An investigation of the functions, strategies and linguistic features of the introductions and conclusions of essays

System, Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 479~495, 1997

Pergamon P I I : S0346-251X(97)OOO47-X

© 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd All rights reserved. Printed in Great Britain 0346-251 X/97 $17.00 + 0.00

AN INVESTIGATION OF THE FUNCTIONS, STRATEGIES AND LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF THE INTRODUCTIONS A N D CONCLUSIONS OF ESSAYS ALEX HENRY and ROBERT L. ROSEBERRY

Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Negara Brunei Darussalam All students in schools and higher education frequently have to read and write "essays". However, if we consider Bruffee's view (Bruffee, K. A. (1980) A Short Course in Writing, Winthrop, Cambridge, MA) that the purpose of an essay is to present an idea and then defend or explain it, this type of writing encompasses a much wider range of discourse. Despite the obvious importance of the essay, little research has been carried out into its rhetorical features. The aim of this research was to use a genre-based research methodology to determine the rhetorical organization of the introductions and endings of essays, and to identify correlations between linguistic features and the functions they perform. A corpus of 40 essays was created and following the procedure of Hasan (Hasan, R. (1989) in Language, Context, and Text: Aspects of Language in a Social-Semiotic Perspective, eds Halliday and Hasan), the obligatory and optional moves, and the allowable move order were identified. The strategies chosen by the writers to "do the moves", and the linguistic features which characterised the realisations of each of the moves were investigated using the method described in Henry and Roseberry (Henry, A. and Roseberry, R. L. (1996) in Research in the Teaching of English 30, 472489). It was found that although the essay includes an exceedingly wide range of topics, styles and text lengths, essay introductions and conclusions exhibit many clearly identifiable generic discourse and linguistic features. © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd

INTRODUCTION Perhaps the most common place for the term "essay" to appear is in the educational context. In most secondary and tertiary institutions, pupils and students are still burdened with the task of writing essays to display knowledge presented to them by teachers or lecturers or acquired from prescribed texts. However, essays are not confined to academia. Bruffee (1980) defines the purpose of an essay as putting forward a point of view on a particular issue or topic and defending or explaining it. He describes the expository essay as consisting of three parts: an introduction, a unifying idea, and a defence or explanation. If we consider the essay to be defined 479

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in these terms then we can include under the heading "essay" a very wide range of texts including feature articles in newspapers and illustrative case studies in undergraduate management textbooks. The question that now arises is under what heading can such texts be grouped. One possibility is that these texts all belong to the same "genre". The modern notion of genre groups texts together based primarily on their purpose within a social context. However, the notion of purpose is not as straightforward as one might at first think. Swales (1981, 1986, 1990) and Bhatia (1993) both give priority in their definitions of genre to "communicative purpose" but also include secondary considerations such as a conventionalised structure, both rhetorical and social, and restrictions on the linguistic features that can be used. Their definitions of genre are further refined by the notion of a "discourse community" who regularly participate in the genre and who are aware of its conventions. In Biber's (1988) view genre membership is also primarily determined by use (external, non-linguistic criteria) related to the speaker or writer's purpose rather than by linguistic form. However, the categories of use to determine genre membership in Biber's (1988) study are very general and he admits the possibility that these categories may well be a combination of several genres if more specific use is considered. For example, his study places sermons, university lectures, cases in court, political speeches, and popular lectures under the genre "prepared speeches". Biber suggests that from a theoretical point of view the category "prepared speeches" may be a superordinate category rather than one genre. Biber (1988) also makes clear his concept of genre by contrasting it with the notion o f " t e x t type" which groups texts with similar linguistic features. This distinction between genre and text type allows for different genres to belong to the same text type. For example, Biber found that the present tense was one of a cluster of features predominant in academic prose which could be considered to consist of several genres if specific purpose is considered. The essay as a genre would appear to satisfy the most important priority in that all essays have a similar general purpose: to put forward a point of view and either defend or explain it. If Bruffee's (1980) description of the essay is correct, essays would also satisfy the condition of conventional structure: an introduction followed by a central idea ("proposition" is Bruffee's term, while "main idea", "main claim", and "thesis" are also used in ESL/EFL textbooks) followed by an explanation or a defence of the proposition. From the above discussion, it would be tempting to postulate that the essay is indeed a genre. However, there are several reasons for resisting this temptation. The most important of these concerns communicative purpose. "Putting forward a point of view and explaining or defending this view" is perhaps too general a purpose to be of practical benefit. While the general purpose of the texts in this category may be broadly similar, we find many specific purposes within this category. For example, the illustrative case study aims to show undergraduate management students how a problem in a company can be solved using a particular management technique, the specific purpose of an undergraduate essay is to demonstrate understanding of a particular body of knowledge, while the feature article aims to make a particular topic interesting and to present information in an interesting way. The consideration of the specific purposes of these texts also makes quite clear that there are different discourse communities involved.

