British and Montenegrin university lecture introductions: A corpus-based study of their rhetorical structure

Abstract

This study explores the rhetorical structure of university lecture introductions and its linguistic specificities. Applying genre, corpus and contrastive analyses, it aims to identify which moves and steps are used in lecture introductions in English and Montenegrin, as well as to reveal differences and similarities in their structure between the two languages. Drawing upon the Swalesean move approach (1981, 1990) and referring to the models already established in the literature, the study examines academic lectures in the linguistics discipline taken from the electronically available British corpora, and a specially compiled corpus of Montenegrin linguistic lectures. The results show the major difference lying in a more elaborate framework in British lecture introductions. This consists of three moves – Move 1: Orienting the students, Move 2: Setting-up lecture framework and Move 3: Putting topic in context, compared to the two-move structure of Montenegrin lecture introductions composed of Move 2 and Move 3. Some specific differences are also noticed in the composition of these two moves. The main similarity lies in the presence of two obligatory moves in both corpora, Move 2 and Move 3 respectively, reflecting the influence of the lecture as an established academic genre in university settings regardless of the language in which lectures were delivered. In addition, compared to the established models in the literature, the findings have yielded three steps that are original to this study.