A genre analysis of food reviews in a Malaysian online dining guide website / Angelicia Anthony Thane

Angelicia , Anthony Thane (2017) A genre analysis of food reviews in a Malaysian online dining guide website / Angelicia Anthony Thane. Masters thesis, University of Malaya.

[img] PDF (The Candidate's Agreement)
Restricted to Repository staff only

Download (1302Kb)
    [img]
    Preview
    PDF (Thesis M.A)
    Download (6Mb) | Preview

      Abstract

      The ‘Food Culture’ is an increasingly popular notion in our world today. With the Internet, information on various cuisines is easily made available. This phenomenon gives rise to a relatively new digital genre: online food reviews. Hence, this study aims to provide a comprehensive description on online food review focusing on rhetorical strategies. Swales’s Three-Level Genre model is employed to identify the communicative purpose, rhetorical structures and rhetorical strategies of online food review from a popular Malaysian food website, FriedChilies. The analysis of rhetorical structures is based on a conceptualised framework incorporating both Bhatia’s (2004) move structures for advertising discourse and Askehave & Nielsen’s (2005) move structures for online genre. On the other hand, the rhetorical startegies is focused on visuals as move and relevant discourses found in the reviews. Unlike traditional genre analysis, the present research concentrates on exploring the roles of visuals and accompanying discourses in achieving private intentions of the review. Results of the study shows that the move structure confirms that reviews are of a mixed genre. The findings also demonstrated that while reviews are supposed to be more informative, strong promotional elements are subtly incorporated via usage of visuals and different discourses. This indicates that visuals and discourses may influence and manipulate a genre’s communicative purpose which in turn affects the genre type and its generic description.

      Item Type: Thesis (Masters)
      Additional Information: Dissertation (M.A.) – Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya, 2017.
      Uncontrolled Keywords: Food Culture; Online food reviews; Swales’s Three-Level Genre model; Malaysian food website; Promotional elements
      Subjects: H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
      Divisions: Faculty of Languages and Linguistics
      Depositing User: Mr Mohd Safri Tahir
      Date Deposited: 11 Apr 2019 08:39
      Last Modified: 11 Apr 2019 08:39
      URI: http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/id/eprint/9935

      Actions (For repository staff only : Login required)

      View Item