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The feature these texts have in common is, of course, that they are expository in nature and so perhaps a more useful positioning of the term "essay" would be to consider it not as a genre but rather as an expository text type. If this classification is sound then the texts in this group should exhibit similar linguistic patterns which can be related to specific functions. Biber (1988, 1989) proposes a typology of texts based not on their functions, but on their prominent linguistic characteristics. He identifies three main types of exposition: "scientific", "learned" and "general narrative". Biber (1989: p. 38) describes scientific expository texts as "extremely informational, elaborated in reference, and technical and abstract in style and content", learned exposition differs from scientific in that it is "less abstract and less technical in style" while general narrative "is a very general text type that combines narrative forms with expository, informational elaboration". Given the large number of texts which fall into this category and hence its importance to second language learners and indeed native speakers (Martin and Peters, 1985), and the limited amount of previous research, we began an extensive corpus-based investigation into the functions and linguistic patterns of two of the three classes of this text type identified by Biber, "learned exposition" and "general narrative exposition". In this paper we report on the findings of this study related to the introductions and endings of essays. In particular we report on the rhetorical functions found, the moves identified, the allowable move order, the strategies chosen to do the moves and their linguistic realisations.

BACKGROUND

Definition of terms The term "rhetorical function" refers to the logical relationships that bind parts of a text together. The term "move" follows Bhatia (1993) in that a particular move is designed to realise a particular intention or purpose while contributing to the overall communicative purpose of the text. For example, the move "location" in the genre brief tourist information, described in Henry and Roseberry (1996), gives the location of a tourist site and does so in a manner which entices readers to visit the site. From the definition of a move, it follows that a "move boundary" is where the writer changes his or her communicative intention. Following Bhatia (1993: pp. 19-21) a "strategy" is how a writer chooses to do a move, for example, self promotion through "listing work experience" in a Letter of Application. Strategies then, are tactical choices which aim to make the writing effective by considering "reader requirements".

Purpose and language teach&g Lindemann (1987) traces the history of the definition of the term "rhetoric" from the original, rather narrow definition which saw rhetoric only as the study of the art of persuasion to the "new rhetoric" which emphasises much more the different purposes and the social actions people perform when using language. However, while the "new rhetoricians" do indeed mention purpose and audience when teaching writing (e.g. Winterowd and Murray, 1985; Elbow and Belanoff, 1995) their emphasis seems still to be on the process involved rather than on the purpose. This may be explained by the lack of specific instructional frameworks emanating from the New Rhetoric movement (Hyon 1996).

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In ESP/EAP settings, the approach to the teaching or reading/writing which has purpose as its foundation is the genre approach developed by Swales (1981, 1986, 1990), and Bhatia (1991, 1993) among others. The genre approach to the description and teaching of language aims to identify the rhetorical structure of a genre and relate this structure to its communicative purpose while considering the social context in which the genre occurs. Linguistic features associated with the realisation of this purpose can then be identified and presented to the second language learner. The final step is to explain to the learner why writers choose particular strategies and linguistic forms to achieve their communicative purpose.

Previous genre-based research In academic settings this approach has been used to identify the generic structure of, among others, research article introductions (Swales, 1981), lecture introductions (Thompson, 1994), discussion sections of articles and dissertations (Hopkins and DudleyEvans, 1988), results sections of research articles (Dudley-Evans 1986). In professional settings, Bhatia (1993) has investigated sales promotion letters, job applications, and legislative documents, while Henry and Roseberry (1996) describe in some detail the linguistic features found in the moves of brief tourist information texts. Although no investigation appears to have been carried out on published essays, some research has been carried out into the structure and linguistic features of expository essays of young writers in particular, the essays of primary and secondary school students in Australia (Martin and Peters, 1985), native speaker undergraduate essays (Kusel, 1992) and non-native speaker high school matriculation students in Papua New Guinea (Hyland, 1990) while Horowitz (1989) explores the interaction between the writing and research processes in undergraduate research papers ("essays" in British terms). Kusel (1992) attempted to analyse the introductions and endings of undergraduate native speakers' essays using a modified version of Swales' (1990) research article model for the introductions, and, presumably, his own categories for conclusions. Certain aspect of this study appear problematic however. In particular, the approach is top-down in that it starts with a framework for the introductions based on an analysis of a completely different genre, and tries to fit the data into this framework. Furthermore, the origins of the model used for the analysis of the endings is not clearly stated or justified. However, this work is interesting in that it found some rather unusual functions in the students' essays such as "claiming centrality" for the topic of their essays, and "indicating a gap". Hyland (1990) proposes a preliminary descriptive framework, based on obligatory and optional moves, for the argumentative essay. He proposes a possible five move introduction, with one move being obligatory, and a possible four move, one obligatory, conclusion. Hyland's data are drawn from the top 10% of essay scripts from a high school matriculation exam and are supplemented by what the author calls an "informal sample" of the British and American press. Horowitz (1989: p. 354) points out that unlike primary research papers, the conventions governing the structure of undergraduate essays are not so apparent. He suggests students follow the introduction, body, conclusion structure mentioned in most writing books with the introduction beginning with 'rather general attention getting statements' leading to a thesis statement. The thesis statement is then followed by some indication of how the essay is to be organised. With regard to the conclusion Horowitz

