Abstract
Given that little research has examined Arabic book reviews (BRs),this study aims to investigate the generic rhetorical structure, potential variationsand preferred verb tense as used in Arabic BRs across soft disciplines. To thisend, the non-reactive fully naturalistic approach was used to collect data from acorpus of 30 Arabic BRs published in 10 journals during the period from 1997 to2015. Data were analyzed qualitatively. Results showed that Arabic BRs areprincipally informative and descriptive. Arab reviewers tend to have recourse toa generic versatile organization of six major structural moves (SMs): four are descriptive and informative, and two are evaluative. Despite consistency, preliminary SM-variations appeared in two forms: SM-fusion and SM-rise shifting,driven by a trade-off between compliance with institutional norms and personalexpressivity. Results showed that present tense was the preferred verb tense. Arabic BRs displayed sharing some of the defining content and formal schemata ofEnglish and Spanish BRs while maintaining typical characteristics that couldgive Arabic BRs a genre status and a representing shape with its own sociocultural specifics. Overall differences could be ascribed to soft disciplinepreferred practices, discourse community expectations and editorial requirements. This study provides implications for book reviewing, language for academic purposes and discourse analysis.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1-23 |
Number of pages | 23 |
Journal | Linguistica |
Issue number | 19 |
Publication status | Published - 2017 |
Externally published | Yes |