Rhetorical structure and sociocultural analysis of Muslim and Christian obituaries in Jordanian newspapers

Abstract

This paper gives a detailed account of the distinctive macro-structural and micro-linguistic properties used in Muslim and Christian obituaries in Jordan society. It also examines how socio-religious practices and beliefs are played out through the overall genre text. In order to examine the discourse, a move-based analysis was conducted upon a corpus of 150 Muslim obituary announcements (MOAs), and another 100 Christian obituary announcements (COAs). The analysis of textual and linguistic features is carried out by following Bhatia's (1993) model as it fruitfully illumines the relation between social discursive practice and written discourse. The genre analysis of the data demonstrates that eleven communicative moves exist in both types of obituary announcements (OAs). The study also highlights that the generic genre discourse reveals several socio-cultural and religious messages about the Jordanian community that are reflected in the rhetorical components of this genre.