Khảo sát tiềm năng cấu trúc thể loại của các nhật ký cá nhân quảng cáo trong tiếp thị nội dung tiếng anh và tiếng việt theo quan điểm chức năng hệ thống​

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOIUNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES KIỀU THỊ LỆ INVESTIGATING THE GENERIC STRUCTURE POTENTIAL OF ENGLISH

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST

GRADUATE STUDIES

KIỀU THỊ LỆ

INVESTIGATING THE GENERIC STRUCTURE POTENTIAL OF ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE BLOG POSTS IN CONTENT MARKETING IN THE

LIGHT OF SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS (SFL)

(Khảo sát tiềm năng cấu trúc thể loại của các nhật ký cá nhân quảng cáo trong tiếp thị nội dung tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt theo quan điểm chức năng hệ thống)

MASTER’S THESIS PROGRAM I

Major: English Linguistics Code: 8220201.01

Hanoi – 2019

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST

GRADUATE STUDIES

KIỀU THỊ LỆ

INVESTIGATING THE GENERIC STRUCTURE POTENTIAL OF ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE BLOG POSTS IN CONTENT MARKETING IN THE

LIGHT OF SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS (SFL)

(Khảo sát tiềm năng cấu trúc thể loại của các nhật ký cá nhân quảng cáo trong tiếp thị nội dung tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt theo quan điểm chức năng hệ thống)

MASTER’S THESIS PROGRAM I

Major: English Linguistics Code: 8220201.01

Supervisor: Dr Nguyễn Thị Minh Tâm

Hanoi - 2019

DECLARATION OF WORK

I do solemnly and sincerely declare that:

(1) I am the sole author/writer of this work;

(2) This work is original;

(3) Any use of any work in which copyright exists was done by way of fairdealing and for permitted purposes and any excerpt or extract from, orreference to or reproduction of any copyright work has been disclosedexpressly and sufficiently and the title of the work and its authorship havebeen acknowledged in this Work;

(4) I do not have any actual knowledge nor do I ought reasonably to knowthat the making of this work constitutes an infringement of any copyrightwork;

(5) I hereby assign all and every rights in the copyright to this work to theUniversity of Languages and International Studies (ULIS), who henceforthshall be owner of the copyright in this work and that any reproduction or use

in any form or by any means whatsoever is prohibited without the writtenconsent of ULIS having been first had and obtained;

(6) I am fully aware that if in the course of making this work I have infringedany copyright whether intentionally or otherwise, I may be subject to legalaction or any other action as may be determined by ULIS

Date: June 22 nd , 2019

Candidate‘s Signature

Kiều Thị Lệ

Blog posts have been widely considered to be an effective tool incontent marketing as they not only get the products exposed to the customers

but also provoke reasonable and appealing motives for them to click buy.

Among various types of blog posts, instructional blog post is the most populartype since they can create demand and bring many values to customers.Instructional blog posts provide insights and directly address readers‘problems or concerns

This study aims at finding the Generic Structure Potential (GSP) ofEnglish and Vietnamese instructional blog posts, based on the framework ofHasan (1985) The corpus consists of ten English and ten Vietnamese blogposts which were collected from blogs whose views per month surpass150,000 Moreover, this research also seeks to find the similarities anddifferences between the two categories

The analysis reveals that 36 types of potential elements might occur inthe instructional blog posts Based on the obligatory, optional and iterativeelements found in the data, the GSP of English and Vietnamese instructionalblog posts is proposed In conclusion, While English instructional blog postsaccomplish the mission of advertising, instructing and increasing leads;Vietnamese posts serve the purpose of instructing and increasing traffic to thepage

The result of the study can be employed to evaluate the necessity andreasonability of the elements in the instructional blog posts and propose themost efficient factors to compose successful instructional blog posts

Key words: generic structure potential (GSP), blog post, content

marketing

me the chance and the trust to work on this area of research despite theobstacles.

