A GENRE-BASED ANALYSIS OF CAR ADVERTISEMENTS IN A LOCAL NEWSPAPER

Abstract

This piece of work is a genre-based analysis of the move-structure found in car advertisements in The Straits Times, a mass-circulation newspaper in Singapore. The study applies Kathpalia's (1992) nine-move structure for straight-sell advertisements to three subclasses of car advertisements, luxury, normal and small, each category being defined using the criterion of affordability as reflected in the overall price of the particular car offered in the advertisement. The purpose of this exercise is an in-depth investigation of the moves representative of each subclass of car advertisements (luxury, normal, small) so as to determine if move-structure generalisations can be made for each category of car advertisement. If such generalisations can indeed be made, a better understanding of the linguistic moves underpinning each particular category of car advertisements would be achieved.