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says very little regarding the organization of the conclusion but indicates that some discussion of the thesis statement is necessary. Sections of essays and their functions Most textbook writers consider the essay to have three main sections--introduction, support and conclusion---each of which has its own definable rhetorical function or functions. Bruffee (1980: p. 29) suggests the introduction has one main purpose: to provide sufficient background information to prepare the reader to receive the proposition. He suggests that the proposition to be discussed follows this preparation. The purpose of the body of the essay is to provide evidence to convince the reader of the truth of the proposition while conclusions according to Bruffee (1980: p. 77), give the writer the opportunity to: show the relevance of a proposition-and therefore the relevance of the whole essay-by explaining how it is related to its assumptions or implications, to a system of knowledge or values, to other ideas or to h u m a n experience. In this way they expand the significance of something by showing its relationship to a context of issues.

These descriptions of the possible purposes of the different sections of the essay suggested by Bruffee provide a reasonable starting point for the investigation of the rhetorical functions likely to be found in this text type.

METHODS AND PROCEDURES The data From our corpus of several genres we extracted 40 "essays" which originated from a wide range of sources including feature articles from newspapers including The Borneo Bulletin, The Straits Times, The Economist; magazines including Time and Newsweek; illustrative case studies from management textbooks including Stoner et al. (1995); encyclopedia entries including Grolier; short essays in travel books and atlases; compilations of essays in books; and academic essays written by native speakers (in Bruffee, 1980). The criteria for possible inclusion was that each text contained a point of view and an explanation or defence of that point of view. In defining "introduction", we collapse Bruffee's separation of background and proposition, and consider the introduction to an essay as being from the beginning of the essay to the end of the proposition. The term "conclusion" is taken from the point at which the writer stops explaining or defending the proposition to the end of the text. Method A corpus of the 40 essays was created and the texts analysed taking heed of the warning in Chafe (1994) that typological and aesthetic concerns often govern indentation in published work. Thus physical paragraphs were not considered to be obvious boundaries between moves, strategies or rhetorical functions. The rhetorical functions which characterise each of the moves were determined in terms of the communicative purpose of the genre: namely to put forward and explain or defend a proposition. In order to ensure the reliability of the analysis, definitions were written for the moves identified and a member of the Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics not involved in this project was asked to identify the moves, based on our definitions, in 20 of the texts chosen

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at random from the original 40. To identify the obligatory and optional moves and the allowable move order we followed the procedure of Hasan (1989). The next step involved the creation of a separate corpus for each move in order to identify the strategies and rhetorical functions chosen by the authors to "do the move". Then using a concordancing programme and following the procedure described in Henry and Roseberry (1996), we identified the linguistic features which characterise the realisations of each of the moves. Finally, we identified cohesive elements and changes in tense across move boundaries.

RESULTS A N D DISCUSSION We present our findings in terms of the moves identified, the order of the moves, the strategies used to do the moves and the linguistic features of the moves and the move boundaries. Introductions Moves, move order and strategies. We found that the main purpose of the introduction is to state the central idea which is to be explained or defended in the essay. A secondary purpose is to provide the reader with enough background knowledge in which to set the central idea. To achieve these purposes we found the following three moves: Introducing the Topic (IT), a very general statement which introduces the topic of the essay's central idea in very general terms; Narrowing the Focus (NF), which increases the specification of the topic to prepare the reader for the more specific proposition contained in the Central Idea; and Stating the Central Idea of the Essay (CI), which states very clearly the proposition to be explained or defended in the essay. The first two moves, which are optional were employed by the essay writers to provide sufficient and interesting background in which to set the proposition to be presented. These two moves appear together in the order presented above and were found in 83% of the texts in the essay corpus. CI was found in all the texts and if IT and N F were present, CI immediately followed them. Using Hasan's (1989) terms this pattern is represented by the formula (IT) (NF) CI (where" means "precedes" and brackets indicate an optional move) and describes the allowable move structure of the introduction, as used by the writers of this genre. ^

^

These findings are similar to Hyland's (1990) model in that the introduction has only one obligatory move, Central Idea, which corresponds to his Proposition. The main difference between the models is that in our model the Central Idea includes as strategies Hyland's last two moves: Evaluation, which gives support to the proposition; and Marker, which introduces or identifies a list. Contrary to Kusel's (1992) findings we found no examples of Claiming Centrality, Previous Research, Indicating a Gap or Revealing Outcome. This perhaps highlights the range of possible moves found within this text type. Strategies.