I‘m grateful to my dear supervisor professor Dr Nguyen Thi Minh Tamfor all her valuable guidance and encouragement She always supported mewith valuable suggestions and positive criticism I‘m thankful for all the helpand the flexibility she had with me despite being busy

I have a great joy thanking my dear friend Vu Thi Thu Huong who hasbeen very generous in her friendship with me I wish to show my gratitude toher for introducing this field of study to me and helping me to learn it Thankyou for all the academic and moral support during the years of our friendship

My deepest gratitude goes to my dearest mother for all the love andsacrifices to grow me up Thank you for being patient with me in my downtimes and tolerating my absence at home as well as encouraging me to pursueall my dreams since my childhood

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION OF WORK i

ABSTRACT ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF TABLES vi

LIST OF FIGURES vii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the study 1

2 Aims and objectives of the study 2

3 Research methodology 2

4 Scope of the study 3

5 The significance of the study 3

6 Structure of the thesis 3

CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND REVIEW OF LITERATURE 5

2.1 Generic Structure Potential (GSP) in SFL 5

2.1.1 Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) 6

2.1.2 Genre and genre analysis in SFL 7

2.1.3 Macrostructure analysis and GSP 12

2.2 Blog posts as a special kind of genre 17

2.2.1 Overview about content marketing and blogging 20

2.2.2 Internet/ web Genres 24

2.3 Previous Studies 26

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 31

3.1 The data corpus 31

3.2 Methods of the study 31

3.3 Analytical framework 32

3.4 Data analyzing procedure 33

CHAPTER 4: RESULT AND DISCUSSION 34

4.1 General findings 34

4.2 Qualitative findings 40

4.2.1 Generic structure potential of instructional blog posts in English 40

4.2.2 Generic structure potential of instructional blog posts in Vietnamese 52 4.3 Discussions: Answers to the research questions 62

4.3.1 Answer to RQ1: What is the generic structure potential of instructional blog posts in English? 62

4.3.2 RQ2: What is the generic structure potential of instructional blog posts in Vietnamese? 64

4.3.3 Answer to RQ3: What are the similarities and differences between instructional blog posts in English and Vietnamese in terms of generic structure potential? 65

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 67

1 Recapitulation 67

2 Implications 68

3 Limitations and suggestions for further studies 68

REFERENCES 70

APPENDICES I APPENDIX A I APPENDIX B II

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 The data corpus 31

Table 2 Analytical framework 32

Table 3 Newly found elements 34

Table 4 Occurrences and Frequencies of the elements 37

Table 5 Average number of the elements 39

Table 6 Number of obligatory, optional and reiterative elements 40

Table 7 GSP of instructional blog posts in English 63

Table 8 GSP of instructional blog posts in Vietnamese 64

Table 9 English and Vietnamese blog posts GSP in comparison 65

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Categorization of genre (Knapp & Watkins, 1994, p.22) 9 Figure 2 Swales‘ (1990) model of research article genre 14 Figure 3 Instructional blog post sample 23

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

This introductory section presents a broad outline of this thesisregarding the rationale of study, research objectives, research methodology,scope of study, importance of the research article and structure of the study

1 Rationale of the study

In recent years, more interest is placed on advertising and marketing astools to bring value and attract target audiences People do not simply useadvertisements to introduce and describe their products but to drawaudience‘s attraction and enhance their loyalty The challenge here is to create

a text that bridges the gap between the intended audiences and the writer, orparticularly the target customers and the copy writers The text which is notable to make the intended relationship within a specific discourse communitywill not be capable of engaging the readers as insiders and cannot becomprehensible enough within that specific genre However, this aim issatisfied by recognizing the textual variations within specific genres and tosee how texts resemble or vary in accordance with their discourseorganizations and the linguistic features applied Many materials and writingsabout how to write an effective blog are tremendously accessible on theinternet, but to the best of my knowledge, little has been done on the specificstructure of a blog, the factors that make it successful, and the factors thatbore the readers Given such a gap, this study attempts to investigate genericstructure and typical features of blogs to see whether there is the a specificformula for a successful blog post and how a blog is written to attract targetaudiences, boost customers‘ loyalty and finally create more traffic for theproducts or services The results can have good implications for the members

of this discourse community such as copywriters and blog writers as well asadvertisers

