Function Words As Genre Identifiers:an Analysis Of Fiction, News, Poetry And Academic Writing

Genre analysis has been one key focus of linguistic studies, yet there needs more effort in systematically identifying different genres. The goal of the current study is to contribute to the previous body of research by incorporating function words as genre identifiers with the Linguistic Inquire and Word Count (LIWC) approach. Taking function word analysis as an approach, this research seeks to answer the following questions:1) Can the unique linguistic profile of the four genres (fiction, news, poetry, and academic writing) be reflected in their respective function word employment?2) From the perspective of function word employment, can the four genres’differentiation in their level of being formal, narrative, and analytic be testified?3) Is it possible to make generalizations about function words as the genre identifiers of each of the four genres? To realize the above goals, the current study adopts the LIWC approach that makes function word analysis possible. The quantitative analysis reveals that the four genres have significant differences in terms of function word employment. Among the16parameters chosen in the present research, significant differences were found among13parameters, namely, the usage of pronouns, the personal pronoun "Ⅰ", articles, prepositions, exclusives (e.g., but), negations, causal words, insight words (e.g., realize), tentative words (e.g., maybe), words of certainty, quantifiers, past-tense verbs, and inclusive words (e.g., and). Results indicate that:1) academic writing and news are more formal than fiction and poetry,2) fiction and academic writing are highly analytic,3) fiction and poetry are highly narrative. With a qualitative analysis, this study further confirms that these trends are not arbitrary but motivated by specific linguistic characteristics of a certain genre, and hence it is suggested that function words can effectively serve as the genre identifiers.