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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:607346 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Yaakob, Salmah Binti |
| Publisher | University of Birmingham |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/5241/ |
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