2 Aims and objectives of the study

The study aims to explore the generic structure potential (GSP) of atype of content marketing blog posts – instructional blog posts - in Englishand Vietnamese In order to reach this aim, three objectives are set out asbelow:

+ to explore the generic structure potential of instructional blog posts in English;

+ to explore the generic structure potential of instructional blog posts in Vietnamese;

+ to identify the similarities and differences between the generic structure potential of instructional blog posts in English and Vietnamese

With such objectives, the study attempts to seek the answers to the three research questions below:

RQ1: What is the generic structure potential of instructional blog posts

in English?

RQ2: What is the generic structure potential of instructional blog posts

in Vietnamese?

RQ3: What are the similarities and differences between instructional

blog posts in English and Vietnamese in terms of generic structure potential?

3 Research methodology

This study deploys the Systemic Functional theory of language toanalyze the distinctive rhetorical structures and to find the Generic StructurePotential (GSP) (Hasan 1989) that is inherent in the instructional blog posts.Halliday and Hasan (1989) hold that the notion distinguishing any text fromnon-text is its textual unity The textual unity of any written or spoken textprimarily is categorized into two essential features: unity of structure (macrolevel) and unity of texture (micro level) However, the main purpose of thisresearch is to analyze the generic structure, not the component of eachelement, only the macro level is put under focus

4 Scope of the study

This research focuses on analyzing the instructional blog posts whichare a popular and widely recognized type of blog posts They are also highlyemployed as an effective content marketing blog as they can subtly generatedemand and encourage customer to click buy The study was premised ontheory of genre analysis, proposed by Halliday and Hasan (1985) The aim ofthis study is to discover the data‘s generic structure potential (GSP) anddiscover the obligatory structure used to differentiate a particular genre fromany others

The data is categorized according to language uses and origin, whichare English and Vietnamese Macro-structure analysis is performed on theblog posts to draw the conclusion about GSP of each group

5 The significance of the study

This study purports to ascertain the generic structure potential of blogposts in English and Vietnamese The mutual schematic structures of eachgroup are expected to assist copywriters and blog writers, as well asbusinesses to enhance the quality and promotional values of blog posts Theresults of this study may also serve as a reference for further researchconducted in the same field

6 Structure of the thesis

This study is divided into three parts as follows:

- Chapter 1 is Introduction which states the rationale, objectives,

methodology, scope, significance and structure of the study

- Chapter 2 provides Theoretical Framework and Literature Review,

which provides explanation of concepts and related studies

- Chapter 3 is Methodology, which clarifies research methods, data

collection procedure, analytical framework and data analysis procedure

- Chapter 4 presents Results and Discussions, which reports the

analytical results of the study, answers three research questions based on theresearch outcome and literature review

- Chapter 5 is the Conclusion which recaps the main points of the study,

discusses the Limitations and Implications for further studies

CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND REVIEW OF

LITERATURE

2.1 Generic Structure Potential (GSP) in SFL

In SFL, genre is defined as ―staged, goal oriented purposeful activity‖(Martin, 1984, p.25) According to Halliday and Hasan, the concept of genre

is defined as ‗type of discourse‘ and initiated the investigation of its textstructure (1989) From the definition, it can be seen that genre describes theimpact of the context of culture on language as genre is related to culturally-specific purposes Genre is identified by its social purposes, which givemeaning to the social activities being described These distinct purposesinfluent the differences in the stages of the activities used to accomplish thesepurposes The stages of description imply a structure, into which texts arearranged The reason why genres have stages is that normally people cannotmake all the meaning they want to at once The stages are vital to construe theorganization of text, as describing the procedure of achieving goals isnecessary

