Lingua e traduzione inglese - Discourse analysis

Creativity

We can also say that some people don’t follow the rules of constraints and sometimes they mix genres and don’t respect rules, this creativity is also accepted in some cases but it only exist because there are some specific boundaries between a genre and another and because there are constraints.

Discourse communities

The center of the idea of genre is belonging, we use genre to show ourselves to be member of particular groups and demonstrate that we are qualified to participate in particular activities. Genres are associated to groups and their common way of reaching a goal; those groups are called discourse communities introduced by the expert John Swales that says that a specific group has a specific vocabulary (dottori, avvocati ecc). Genre not only link people together but it also links people to certain activities, identities, roles and responsibilities.

All the right moves

Texts that are structured according to a particular generic frameworks are called genres. But

Genres are more than just texts, they are means by which people get things done and the way they are structured depends on what people using a genre want or need to do. In other words, its communicative purpose.

Usually, the overall communicative purpose of a genre can be broken down into a number of steps that users need to follow in order to achieve the desired purpose.

How a genre is structured involves the steps that must be included and the order in which they should appear, these steps are known as moves.

John Swales illustrated the idea of moves in one of his analyses where he questioned WHAT the writers need to do in a text in order to achieve their desired purpose. In answering the question, he identified 4 moves:

1. Establishes the field in which the writer of the study is working
2. Summarizes the related research or interpretations on one aspect of the field
3. Creates a research space or interpretive space for the present study by indicating a gap in current knowledge or by raising

4. Introduces the study by indicating what the investigation being reported will accomplish for the field-Not all introductions to academic articles contain all four of these moves in this exact order because some might contain different moves for example, for Swales these are prototypical moves. It is also important to remember that not all genres are equally conventionalized, while some genres have very strict rules about which moves should be included and what order they should be in, other genres exhibit much more variety.

Example: a dating advertisement, which sometimes appears on the newspaper, tend to consist of five moves:

1. The advertiser describes himself or herself
2. The advertiser describes the kind of person is looking for
3. He/she describes the kind of relationship or activities he/she wishes to engage in
4. The advertiser gives additional information
5. The advertiser indicates how he or she can be contacted

All of these moves are essential if the overall

The communicative purpose of finding a partner is to be achieved. Such ads also tend to have certain regularities in style and the kinds of language that is used to realize these five moves. It serves to communicative purpose of individual members of a discourse community to find suitable partners and also to define the values of the discourse community as a whole regarding what kinds of partners and activities are considered desirable.

A different Ad is given by the example of the matrimonial advertisement or an unique sub-genre of personal ads placed by lesbians in search of reproductive partners. The main difference has to do with the kinds of information included in the descriptions: educational attainment, income, caste, religion, immigration status or in the second case there's no elaborate description of the kind of person sought or what he or she is sought for beyond the use of the term 'donor'.

The most important point we can take from these two examples is that generic

Variation is not just a matter of the different values or styles of different discourse communities, but is also a function of differences in the overall communicative purpose of the sub-genre.

Bending and Blending

Despite the stylistic variety in personal advertisements among different discourse communities, this genre nevertheless remains very conventionalized, with fairly strict constraints on what is considered a relevant contribution.

Advertisers must describe themselves and the kind of person they are seeking, but also the relationship they want to have. The conventionalized nature of this genre has the potential to work against the overall communicative purpose that is attracting the attention of interested readers. It is not uncommon for expert users to try to make their ads stand out by playing with the conventions of the genre.

