...seven-step corpus-based approach to discourse analysis that starts with a detailed analysis of each individual text in a corpus that can then be generalized across all texts of a corpus, providing a description of typical patterns of discourse organization that hold for the entire corpus. This approach is applied specifically to a methodology that is used to analyze texts in terms of the functional/communicative structures that typically make up texts in a genre: move analysis. The resulting corpus-based approach for conducting a move analysis significantly enhances the value of this often used (and misused) methodology, while at the same time providing badly needed guidelines for a methodology that lacks them. A corpus of ‘birthmother letters’ is used to illustrate the approach. Biber et al. (2007) explore how discourse structure and organization can be investigated using corpus analysis; they offer a structured, seven-step corpusbased approach to discourse analysis that results in generalizable descriptions of discourse structure. This article draws on the themes in this book, but focuses in particular on analyses that use theories on communicative or functional purposes of text as the starting point for understanding why texts in a corpus are structured the way they are, before moving to a closer examination and description of the linguistic characteristics and overall organizational tendencies reflective of the corpus. Biber et al. (2007) refer to this as a ‘top-down approach’...
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...DESCRIPTION is one of four rhetorical modes (also known as modes of discourse), along with exposition, argumentation, and narration. Each of the rhetorical modes is present in a variety of forms and each has its own purpose and conventions. Description is also the fiction-writing mode for transmitting a mental image of the particulars of a story. Description as a fiction-writing mode Fiction is a form of narrative, one of the four rhetorical modes of discourse. Fiction-writing also has distinct forms of expression, or modes, each with its own purposes and conventions. Agent and author Evan Marshall (agent) identifies five fiction-writing modes: action, summary, dialogue, feelings/thoughts, and background (Marshall 1988, pp. 143–165). Author and writing-instructor Jessica Page Morrell lists six delivery modes for fiction-writing: action, exposition, description, dialogue, summary, and transition (Morrell 2006, p. 127). Author Peter Selgin refers to methods, including action, dialogue, thoughts, summary, scene, and description (Selgin 2007, p. 38). Currently, there is no consensus within the writing community regarding the number and composition of fiction-writing modes and their uses. Description is the fiction-writing mode for transmitting a mental image of the particulars of a story. Together with dialogue, narration, exposition, and summarization, description is one of the most widely recognized of the fiction-writing modes. As stated in Writing from A to Z, edited by Kirk...
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...Business This collection contains materials that inform, instruct, and support those who wish to develop or improve a set of writing skills that will have practical applications in the business environment. Included are annotated examples, online templates and step-by-step guides for writing common business documents such as letters, memos, email, and press releases. Category: Business Documents Hide Descriptions Writing Guides Business Letters: When you write business letters in industry or for a class, knowing your purpose and audience will help determine what information to include. Generally, business letters follow a particular format, although your instructor or company may require you to use alternative formats. This guide provides writers with an introduction to writing business letters. Case Studies: This guide examines case studies, a form of qualitative descriptive research that is used to look at individuals, a small group of participants, or a group as a whole. Researchers collect data about participants using participant and direct observations, interviews, protocols, tests, examinations of records, and collections of writing samples. Starting with a definition of the case study, the guide moves to a brief history of this research method. Using several well documented case studies, the guide then looks at applications and methods including data collection and analysis. A discussion of ways to handle validity, reliability, and generalizability follows, with...
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...1. a) Rhetorical Situation: Rhetorical Situation is a framework that serves as a useful way to analyze public discourse. Speaker first set a relevant context to an issue or problem the audience is facing and then come up with solutions. Lloyd Bitzer defined the rhetorical situation as, “A complex of persons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or potential exigence which can be completely or partially removed if discourse, introduced into the situation, can so constrain human decision or action as to bring about the significant modification of the exigence.” For example, a serious oil spill happened in the U.S. The Rhetorical situation is thus created because the oil spill caused damage to the environment. The environmental...
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...develop their ability to work with language and texts in order to establish greater awareness of purpose and strategy, while strengthening their own composing abilities. C16 Students examine rhetoric in essays, images, movies, novels, and speeches. They frequently confer about their writing by conferencing in class. C 14 Feedback is given both before and after students revise their work to help them develop logical organization, enhanced by specific techniques to increase coherence. Rhetorical structures, graphic organizers, and work on repetition, transitions, and emphasis are addressed. I comment on individual drafts, and I write memos to the class in a blog about whole-class concerns such as specificity of quotations, parallelism, and transitions. C13 Simultaneously, students review the simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentence classifications. We examine word order, length, and surprising constructions. Loose and periodic sentences are introduced. We examine sample sentences and discuss how change affects tone, purpose, and credibility of the author/speaker. In addition, feedback on producing sentence structure variety is focused on critical thinking skills, evaluating sources and resources, using specific details to support general conclusions, revising for the best possible way to sue the language to express ideas clearly, concisely, and elegantly as possible. The feedback is ongoing and frequent. C9 In order to encourage students to be successful...