Nonetheless, the context of culture or genre is often considered anabstract and general concept It cannot be directly recognized in the languageand its encoding in the language is mediated in two ways On the one hand,the mediation is recognized by specifying common staging organization, orschematic structure On the other hand, it is mediated by the second level ofcontext, which is register, by specifying the genre potential of a particularculture in terms of the possible configurations of register variables allowedwithin a given culture at a given time (Eggins, 1994, p 35)

In terms of describing the schematic structure, constituency andlabeling are two basic concepts Eggins (1994) purports that constituencyrefers to a part/whole relationship between elements of some structure.Constituents are identified by functional labeling accordingly the function ofdifferent constituents In a schematic structure, constituents are either

obligatory, optional or recursive and a genre is defined according to theobligatory elements Different genres contain different patterns of schematicstructure and these differences also depend on what activities are consideredpurposeful in particular cultures Texts of the same genre perform similarstages of organization or schematic structure.

2.1.1 Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)

Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) inspired by ideas from MichaelHalliday in the mid nineteenth century has received a spate of interest inapplied linguistics As Eggins (2004) explains, the central theoretical claimabout language in the systemic functional linguistics theory which is a

‗functional-semantic‘ approach is categorized as follows:

+ That language use is functional

+ That its function is to make meanings

+ That these meanings are influenced by the social and cultural context in which they are exchanged

+ That the process of using language is a semiotic process, a process of

making meanings by choosing (Eggins, 2004, p 3)

Deriving from the explanation of SFL by Eggins (2004) the mainaccounts of systemic functional theory is based on the notion of function,system and the social semiotic nature of language

The functionality of language mainly shows why in specific contextspeople make specific choices of language features in contrast with the otherpossible choices To Halliday and Matthiesen the prominence of namingfunctional categories lie in the fact that they ―provide an interpretation ofgrammatical structure in terms of the overall meaning potential of thelanguage‖ (2004, p 52)

The system in this model refers to ―a set of features which stand incontrast with each other in a specific environment of which one will bechosen whenever the environmental conditions obtained‖ (Halliday &

Webster, 2009, p 65).This mainly implies that any feature of the language

chosen is only one option taken from a diversity of options in a languagesystem By this it takes into consideration the paradigmatic elements oflanguage referring to ―a set of oppositions or choices in a particular context‖(Eggins, 2004, p 192) as well as syntagmatic elements which are ―asequence of ordered elements in a linear arrangement‖ (ibid) within language.However, SFL perceives language as ―a system network of meaningpotential‖ (Morley, 1985, p 42) and describes it as being built up from varioussystems each of which representing features that differ from one another(ibid).

Despite other linguists who explain language from various aspects such

as psychological, psychoanalytic or aesthetic aspects, Halliday explains itfrom a social perspective which is relevant to the notion of culture In SFLtheory, it is believed that while other aspects are rather relevant to lookthrough language but above all, the language is acquired in a social processand the knowledge is exchanged in a social environment either oninstitutionalized settings like the school system or in natural settings likeparent- child conversations (Halliday & Hasan, 1989, pp 4-5) The semioticexplains that language as one of the sign systems, mainly a prominent one asother systems are learnt and translated through it, makes the whole of culturewith a series of other sign systems (Malmkjær, 2010, p 179)

2.1.2 Genre and genre analysis in SFL

2.1.2.1 Genre

There has been many efforts on defining genre, some of the notableworks are of Miller (1984), Martin (1984), Swales (1990), Eggins (1994),Bawarshi and Reiff (2010), Bhatia (1993, 2004) According to Miller (1984),

a genre theorist who envisions genre as a social concept instead of a structuralone, genre is defined as ―typified rhetorical actions based in recurrentsituations‖ Recurrent situations can be defined as socially relevant events,which are categorized, interpreted, and acted on in certain ways He holds that

