A Critical Genre Analysis On Commencement Addresses Of Harvard University

As the last lecture of university students,the commencement ceremony not only indicates the end of schooldays,but also presupposes the beginning of the new life to them,which is one of the major events held by universities at home and abroad every year.Addresses of keynote speakers and presidents on the ceremony have been hot topics in recent years.Scholars in the field of education,rhetoric and communication,etc.have their own point of emphasis on commencement addresses.According to current research status of Critical Genre Analysis,the related research on addresses discourse from this perspective has been scarcely found.Taking Harvard university as the research objective,the present study collects 20 keynote addresses(2000-2019)and 15 presidents' addresses(2005-2019)from Harvard official website in chronical order as research materials.The present study adopts a combination of qualitative and quantitative research method to analyze Harvard commencement addresses from the dimension of text,genre,professional practice and professional culture.The purpose of this study is to summarize lexical features and generic structures of Harvard commencement addresses,identify interdiscursive strategies and their performances that occur in these addresses,and try to explore reasons for the formation of the basic generic structure from the perspective of professional culture.It is found that Harvard commencement addresses aim to establish a closer interactive relationship with audiences and to provoke thought and encouragement to audiences.First,in the dimension of text,it is found that the indexes of words-difficulty and mean word-length in keynote speakers' addresses and presidents' addresses are basically identical,which indicates that the difficulty of vocabulary in these addresses is highly similar.It is noteworthy that the occurrences of content words like “Harvard”,“graduates”,and “world” are particularly frequent in addresses of keynote speakers and Harvard presidents.Moreover,speakers tend to choose words with positive meanings to collocate with these high-frequent words,which not only reveals the theme of these addresses,but also reflects the speakers' recognition of Harvard and its graduates to some extent.There is a slight difference in the mean sentence length,which shows that keynote speakers' addresses tend to be a little more difficult and complex in syntax structure than presidents' addresses.Therefore,it can be concluded that keynote addresses are essentially in agreement with Harvard presidents' addresses in general.Secondly,in the dimension of genre,three communicative purposes are identified,including information-providing,relationship-building and thought-provoking.Based on these purposes,it is found that Harvard commencement addresses have a relatively fixed generic structure,which generally contains: Establishing Identity;Defining Themes;Developing Themes;Summarizing Themes;Looking Forward and Expressing Gratitude.Statistical results suggest that Developing Themes and Summarizing Themes in Harvard commencement addresses are obligatory moves and the other four moves are optional moves.Thirdly,in terms of professional practice,blended interdiscursivity,embedded interdiscursivity and chained interdiscursivity are often used in Harvard commencement addresses.Addressers tend to apply appropriate characteristics of other genres,discourses or styles to achieve their specific practical purposes.By quoting anecdotes or aphorisms of famous people,commencement addressers put forward advice combined with their personal experiences and make these addresses more impressive and persuasive.Lastly,it is found that these addresses are full of humanity and idealism from the perspective of professional culture,which connect the individual with the fate of the whole human being.The trend of diversification and deformalization of Harvard commencement addresses attracts more attention from listeners and readers all over the world.Through the analysis of professional culture,the present study can help audiences understand commencement addresses better.Furthermore,it is easier to understand why commencement addresses can provoke discussions among students all over the world.Theoretically,this study further expands the scope of Critical Genre Analysis theory and provides a new perspective for linguistics to address discourse analysis.Practically,the results contribute to helping promote audiences or readers to better understand the meanings of these speeches,provide references for addresses writers and have practical implication for critical analytical reading of English learners.