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...analysis, evaluation and synthesis of information • Communication Skills: To include effective development and expression of ideas through written, oral, and visual communication • Teamwork: To include the ability to consider different points of view and to work effectively with others to support a shared purpose or goal • Personal Responsibility: To include the ability to connect choices, actions and consequences to ethical decision-making ENGL 1301 Expected Learning Outcomes. By the end of ENGL 1301, you should be able to demonstrate the following: Rhetorical Knowledge • Use knowledge of the rhetorical situation—author, audience, exigence, constraints—to analyze and construct texts • Compose texts in a variety of genres, expanding your repertoire beyond predictable forms • Adjust voice, tone, diction, syntax, level of formality, and structure to meet the demands of different rhetorical situations Critical Reading, Thinking, and Writing • Use writing, reading, and discussion for inquiry,...
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... Introductory Activities: ▪ Class rules, expectations, procedures ▪ Students review patterns of writing, which they will imitate throughout the course: reflection, narration and description, critical analysis, comparison and contrast, problem and solution, and persuasion and argument. ▪ Students review annotation acronyms, how to do a close reading, literary elements and rhetorical devices. Students also review the SOAPSTONE (subject, occasion, audience, purpose, speaker, tone, organization, narrative style and evidence) strategy for use in analyzing prose and visual texts along with three of the five cannons of rhetoric: invention, arrangement and style. ▪ Students learn the format of the AP test, essay rubric and essay structure. ▪ Students take a full-length AP test for comparison purposes in the spring. Reading: The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne Writing: Answer the following question in one paragraph. Use quotes from the novel as evidence. Some readers believe that the elaborate decoration that Hester embroiders on the scarlet letter indicates her rejection of the community’s view of her act. Do you agree or disagree? Explain your position using evidence from the text. (test grade) Writing: Write a well-developed essay addressing the following prompt. Document all sources using MLA citation. Compare Hester to a modern day person who has been shunned. Provide at least two research sources for the other person. (project grade) ...
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...rhetoric is concerned we should inevitably deal with literature. In other words rhetoric is like a joint which connect literature with politics and establish a method of analyzing political speeches called polio-linguistic approach. Thus we can consider political discourses as pieces of literature. Literary techniques especially rhetorical devices serve as one of the most distinctive features of the greatest and most influential speeches of all time. There is no shortage of rhetorical devices used in these speeches, but we can prioritize them by count of repetitions in political discourses. In this study first I have represented the necessity of using these types of persuasive skills in political discourses, the methods within which politicians take advantages of these skills and the different sides of a successful speech. Then after a glance through different rhetorical devices, excerpts from four of the greatest speeches in history are provided with the rhetorical devices indicated in them. Finally a quite deep examination of the most important of these rhetorical devices is presented and the conclusion is made through comparing these samples. The primary purpose of every presenter or rhetorician is to grab people`s attention. After that he/ she needs to convey people`s thoughts and beliefs in his/her to desirable direction. This is a hard job and needs a big deal of effort and commitment. In...
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...became the bases for learning to support my opinion with aspects from a novel. This became especially challenging in terms of trying to analytically defend and justify the decision of one of the main characters, despite the surface level analyses that the character was “wrong” for her decision. Developing a personal position that was rooted and supported by evidence from the text also helped to strengthen my ability to discern the appropriate voice needed in an argumentative essay. Argumentative essays should not only include a position on the topic, but it should also use emotional and logical appeals directed toward countering the opposing argument. Since originally submitting the paper I’ve made stylistic revisions including, not posing rhetorical questions that I leave unanswered which suggest a different style of writing such as a magazine or something less formal than an academic...
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...At the point when Rev Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., made his name in the United States of America, he was arrested and detained inside a prison in Birmingham, AL, for reason obscure. While he was holding up in prison, eight caucasian priests of Alabama issued a letter to African-Americans and asked them to quit dissenting in the boulevards. King was exasperated by this letter, and reacted by composing "A Letter From a Birmingham Jail" asserting that African-Americans will never get the rights they merit in the event that they quit dissenting. King’s first rhetorical strategy he used was the use of loaded language. King used loaded language to assist in the understanding of the horrors that were being wreaked upon African-Americans everyday. One example of this is when King said, “ But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim”. This statement told about...
