A Discourse Study Of Property Transaction Reports In Guangzhou

As an indirect but primary communication channel between property companies and potential customers,property transaction reports(PTRs) play a major role in publicizing transacted products in the reports.Based on a corpus of 30 authentic property transaction reports,the author studies both moves and stance applied in PTRs with an aim to identifying their generic and linguistic features.In the light of Swales(1990) and Bhatia's(1993) move theories combined with Biber et al.'s(1999) and Hyland's(2005) stance theories the present research has been conducted at the first stage.Having analyzed the linguistic features,the author then spells out the insight of PTR genre and language use.The thesis has adopted qualitative and quantitative research methods to unfold analysis at both macro-level and micro-level.In the macro sense,seven moves have been identified in PTRs,all of which carry certain promotional functions in a different way.In the micro respect,the extensive adoption of attitudinal stance enhances the persuasion and builds solidarity between writers and readers while the adoption of epistemic stance can make persuasion by avoiding the subjectivity of the positive evaluation.Last but not least,both elements of news reports and advertisements are present in PTR and communicative functions of PTR are to inform the news as much as to promote the business.In brief,this empirical study can serve as a reference for the future cross-culture comparative studies of this particular genre.