what recurs is not the material situation such as a factual event but ourconstrual of a type Martin (1984) regards genre as a ‗staged, goal-oriented,purposeful activity in which speakers engage in as members of our culture‘(p.25) Meanwhile, Swales‘ seminal work on the purposive nature of genrefrom the ESP approach has continued to be one of the most extensivedefinitions of genre Swales (1990, p 58) describes genre as a class ofcommunicative event exposing some shared set of communicative purposeswhich are often identified by members of the specific professional oracademic community where the genre appears This rationale shapes theschematic structure of the discourse and influences and constrains choice ofcontent and style Eggins (1994, p 36) purports that the primary determinant

of genre membership is that of ‗purpose‘ whereas schematic structure andlinguistic features are regarded as dimensions to the realisation of genres

Bhatia (1993) has also mentioned the fact that social motive is adefining factor of genres by using other terms such as communicative goal,purpose or end Bhatia (2004, p 23) holds that genre refers to language usewithin a conventionalized communicative situation to achieve a specific set ofcommunicative goals of a disciplinary or social institution, which cause

―stable structural forms‖ by restricting the use of lexico-grammatical anddiscoursal resources Genre is the same as notions such as prototype, schema,frame, typification, speech activity, etc

Hyland (2008) claims that genre is a series of texts which sharecommon notable characters, containing the characters that represent for usingthe language in specific and repetitive situations These characters allowmembers of a language community to recognize the common features of thetexts in the same genre, to read and understand effortlessly or create a similartext (p 543)

According to Bawarshi and Reiff (2010) genre represents how language

is organized to present and respond, or behave in a reasonable way, they helppeople reinvent the situation in which the language is used Thus, from afunctional approach on the classification of texts, or genres, theaforementioned approaches classify genres according to their functionalfeatures All of the authors mentioned above share the same opinion that thepurpose of using a text plays a key role in realizing genre of that text, andtexts are categorized based on the purpose of which they are used Base of thepurpose, necessary characters can be identified to recreate the genre Figure 1below represents genre with their functions Under each is a list of somecommonly used text types that often deploy those genres

The notion of genre and the classification of genres are summarized byKnapp & Watkins in Figure 1 below:

Figure 1 Categorization of genre (Knapp & Watkins, 1994, p 22)

Genre has also been put in Halliday‘s theory of language which isSystemic Functional Grammar (SFL) What SFL is fundamentally concernedwith link the language and its functions in social settings In SFL, language isviews as a social semiotic SFL considers genre as ―a staged, goal-oriented,and purposeful social activity‖, in which people engage as members of theirculture (Martin, 1984, p 25) In the light of SFL genre is the cultural purpose

of texts and genres are conveyed within texts via their structural andrealization patterns (Eggins, 2004) Therefore, genre is a social processaiming at interpreting the organization and structure of language in identifyingits social purpose within specific context and culture

The concept of realization is of optimal importance to SFL in which it

is regarded as an importance notion that aids to explain the dynamicrelationship between language and contexts While the former realizes socialpurposes, the latter plays the role of specific linguistic interactions.Concurrently, language is also realized as specific social actions and meanings

by employing these social purposes and contexts Halliday (1978) wiselydescribes the ―context of situation‖ as register, in which language is regarded

as a form of socialization and acts as an assistant to help people socializingand performing meaningful actions Based on this, Martin (1984) associatesgenre to register in order to create the relationship between the two and makethem realize each other in important ways He argued that register functions atsituational level while genre perform at cultural level

Halliday (1985) establishes three kinds of meaning into SFL literature,which are ideational, interpersonal, and textual Ideational meaning is whattexts are about (representation of action- corresponds to field), interpersonalmeaning refers to how relationships are made through language (describesinteractions between participants- corresponds to tenor), and textual meaningmakes reference to how information is organized (describes the flow ofinformation within and between texts- corresponds to mode)

In conclusion, genre is a purposeful use of language which possessesspecific schematic structure and linguistic features and serves to achieveparticular communicative goals.