The strategies most commonly used to do the moves are shown in Table 1

Linguistic features which characterise the moves and the move boundaries Introducing the topic. The purpose of this move is to introduce the topic of the essay in general terms. The move is typically realised in 2.24 sentences, averaging 21 words.

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Table 1. Strategies used in the Introduction Move

Strategies

Introduction to the Topic (IT)

Make a general statement (58%) Give an example (10%) Give a general historical perspective (8%) Make a prediction (8%) Give a general definition (6%) Ask a general question (2%) Give statistics (2%) Give a list (2%) Give a quote (2%)

Narrowing the Focus (NF)

Give specific facts, statistics, examples, historical background, justification, classification, the next item in a set, or specific background information (55%) Explain or give reasons for the IT move (13%) Introduce a problem (7%) Contrast with the past by describing the present (4%) Predict or speculate about the future (4%) Ask a question about the IT move (2%) Choose an item from a set (2%) Answer a WH-question (2%) Make a related statement (2%) Give a description (2%) Give more general background information (2%) Give a general principle or an example (2%)

Stating the Central Idea (CI)

State a fact (including general and specific statements) (70%) State a problem (10%) State or referring to a solution to a problem (7.5%) Provide a Preview of the essay structure (5%) Ask a question (55%) Ask a question and providing an answer (2.5%) Describe a problem and a solution (2.5%) Give a definition (2.5%) Offer a historical perspective (2.5%)

General nouns (e.g. people, man, world, earth) and general noun phrases (e.g. p o o r health care, failure of resources, the number of human beings alive at any one time) are a feature of m a n y of the texts. Proper nouns (e.g. Henry Ford, The New Yorker, The Guarani Indians) to introduce the name of the topic are also frequent. Multiple clause combinations are a very c o m m o n feature: hypotaxis is found in 42% of the texts mainly as adverb clauses with " i f ' , "when", "as", "while" and "since"; and embedding in the form of adjective clauses with "which" and "that" occurs in 15% of the texts. The simple present tense is found in 82% of the texts to make statements of fact, give examples, quote statistics and identify. The past tense occurs in 24% of the texts and the present perfect tense in 17% and both are used to give a historical perspective, make statements of fact and give examples. The future tense with "will" was found in only 6% and it was used to make predictions.

Narrowing the focus. The purpose of this move is to increase the specification of information in a way that ties together the introductory first move, with the central idea, which is to follow. The move is, on average, realised in 3.9 sentences averaging 21 words. The most c o m m o n technique of specification is to construct topics and comments in such a way so that at least one of t h e s e - - a n d usually b o t h - - c o n t a i n s specifics such as names,

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dates, statistics, facts, etc. For example, "The name Ritz (topic) has been synonymous with quality for years (comment)". Topic and comment can be related by any kind of logical relationship. Such a relationship leads to greater specification. Some examples from the corpus follow (key words italicized): (Table 2). The present and simple past tenses dominate this move with a number of uses of the present perfect also found. The active is the most common choice of voice being used in 82% of the items, with the passive being used, as is common in English usage, to delete actors that are unimportant or whose identity is understood from the cotext. Due to this move being relatively long, it is not uncommon for several tenses to be used in this move in a single text. The most common tenses are present simple (49%), simple past (25%) and present perfect (19%). The present tense is used to ask questions, give specific facts and make specific statements while the simple past and the present perfect are mainly used to give facts. Other important features of this move are hypotaxis and embedding, and a first-person stance. Frequent hypotactic connections include "that" (39%), "when" (18%), "because" ( 15 % ), a n d " as" ( 12 %). Embedding is realised with "which" (24%, with half of all instances preceded by the prepositions "in", "on", "at"), "who" (21%), and "that" (18%). If a firstperson stance is to be used in the essay, it is most likely to enter at this move. In the corpus, first-person ("I") appears in 9% of the texts in this move. It appears only once in the IT move. Examples include: "One of the reasons I gave was ..."; and "These exciting propositions occurred to me" when I read somewhere that .... " Occasionally in the corpus "we" is used in this move to indicate a group to which the writer, and possibly the reader, belong. Table 2. Specification through logical relationships Logical relationship

Topic

Comment

Dependency (X depends on Y)

What happens after that

Necessity (X necessitates Y)

Rapid progress in the medical application of basic biological knowledge

has necessitated the ethical questioning of certain present-day and imminent medical practices...

Reason (The reason BE that...)

The major reason we placed ourselves at the top of the intellectual hierarchy

was that we have a language

Classification (X can be classified into...)

Electronic publishing technologies

can be classifed into two general

Cause Effect (The cause of X lies in Y)

The cause of this extraordinary explosion in human numbers over the past 200 years

lies essentially in declining death

(X is caused by Y)

...Hurler's syndrome,

caused by a defect in the gene that

Comparison~Contrast (Unlike X, Y...)

