Functional Genre Analysis Of Internet Academic Forum

As Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), Internet Discussion Forum (IDF) is also be termed Bulletin Board System (BBS). It is an online discussion site which centers on the communication and interactions of participants to generate member-driven content, resulting in the establishment of relationships. It is an important way for information exchange. With the development of the Internet, it has received lots of attention as a new way of communication. But little research has been done on the summarization of IDF from the perspective of functional genre analysis.This thesis which starts with the functions and communicative purposes of IDF takes BISC (the Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing) Academic Forum as a case study and makes a constructive exploration of genre features of Internet Academic Forum (IAF). The corpus consists of one hundred pieces of discussions which are under five topics collected from BISC Academic Forum with the time range from 2008 to 2009. The exploration is mainly based on Halliday's three metafunctions (ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function) in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Swales'and Bhatia's genre analysis theories. It is a corpus-based functional genre analysis which adopts a combination of qualitative and quantitative methodology as well as statistics software of Wordsmith 4.0 Concord Tool.The aim of the thesis is to study how genre functions of IAF are achieved to the maximum degree and why the causes of such choices of language are. Meanwhile, it seeks to find out the best match between functions and lexical grammar and to detect some linguistic characteristics of this genre. Based on the analysis of the communicative purposes and genre features of this forum, the move structures are analyzed firstly. The analytical results show that this genre tends to be a three move-structure: the first move Claiming the centrality of a post, the second move Defining the scope of a theory and the third move Analyzing the theory and soliciting responses and each move have their own particular functions and purposes. Based on that, the realization of three metafunctions and the linguistic characteristics in moves and in BISC Academic Forum are examined from the perspectives of transitivity system, voice, modality system and cohesion. It shows from the results that the realization of ideational function is by means of adopting abundant relational processes to define the scope of a theory under discussion and comment on discussions. After compared the distribution of processes in three moves, it is found that: plenty of verbal processes are used in the first move by presenters to evaluate others'statements before they claim the centrality of their discussions; the second move comparatively uses more relational processes to define the scope of a theory under discussion; the third move uses comparatively more material processes to discuss soft computing and related theories and introduce achievements on soft computing and the state of development in this discipline. The abundant use of low value modal verbs and possible modals are to achieve interpersonal function. They aim at leaving room for the propositions which are proposed by presenters and making them more objective. After compared the distribution of modal verbs in three moves, it is found that: in the first move, the presenters use plenty of median value modal verbs to avoid demonstrate their attitudes directly, therefore leaving themselves room to enter the discussion formally; high value modal verbs in the second move are used most which are to demonstrate the definiteness and objectivity of the definitions the presenters provide; due to the indeterminacy and complexity of soft computing and related theories, in the third move, the presenters use plenty of low value modal verbs to lower the validity of their statements, reduce the pressure on other members in the forum and leave space for feedback suggestions. The analytical findings show that the realization of ideational function and interpersonal function and linguistic characteristics in three moves corresponds with the functions and communicative purposes of moves in this genre. As for textual organization, lots of cohesive devices are adopted to achieve textual function effectively. Among these cohesive devices, reference in grammatical cohesion and repetition in lexical cohesion are used most. The uses of cohesive devices are largely influenced by genre features, communicative purposes and the topics of the forum. All the findings manifest that the functions and communicative purposes of IAF determine the characteristics of move structures and the choices of language. Finally, it is hoped that this study will provide some valuable implications for the research on genre analysis and offer some pedagogical insights into genre teaching and web-based instruction.