One way of playing with generic conventions, genre bending, involves flouting the conventions in subtle ways which makes a particular realization of a genre seem

creative or unique. One way is by flouting the expectations for self aggrandizement. Example: Chinese, 20, young but not attractive nor sexy etc. Example: Classic LADY limousine, mint condition, excellent runner. The advertiser blends the conventions of the dating and genre with the conventions of another genre, namely ads for automobiles. What both of these writers are doing by flouting the conventions of the genre is subtly distancing themselves from the discourse community of users while at the same time identifying with it. By ‘playing with’ the genre they succeed in resisting the commodifying nature of the genre and humanizing themselves one through modesty and the other through humour. Tactical aspects of using genres like bending and blending are common in nearly all communities and are often markers of users’ expertise. When bending a genre one must be careful not to bend it to the point of breaking. Modes, Media and Context A number of other important factors determine

How genres are used and how they change. One has to do with different modes (writing, video, graphics) that are available for constructing the genre, and another that has to do with the media through which genres are produced and distributed.

Nowadays it is more likely that one would encounter such an advertisement on the Internet rather in a newspaper. As a result to this migration, genre has changed dramatically:

• In terms of the different modes that are available to users to realize the moves. Because it's easier to upload digital photographs and even video in online personal advertisements.
• Opposite websites require users to fill out web forms which specify exactly which information should be included and render that information in a predetermined format. It makes it easier to electronically search through thousands of ads using keywords.
• Internet-based dating advertisements include all kinds of ways for the advertiser and target to interact thanks to online chat or real-time video.

chat.GPS also helps to find suitable partners within a certain radius of their present location.

The point is that genres inevitably change, either because communicative goals or technologies introduce new and more efficient ways of fulfilling old communicative goals.

Discourse and ideology.

We will focus on:

• The ways authors create "versions of reality" based on their choice of words and how they combine words together.
• The ways authors construct certain kind of relationships between themselves and their readers.
• The ways authors appropriate the words of other people and how they represented those words.
• The ways authors of texts draw upon and reinforce the largest system of belief and knowledge that govern what counts as right or wrong, good or bad, normal and abnormal.

Our words are very natural, text always promote a particular ideology that is a specific set of beliefs and assumptions people have, it provides us how the world is supposed to be, it help

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Us a worldview but it also limit us and make us exclude things, ideas and people. "Whos doing whats". Halliday points out that when we are using language we are always doing three things at once:

1. Representing the world —> ideational function of language
2. Creating relationship with people we are communicating —> interpersonal function of language
3. Joining sentences and ideas to form cohesive and coherent texts —> textual function of language

We represent the world through language by choosing words that represent people, things or concepts (participants) and words that represent what they are doing (processes), all texts contains these two elements. We have to choose wisely our words because we can be misunderstood. (In many ceremonies in many places the convener of the ceremony after the couple have taken their vows will pronounce them man and wife by using this kind of words they portray them as different kinds of beings and as fundamentally unequal, it

gives to the man an independent identity but makes the woman contingent on her relationship to the man. Nowadays we have I now pronounce you husband and wife in order to present the two individuals as more equal. The processes always create a kind of relationship between participants, this relationship is called transitivity by Halliday in which participants are portrayed as performing actions (for example, you may now kiss the bride which portrays the woman as a passive participant of the action when in reality she is an active participant, it has recently been changed in some places). Relationships. An important way texts promote ideology is in the relationship they create between the people who are communicating and the communicators and what they are communicating about. Halliday calls this the interpersonal function of language; we construct relationships through words we choose to express things like certainty and obligation. Language can create relationship (the priest).

Dice "you may kiss the bride" (come se stesse dando il permesso ed usa un linguaggio formale).

Another way we use language to construct relationships is through the style of speaking or writing that we choose ("you may now kiss the bride" instead of "why don't you give her a kiss").

Halliday sees formality as a matter of register, it tends to link us to different groups and it shows the relationship we have with other people and with whom we are communicating.

Intertextuality. Texts often refer or depend on other texts, this relationship is called intertextuality and this is an important way of promoting ideologies in discourse. Bakhtin says that we always use words that someone else said (both when we talk and when we write), we can't talk or write without borrowing something from someone else and at the same time without anticipating something. Intertextuality involves mixing genres like we've said before, mixing social language and mixing other people's words with.

Gee introduces frozen theories cultural models that