Unlike the rich and the middle class,

are barred from advanced methods of treatment...

depends on the speed at which the

rate of population growth slows down

categories:... rates ...

produces the enzyme. who can afford private medical insurance and private doctors, these people

Enumeration On top of that, China (On top of that, X (transitive verb).., another...)

faces another population induced crisis of supply and demand.

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I T - - N F move boundary. The choice of tense across the move boundary shows that a kind of tense harmony exists, linking this move to the preceding IT move. The pattern is as in Table 3: Tense is thus a powerful indicator of the move boundary. It is interesting to note, however, that the present tense is the most c o m m o n tense in both moves, and it is the only tense that harmonizes with itself across the move boundary. In 30% of the texts in this corpus that contain the IT and N F moves, the present tense is used predominantly in both. Semantic cohesion exists across the move boundary in all texts in the corpus containing both the IT and the N F moves. In Table 4 the cohesive devices, with an example of each from the corpus, show how this is typically done. (The coreferent is italicized). It is interesting to note that several cohesive devices may be combined in the same text, as in some of the examples in the table above; also that determiners or demonstratives may be found within noun phrases, and these contribute to cohesion.

Stating the central idea o f the essay. The first move of the introduction, if present, introduces the topic of the essay in a very general way. The second move then narrows the focus which prepares the reader for the more specific proposition contained in the Central Idea. Two main purposes of this move were identified: stating specifically the central idea of the essay, and secondly showing how committed the writer is to the truth of this proposition. This move is the shortest of the moves in the corpus, being realised, on average, in 1.3 sentences averaging 19 words. As the purpose of this move is to make clear to the audience a central idea which can be discussed in reasonable depth within an essay, specification is again an important feature. To increase the specification of the topic to an even greater extent than in the previous move "narrowing the topic", a writer may include specific references to time, places, classes/categories, specific activities, trends/fashions, and alternatives. The most common of these references are specific activities and place followed by classes/categories. Table 5 shows some examples from the corpus. Another common way of achieving specification is achieved through logical relationships and this is found in 22.5% of the texts. This is mainly through "cause-effect" in 12% of the texts, and "comparison-contrast" in 7.5%. Table 3. Tense harmony across the IT NF move boundary If the IT moves ends with this tense:

The NF move will most likely begin with this tense:

Present

Present (36%) Present perfect (15%) Past (12%) Present perfect (6%) Present (6%) Past (12%)

Past Present perfect

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ALEX HENRY and ROBERTL. ROSEBERRY Table 4. Cohesion across the IT NF move boundary

Cohesive device Repetition (33%)

Cohesive node in I T

Beginning of N F

Henry Ford

Even the subsequent growth and success of Ford's rival... It has earned this astounding reputation...

Pronoun coreference (21%) The Walt Disney Company Hyponymy and general Snapple words (21%)

Now, only five years later, the small, entrepreneurial company's tremendous success...

Substitution (15%)

increasing available food supplies

Conjunction (12%)

Synonymy (6%)

When a manager finds that demand exceeds inventory, the answer lies in making more goods. When a manager finds that inventory exceeds demand, the answer lies in making fewer goods the red man

Antonymy (3%)

Newspapers, television sets

Nor is there any question about the two principal ways of doing so But what if a company management...

Whatever progress has been made in the civil rights movement, the Indian has yet... ... you may think that the radio is obsolete...

The second purpose of this move is to show how c o m m i t t e d the writer is to the central idea. Three ways of showing this c o m m i t m e n t are represented in the corpus: m o d a l auxiliaries, lexical items a n d reported speech. M o d a l s auxiliaries are f o u n d in 28% of the texts in this corpus all in the present tense. The degrees of c o m m i t m e n t present range from certainty (e.g. W e can say that e d u c a t i o n is the most vital of all h u m a n resources) to possibility (e.g. changes in the variable c o n t e n t s of the a t m o s p h e r e .... could cause the E a r t h ' s surface to w a r m up to a d a n g e r o u s degree.) F o l l o w i n g N a t t i n g e r a n d D e C a r r i c o (1992) the lexical phrases in this move which include m o d a l s were identified a n d are s h o w n in T a b l e 6. I n two essay i n t r o d u c t i o n s the degree of c o m m i t m e n t is indicated by the lexical items " d o u b t e d " a n d "suggests". The fixed phrases "there is n o d o u b t a b o u t it", " n o t h i n g could be further from the t r u t h " , a n d "is a p a r a d i g m o f ' are also used to indicate 100% comm i t m e n t to the central idea o f the essay. Table 5. Specificationin the CI move Specific reference Activity (40%) Place (40%) Category/class (18%) Trend/fashion (15%) Time 8% Alternative 5%

Example A growing band of farmers.., are staking their fortunes on ostrich meat ...in the developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America... Our main characteristics include individuality, a combination of idealism and practicality, materialism.., all of which permeate our lives Their plight is a symptom of the slump in social drinking ...until the year 2000 Clearly steps must be taken to improve this deplorable situation. But reform must take place with the reservation system

