The Generic Integrity of Newspaper Editorials: A Systemic Functional Perspective
Title
The Generic Integrity of Newspaper Editorials: A Systemic Functional Perspective
The Generic Integrity of Newspaper Editorials: A Systemic Functional Perspective
Keywords: genre analysis, Generic Structure Potential (GSP), Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), newspaper editorials
Authors
Hasan Ansary
Shiraz University, Iran
Hasan Ansary
Shiraz University, Iran
Esmat Babaii
Teacher Training University, Iran
Bio Data
Hasan Ansary (Mr): Ph.D. candidate in TEFL (Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran), EFL instructor (University for Teacher Education, Tehran, Iran), and assistant editor of the Iranian Journal of Applied linguistics
Esmat Babaii (Ms.): Ph.D. candidate in TEFL (Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran), EFL instructor (University for Teacher Education, Tehran, Iran), and Assistant editor of the Iranian Journal of Applied linguistics
Abstract
One fruitful line of research has been to explore the local linguistic as well as global rhetorical patterns of particular genres in order to identify their recognizable structural identity, or what Bhatia (1999, p. 22) calls “generic integrity.” In terms of methodology, to date most genre-based studies have employed one or the other of Swales’s move-analytic models of text analysis to investigate whether or not the generic prototypical patterns that he has introduced exist universally. This paper, however, considers the application of the Systemic Functional (SF) theory of language to genre analysis. The paper looks, in particular, at distinctive rhetorical features of English newspaper editorials as an important public “Cinderella” genre and proposes a generic prototypical pattern of text development for editorials or what Halliday and Hasan (1989) refer to as the Generic Structure Potential (GSP) of a genre. The results of this study should benefit both genre theory and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and will be, it seems, of interest not only to applied linguists, but to those involved in education, journalism, and the media.
One fruitful line of research has been to explore the local linguistic as well as global rhetorical patterns of particular genres in order to identify their recognizable structural identity, or what Bhatia (1999, p. 22) calls “generic integrity.” In terms of methodology, to date most genre-based studies have employed one or the other of Swales’s move-analytic models of text analysis to investigate whether or not the generic prototypical patterns that he has introduced exist universally. This paper, however, considers the application of the Systemic Functional (SF) theory of language to genre analysis. The paper looks, in particular, at distinctive rhetorical features of English newspaper editorials as an important public “Cinderella” genre and proposes a generic prototypical pattern of text development for editorials or what Halliday and Hasan (1989) refer to as the Generic Structure Potential (GSP) of a genre. The results of this study should benefit both genre theory and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and will be, it seems, of interest not only to applied linguists, but to those involved in education, journalism, and the media.
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