In Search of the Generic Identity of the Book Review: A Chronological and Pragmatic Study

Abstract

Given the significance of Book Reviews (BRs) and the fact that little has been devoted to the study of this genre, the current study investigated the macrostructure as well as the politeness features of a sample of BRs, representing two periods of time (1980-1990/2000-2010), in applied linguistics. The main purpose of this analysis was to identify the macrostructures and the politeness strategies in the "closing evaluation" section of BRs. The dataset consisted of 80 BRs (40 extracted from the journals published in the 1980s and 40 derived from the journals published in the 2000s). The findings demonstrated no major quantitative differences between the moves exploited in the BRs, except for move 3. Further, positive politeness strategies, characteristic of the "closing evaluation" section, revealed no significant differences deployed in the two groups of BRs, and negative politeness strategies were absent, indicating the non-alignment of these latter strategies to BRs. The analysis of BRs can contribute to both the schema theory and discourse analysis. The study may provide a valuable framework for a comprehensive book review analysis.