AN INVESTIGATIONOF THE FUNCTIONS,STRATEGIESAND LINGUISTICFEATURESOF ESSAYS 489 Table 6. Lexical phrases of modal auxiliaries Lexical phrase

Examples (arranged from most to least certain)

Active (25) (noun) (modal) (verb) [prep] [noun]

Passive (5%) (noun) (modal) (be) (verb-ed)

reform must take place within the reservation system tutoring itself can make an important contribution changes...could cause the Earth's surface Professional codes of ethics.., may require augmentation pilgrims might sight bears clearly steps must be taken our own claim.., may be seriously challenged

R e p o r t e d speech is used in one essay to distance the a u t h o r f r o m the t r u t h o f the central idea: " T h e trick, he says, is to replicate a technique..." O t h e r i m p o r t a n t features o f the m o v e include choice o f tense a n d clause structure. T h e p r e s e n t is the p r e d o m i n a n t tense used in this m o v e being f o u n d in 63% o f the texts, followed by the present perfect a n d simple p a s t tenses ( b o t h 13%), the present progressive a n d the future tense with " w i l l " b o t h 7.5%. T h e active voice is used in 95% o f the cases. T h e p r e s e n t tense is used to realise all the nine strategies (cf. T a b l e 1); the p r e s e n t perfect is used to state a fact, a n d state o r refer to a p r o b l e m ; the simple p a s t is used to state a fact, state a p r o b l e m , a n d state o r refer to a solution; the future tense with " w i l l " is used only to state a fact, a n d the p r e s e n t progressive is used to state a fact, o r state a p r o b l e m . G i v e n the wide range o f topics f o u n d in the corpus, it is p e r h a p s n o t surprising t h a t only one verb, " t o b e " , a p p e a r s m o r e t h a n once in the central idea corpus. This verb is f o u n d in 2 5 % o f the texts in this m o v e o c c u r r i n g nine times in the simple present tense a n d once in the simple p a s t . H y p o t a x i s a n d e m b e d d i n g are again a c o m m o n feature o f this move. H y p o t a x i s , m a i n l y with " w h i c h " , is f o u n d in 22.5% o f the texts, while e m b e d d i n g is f o u n d m a i n l y in the f o r m o f r e d u c e d " w h i c h - B E " clauses. The N F - - C I m o v e boundary: tense. In 4 7 % o f the texts the last tense o f the N F m o v e is the s a m e as the tense used at the b e g i n n i n g o f the CI m o v e while in the r e m a i n i n g 57% o f texts the tenses are mixed. T h e m o s t c o m m o n tense in b o t h moves is the present tense and,

Table 7. Tense mixing and tense harmony across the NF--CI move boundary If the NF move ends with this tense:

The CI move will most likely begin with this tense

Present

Present 72% Past 11% Present progressive 11% Present perfect 6% Simple present 50% Past 33% Present perfect 6% Simple present 83% Past 16%

Past

Present perfect

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Table 8. Cohesion across the N F - - C I move boundary Cohesive device

Cohesive node in N F

Beginning of CI

H y p o n y m or general noun (38%)

On top of that China faces another population induced crisis of supply and demand

The place is running out of names

Repetition (20%)

you m a y think that the radio is obsolete as a link to the world at large

but the radio holds sway in Sarawak...

Conjunction (17.5%)

I am not a deep or abstract thinker

Instead I would like to consider the feeding of cattle in England and the growing of fruit in California

Collocation (15%)

Last year's harvest produced 170 m kilos o f the stuff

...,farmers are worried about the antismoking trend in America and Western Europe.

Pronoun coreference (5%)

Therefore, it is hard to find characteristics which apply to all Americans

Our main characteristics include individuality...

Synonym (2.5%)

...this scenario is being repeated the This time there is no doubt about it: world over for most of the so-called The world's "savages" are about to vanish... primitive peoples.

as with the I T - - N F move boundary, it is this tense which harmonizes with itself across the move boundary. Table 7 illustrates the pattern of tenses across the move boundary. This table suggests in some cases that tense may be an indicator of the move boundary. In the texts where the NF, and therefore the IT, moves exist, semantic cohesion can be found across the move boundary between N F and CI. Table 8 summarizes how cohesion is achieved between the last cohesive node in N F and the beginning of the CI. (The node and the coreferent are italicized, and one example of each cohesive type is given.) The frequency of the various cohesive devices does, however, differ quite markedly from those found across the I T - - N F boundary (Table 4). The most striking difference between cohesion across the N F - - C I boundary as compared to the I T - - N F boundary is the very c o m m o n choice of a hyponym or general noun with the definite article (e.g. the company) or a demonstrative pronoun (e.g. this deplorable situation). Halliday and Hasan (1976) show that this combination has about the same level of generality as a reference pronoun. Therefore, the semantic effect is greater specification than general words alone can accomplish. Logical connection is also quite a c o m m o n device to realise cohesion across the move boundary; often the tie comes at the beginning of the move in the form of "however" or "but". The typical introduction in our corpus consists of three moves in the order: introducing the topic, narrowing the focus and stating the central idea. The first move is two sentences in the present tense which make a general statement. The second move is linked to the first move by either repetition of the topic noun or by its substitution by a pronoun. Narrowing the focus is four sentences in the present tense which state a specific fact. This move links cohesively with stating the central idea through a definite article or a

