth approach-genre analysis-is most fruitful. in his words, “it is necessary to combine socio-cultural and psycholinguistic aspects of text construction and interpretation with linguistic insights in order to answer the question, why are specific discourse-genres written and used by the specialist communities the way they are?” today genre analysis dominates work in esp (english for specific purposes). the normal progression is to start with a needs analysis, progressing to a genre analysis, which links communicative with psychological and social aspects of the field, to see how texts work, and finally to the writing of materials based on these analyses (dudley-evans, 1999). genre analysis is to combine socio-cultural (including ethnographic) and psycholinguistic (including cognitive) aspects of text-construction and interpretation with linguistic insights, in order to answer the question: why are specific discourse genres writte