Genre Analysis of Saudi Universities’ Websites: Analysis of Rhetorical Moves and Discursive Strategies for Marketization Purposes

Abstract

The field of education has experienced numerous shifts, including internationalization, greater competitiveness and collaboration, and globalization. Today, higher education branding has become a common trend. To differentiate themselves in the business world, universities apply different branding techniques and this study aims to examine how some Saudi universities advertise themselves. Incorporating Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the study analyzes the “About Us” sections of seven Saudi universities’ websites to explore the rhetorical moves and discursive strategies employed for marketization purposes. The selected universities all featured in the top 1000 universities in the QS World University Rankings 2020. The results show diversity in these universities’ choices of implemented rhetorical moves and sub-moves. They used eight rhetorical moves and 13 sub-moves, with only one of these sub-moves occurring on all seven universities’ websites. The discursive strategies were employed to foster self-promotion, while the results demonstrated that the “About Us” sections of all universities were promotional. Finally, some recommendations are provided for universities for marketization purposes if they want to be global and compete with other international universities in the higher education market, in addition to providing suggestions for future studies.