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demonstrative pronoun and a h y p o n y m or general noun. Stating the central idea is achieved in one sentence in the present tense and it is a specific fact referring to a particular activity. Endings Moves, move order and strategies. We found that endings to essays, "conclusions" in the traditional sense, are not obligatory. In 22% of the texts in our corpus the essay ended without any form of conclusion. This finding illustrates quite clearly this study is investigating a number of genres. Hyland (1990) found all argumentative essays in his corpus included a conclusion. Obviously in an academic setting conclusions are obligatory. In those essays which had endings we found two moves each with a different purpose. The purpose of the first of these moves, which we call C o m m i t m e n t to the Central Idea (CC), identified in 78% of the texts, is to allow the author to show commitment to the central idea after presenting arguments for and/or against in the " b o d y " of the essay. This move more or less corresponds to Kusel's (1992) Internal Outcomes and combines Hyland's (1990) Marker, Consolidation and Affirmation moves. The purpose of the second move, Expansion (EX), is to relate the main idea to a wider context. This move was found in 40% of the texts in the corpus and is roughly equivalent to Kusel's (1992) External Outcomes and Hyland's Close move. Two primary functions were identified with this move; evaluation and prediction. Although a conclusion to an essay is optional, we found that if both moves were present then (CC) preceded (EX). Contrary to Kusel (1992), we found no examples of "review of the ground covered", "reservations placed on outcomes", or "recommendations for further research". Strategies. The moves of the endings were realised through a wide range of strategies as shown in Table 9 Linguistic features which characterise the moves and the move boundaries Commitment to the Central Idea. This move is typically realised in 2.5 sentences averaging 20 words. Four ways of showing the author's commitment to the Central Idea are present in the corpus. The most c o m m o n way of showing 100% commitment is to use either the simple present, in 36% of the texts, or the present perfect tense in 13%. Other c o m m o n linguistic features which show degrees of commitment to the truth found in the corpus include modal auxiliaries in 39% of the texts, specific lexical items such as "certainly" in 26%, and reported speech in 20%. The most c o m m o n tense found in this move is the simple present found in 57% of the texts. This tense is used to realise the strategies of evaluating, stating or confirming the Central Idea, admonishing, presenting a problem, listing and evaluating, refining, summing up and evaluating, and updating. The present perfect, found in 20% of the texts, is used for evaluating, the simple past (10%) is used to evaluate and provide a solution to a problem, and the future with "will" is used to evaluate and speculate. Cohesion with the CI Move. As this move refers directly to the Central Idea of the essay it is perhaps not surprising that cohesive ties were found between the topic of the CI and

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ALEX HENRY and ROBERT L. ROSEBERRY Table 9. Strategies used to realize the endings of essays

Move

Purpose and Strategies

Comm itment to the Central Idea

Show a dregree of Commitment • Evaluate (42%) • State or reaffirm the Central Idea (13%) • Other strategies are used less frequently " State personal opinion or reaction to the Central Idea • Make a prediction • State a solution to a problem mentioned in the Central Idea • Admonish • Show the consequences • Identify a greater benefit • Present a problem related to the Central Idea • List and evaluate techniques and solutions related to the problem stated in the Central Idea • Speculate on and list problems relating to the solution mentioned in the Central Idea " Refine the Central Idea • Sum up and evaluate • Update the Central Idea

Expansion

Evaluation Occurring only one or twice in the corpus • Make a subjective evaluation plus reasons or explanation • Identify greater problems • Analyse by narrating a personal response • Give consequences of the problem • Give reasoned support for the evaluation • Offer an alternative or make a suggestion • Evaluate the Central Idea move • List possible problems resulting from the Commi t me nt to the Central Idea move • Compare present problems with the results of a similar problem in the past • Give a historical perspective which explains the situation by contrasting it with the present Prediction • Mak e a prediction • Show future directions

the beginning of the CC move in 20 of the 31 texts that contain this move. Of these 20 the most common ties were repetition, in just over half of the cases, and hyponymy in just over a third.