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...A GENRE ANALYSIS OF SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL STAFF MEETING MINUTES ABSTRACT Interest in genre analysis has increased over the years with studies done by several scholars such as Swales, Bhatia, Berkonkotter, Hyon, Bazerman, Miller, to mention just a few, on various genre ranging from the research article in general to letters. Studies on genre analysis into meeting minutes are however, very limited and so the aim of this study is to investigate the communicative purpose, schematic structure and lexico grammatical features which characterize this genre. Swales' (1990) rhetorical approach to genre analysis was used to investigate eighteen meeting minutes which revealed the occurrence of seven moves with each having its own communicative purpose and linguistic features which characterize the genre as a formal one. The study has implications for genre studies in the area of pedagogy and further research. Key words: genre, minutes, discourse, moves, steps, Ghana. 1.0 INTRODUCTION Minutes is a highly formal written genre situated in the domain of business discourse and is an official record and considered a legal document by auditors, IRS and the law courts. Oxford defines it as a written record of what is said and decided at a meeting. It is used by institutions, corporate bodies and varied organisations. Its main communicative purpose is to record and relay information to the members of that discourse community. It also gives members the platform to express their views and opinions...
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...Copyright © 2013 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978-0-07-180360-1 MHID: 0-07-180360-2 The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: ISBN: 978-0-07-180359-5, MHID: 0-07180359-9. E-book conversion by Codemantra Version 1.0 All trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners. Rather than put a trademark symbol after every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use names in an editorial fashion only, and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. Where such designations appear in this book, they have been printed with initial caps. McGraw-Hill Education eBooks are available at special quantity discounts to use as premiums and sales promotions or for use in corporate training programs. To contact a representative please visit the Contact Us page at www.mhprofessional.com. Trademarks: McGraw-Hill Education, the McGraw-Hill Education logo, 5 Steps to a 5 and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of McGraw-Hill Education and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property...
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...Seitalieva Alina, 143-1 William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 65” Shakespeare's Sonnets samples belong to the lyric poetry of the Renaissance. The poets of that time, and especially Shakespeare, very acutely aware of the contradictions of life. They saw them in the outside world and in the human soul. "Sonnets" reveal to us the dialectic of emotional experiences associated with the feeling of love, which is not only the source of the highest joys, but also cause grave suffering. The main theme of the “sonnet 65”- the fact that many things are strong, but there is nothing in this universe is forever, especially not a fleeting emotion, such as love. The general idea - the fact that many things are strong, but there is nothing in this universe is forever, especially not a fleeting emotion, such as love. Mortality governs the universe and everything in this world is perishable, so it is only through the infinite art of writing, that the emotion and beauty can be saved. If you remember the main theme of sonnet 64, it is possible to find similarities, because it is continuing the theme of ”ravages of time”. In addition, we can find words such as main, rage, love, that send us back to Sonnet 64. So, we proceed to the analysis of the poem: First quatrain: The beginning of sonnet: "brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea" can escape the ravages of time. In this line, the author used such stylistic devise as gradation: “brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea”, it is a...
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...not a torture technique that involves forced simulated drowning. Less remarkable, perhaps, but possibly more relevant for most of us, we’ve heard the term “downsized” used when someone is fired or laid off. “Ethnic cleansing” covers everything from deportation to genocide. What we have to say may be important, but the words we choose to say it with can be equally important. The examples just given are cases of a certain type of linguistic coercion—an attempt to get us to adopt a particular attitude toward a subject that, if described differently, would seem less attractive to us. Words have tremendous persuasive power, or what we have called their rhetorical force or emotive meaning—their power to express and elicit images, feelings, and emotional associations. In the next few chapters, we examine some of the most common rhetorical techniques used to affect people’s attitudes, opinions, and behavior. Rhetoric refers to the study of persuasive writing. As we use the term, it denotes a broad category of linguistic techniques people use Moore−Parker: Critical Thinking, Ninth Edition 5. Persuasion Through Rhetoric: Common Devices and...
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...franklan118@yahoo.com.cn VCE ENGLISH Units 3 & 4, 2008 ESL EXAMINATION LANGUAGE TASK A Guide & Resource Book for VCE English Area of Study 3 Robc.-t McGrcgor L I1 I 'Cl:: HI/glish Towards ' Ou/(:olfles This book is scaned by franklan118@yahoo.com.cn franklan118@yahoo.com.cn ESL EXAMINATION LANGUAGE TASK Robert McGregor THE ENGLISH CLUB COI'YRIGHT NOTICE Copying for educational purposes Th e Australian Copyright ACI 1986(the Act) allows a maximum of onc chapter or 10"10 of this book, whichever is the greater, to be copied by an educational institution for its educational purposes provided that that educational institution (or the body that administers it) has given a remuneration nOlice Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. For details orlhe CAL licence for educational institutions contact: Copyright Agency Limited Lcvc119, 157 Liverpool Strcci Sydney NSW 2000 Telepho ne : (02) 93947600 Facsimile: (02) 9394 7601 E-mail: info@copyright.co11l.au Copying for other purposes 10 Copyright Except as permitted under the Act (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes o f study, research, criticism or review) no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any fonn or by any means without prior wr itte n pennission. All inquiries should be made to the p ublisher . ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For official advice on th e requirements of the VCE English study design, readers should consult the bulletins published...
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