BHATIA’S PROMOTIONAL GENRE MODEL

73 showing their relationship to this central idea. The study will present a similar approach to business emails. Having identified the major textual units in the texts, their relationship to the main communicative purposes will be shown.Swales does not only identify these moves and steps in the introductory paragraph (and in all the other structural units), but also provides a list of linguistic expressions to accompany each of them, thus aiding the implementation of these principles in writing pedagogy. (For a list of characteristic language examples, see Figure 5 above.)

74 Move 1 Establishing credentials

Move 2 Introducing the offer

(i) Offering the product or service (ii) Essential detailing of the offer (iii) Indicating value of the offer Move 3 Offering incentives

Move 4 Enclosing documents Move 5 Soliciting response Move 6 Using pressure tactics Move 7 Ending politely

The most striking aspect of Move 1, named Establishing credentials, is the indication of a company’s well-established reputation, which can convince the potential buyers of the benefits of a product or service the company can offer. In order to attract the buyer, the writer often uses either a ‘we’, or a ‘you’ orientation depending on what he wants to emphasize more: the reliability of the company, or the buyer’s needs.

Having established the credentials, in Move 2, Introducing the offer, the writer informs his reader about the most essential details of the product or service. In this move there are three important aspects (that Swales calls steps): a) Offering the product or service, b) Essential detailing of the product, and c) Indicating value of the product or service. In offering the product or service, writers tend to use typical formulaic expressions (e.g., We are pleased to bring to your attention to offer/announce/

introduce…) The evaluation of the product is characterized by the predominant use of modifiers, for example latest technology, superior quality standards, delightful environment, etc.

The function of Move 3, labelled as Offering incentives, is to offer a discount to persuade the potential customer to consider seriously the service being offered. Bhatia claims that this move “may seem more cultural than universal” (p. 52), because negotiating price does not play an equally important role in business culture everywhere in the world.

75 This is followed by Move 4, Enclosing documents, where the writer aims to keep the length of the promotional letter within reasonable limits by enclosing detailed descriptions of products in the form of brochures, leaflets, pamphlets, or request forms.

This stage is optional depending upon the writer’s strategy whether he wishes to send the documents with the sales promotion letter (in Move 1), or as a reaction to the request of the buyer (in Move 4)

Move 5, named Soliciting response, basically serves two purposes: it can initiate new business relations or strengthen the existing ones by encouraging the buyer to continue further communication. Therefore, it is characterized by an extravagant use of politeness markers, such as, Should you require further assistance, call our office; Please read through the enclosed leaflet…, etc.

To a certain extent, Move 6, Using pressure tactics, may appear to be similar to Move 3, however, the two have a very distinct function. In the former, the already inclined or half-inclined customer is pushed to take an immediate decision, whereas in the latter, the potential customer is only being convinced about the attractiveness of the product.

Move 7, finally, emerges as Ending politely. The function of this move can be seen as the formality of ending communication, at the same time, it is significant in maintaining and strengthening business relations. Gan (1989, p. 21), for example, distinguishes two types of discoursal functions of closings in business letters: situational and relational. Situational closings are directly derived from the function of the letter concerned whereas the relational ones indicate the attitude of the writer towards future business relations.

In the above structural interpretation, Bhatia claims that there is a certain degree of flexibility in the number and the sequence of these moves. He goes on to say that moves do not necessarily coincide with paragraphs, and it is not always obligatory for the writer to use all the seven moves. He makes a distinction between the discriminative moves that structure a genre, and the non-discriminative rhetorical strategies that (business) writers draw on in putting the genre to creative use. This echoes Paltridge’s (1994) view, who says that the generic framework implies a certain degree of freedom

76 and that structural divisions in text should be seen chiefly as ‘cognitive boundaries in terms of appropriacy and convention’ (p. 295).

In discussing the instances of promotional genres, Bhatia finds that both the sales promotion letters and job application letters use a virtually identical pattern of moves (Figure 6) when they promote something, either a product, or the job applicant himself.

Therefore, they share the same communicative purposes, which are reflected in the structural interpretations that can be assigned to the instances of these text-types.

Sales Promotion Letter Job Application Letter Move 1: Establishing credentials Establishing credentials Move 2: Introducing the offer

(i) Offering the product or service.

(ii) Essential detailing of the offer.

(iii) Indicating value of the offer.

Introducing the candidature

Move 3: Offering incentives Offering incentives Move 4: Enclosing documents Enclosing documents Move 5: Soliciting response Using pressure tactics Move 6: Using pressure tactics Soliciting response Move 7: Ending politely Ending politely

Figure 6: The patterns of moves of promotional genres adopted from Bhatia (1993)

From these examples we can see that the cognitive move-structure outlined above can be widely used for a variety of genres. The pilot study carried on business emails (see later) has justified this claim. In order to describe the main rhetorical characteristics of emails for the present study, the moves/steps are to be refined to accomodate the specific features of the database.

5.3.3 Methodological problems with Swales’s CARS and Bhatia’s Promotional Genre