Expansion. The two primary notions and functions found in this move are evaluation and prediction. This move is the longest of the moves in the essay introductions and conclusions, being realised, on average in 5.3 sentences averaging 19words. Evaluation is expressed largely through modal auxiliaries which include "can" (in 23% of the texts), "may" (10%), and "seem" (5%). Other modals which appear are "could", "dare", "might", "need" and "would". These are usually absent from the opening sentence of this move which tends to be a statement. Words expressing experiential and cognitive states (e.g. awareness, mind, experience, feel, mental, ideas) and words associated with daily life and society (live, cultural, life, social) also contribute to evaluation. A quarter of the texts in the expansion corpus make some form of prediction. This function is largely accomplished through the future tense and the semantic class suggesting future outcomes which include "progress", "evolve", "solution", "activity", "expand", "discover", "extend" and "strive" among others.

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The expansion move almost invariably begins in the present tense (81%) except when strategies of prediction are being used. The high density of relative clauses in this move is within the range identified by Biber (1988) as being typical for expository writing. Cohesion between the CC and E X moves. The most common cohesive device used is repetition (38%). Others, used once or twice in the corpus, include hyponymy and general words, local connectors, collocation, coreference, and synonymy. In addition, a cohesive device not previously used in the genre, cohesion through examples, appears in this move for the first time, as shown below (Table 10).

A typical ending in our corpus would contain only the move commitment to the central idea. This move would be an evaluation or a reaffirmation of the central idea of the essay, would be about 2.5 sentences in length, and would be written in the simple present tense. If the second move were present it would be linked cohesively to the first move of the ending by repetition, or by a hyponym or general noun. This move would be written in the simple present tense and would be an evaluation or a prediction.

A P P L I C A T I O N S TO L A N G U A G E T E A C H I N G The main applications of this research are based on Paltridge's (1996: p. 241) view that from the language learners' point of view the analysis of "one particular text type may be usefully drawn on for the production of significantly different genres." The general aim of teaching/ learning activities concerned with this application is to raise awareness of the similarities and differences between genres found within this text type. Three main approaches can be considered: raising awareness of rhetorical organisation of the text type and the specific genres found within it, making clear to learners which language features associate with each of the moves, and providing opportunities for learners to practice creating texts. To raise awareness of rhetorical organisation learners can be given definitions of the moves and asked to discover for themselves the generic structure of texts within the essay text type. If enough data are supplied learners can decide for themselves which moves are optional, which obligatory and also the allowable move order. They can then be asked to consider how each move contributes to the overall communicative purpose of the text. The second step would be to provide learners with a set of texts of one specific genre within the text type. They would then be asked to decide how the genre compares and Table 10. Cohesion through example Commitment to the Central Idea

Expansion

The industry can probably sustain itself...

...dozens of ancillary suppliers have sprung up, offering products ranging from.., to... There are also devices such as... The economicdevelopment policy of ... Clinton included the...information highwayas a basis for encouraging new businesses...

...Telecommunications...a major infrastructure component of the information age

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contrasts with the text type model in terms of rhetorical organisation. Two obvious genres for comparison would be the academic essay and the features article. It would be expected that the introduction of an academic essay would contain all three moves whereas a feature article might only contain the obligatory move. In order to familiarise learners with the language of the moves, learners can be provided with exercises designed to tease out linguistic features which characterise them. For example choice of tense would be an obvious feature for discussion and so learners could simply make a note of the tenses used in each move. The role of the teacher would be to initiate discussion as to why such tenses were chosen by the writers. For each feature learners could be asked to consider how it contributes to the realisation of the communicative purpose of the move. Having discovered the characteristic features of the moves, learners can then be asked to create their own texts. In the case of the essay, the most important move is the central idea and it would seem logical that learners compose this move first. Learners can be encouraged to experiment with different strategies and then decide which is most suitable for the effect they are trying to create. Learners can also be made aware of the choice of cohesive devices commonly found in this text type and use this information to link their moves cohesively. Other writing activities which emphasise comparing and contrasting genres include presenting information in the form of one genre and asking the language learners to use the information to construct another genre, and asking learners to translate essays written in their first language.

DISCUSSION Despite the fact that this class of texts is so widespread, there has been little research carried out into how expert writers construct the expository text type "essay". One of the reasons for this gap may be the fact that it encompasses an exceedingly wide range of topics and styles thus reducing the chance of finding exact form-function-purpose relationships such as those found in other genres, such as Brief Tourist Information (Henry and Roseberry, 1996), which employ a much more restricted range of linguistic items. The findings of this paper however show that such investigation can be fruitful. This research has also shown that a useful line of further investigation would be into the distinctive characteristics of the individual genres which have been included in the category "expository essay text type". The findings of this study provide a useful baseline for comparing and contrasting these genres and also for investigating the classes of expository texts proposed by Martin and Peters (1985: p. 66) who classify expository texts on the basis of type of thesis proposed.

REFERENCES Bhatia, V. K. (1991) A genre-based approach to ESP materials development. Worm Englishes 10, 1 14. Bhatia, V. K. (1993) Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. Longman, London.

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