2.1.2.2 Genre analysis in SFL

In the 1980s, genre analysis arose as a sub-discipline of appliedlinguistics and then bloomed in the 1990s A genre is regarded as a highlystructured and conventionalized discourse existing among the members of acommunity According to Bhatia (1997), genre analysis focuses on the study

of written discourse that happens naturally beyond the sentence level‖ Inattempting to elaborate the term of genre analysis, Dudley-Evans and St John(1998) claim that discourse study is any study of language or text abovesentence level This may be involved in the study of cohesive links betweensentences, of paragraphs, or the structure of the whole text This is calledapplied discourse analysis where text analysis focuses on the regularities ofstructures that differentiate a text form one another In genre analysis, it isoptimal to identify the communicative purpose, purposes of the texts orgenres under investigation and the use of language in institutionalized settingscontrolled by communicative conventions existing in and created by a group

of participants in a defined discourse community

Bhatia (2008) claimed that it is essential to have a more integratedapproach to genre analysis so as to produce evidence of knowledge employed

in the professional settings Genre analysis is also called discourseinvestigations Connor (2004) asserts that attention towards genre analysis hasrocketed in terms of contrastive rhetoric research, with works concentrating

on textual or structural analysis In contrastive analyses, a generic analysisfocuses mainly on generic structures and rhetorical function, such as move,stages, schematic or generic structures According to Bhatia (2013), genreanalysis is a special method of analyzing text, conducted by identifyingelements contributing to building text and interpretation to answer the

question: why the member of a professional community use the language theyusually use Two main approaches are deployed conduct genre analysis:

‗Move Analytic Approach‘ (Swales, 1990) and ‗Generic StructurePotential‘(GSP) analysis (Halliday & Hasan, 1985)

During any process of genre analysis, three activities have to befollowed strictly: (i) identify the purpose of the text in the research, (ii)identify the features of using language restricted by custom of the community,and the most important one (iii) identify the stages from element to element ofthe text (Martin, 1985) In other word, when analyzing generic structure, it isnecessary to identify the bridges and stages between elements of the text

2.1.3 Macrostructure analysis and GSP

According to Dijk (1977, 1980), part from the microstructure, or ahorizontal organization, texts also have a vertical organization, ormacrostructure, corresponding to the hierarchical organization of text contentaround its main ideas, or macropropositions Dijk (2007) holds that as thesource of a text's global coherence, the process of constructing arepresentation of a text's macrostructure is central to the process of textcomprehension It consists, first, of identifying and representingmacropropositions as they are encountered during reading and, second, ofdetermining the relations among the macropropositions These processes areguided by a variety of explicit signals and syntactic cues, as well as thereader's knowledge of how macrorelevant information is conventionallydistributed within a text In addition, processing depends heavily on thereader's semantic knowledge to construct macropropositions that are onlyimplied in the text, and also to identify hierarchical relations amongmacropropositions expressed or implied by the author

The macrostructure is defined as the ―germinal idea‖ (or closely relatedcomplex of germinal ideas) that acts as an overall plan in the development of thediscourse (Toews, 1992) while the microstructure is defined as a

collection of coherent basic units of text (e.g sentences) Likewise, themacrostructure is a network derived from the microstructure by application ofsome semantic rules (Van Dijk, 1988).

Furthermore, according to Engebretsen (2000), the term macrostructuredenotes both a textual and a cognitive entity The macrostructure has asemantic representation in the text And that representation has an encounterwith the reader‘s interpretive framework (mental schemas) and so, it isestablished in the mind of the reader He also says that the macropropositions

at the various levels will be partly expressed in the text

Sanders and Schilperood (2006, p.387) holds that macrostructure is theabstract representation of the global meaning structure and macrostructureanalysis occurs mainly at the discourse level (Scott, 2009) Macrostructureanalysis examines a writer‘s conveyance of meaning at the discourse level andmay include measures of organization, cohesion, and genre-specific textstructure Elements of macrostructure are often included in qualitative writinganalyses, such as in holistic or analytic scoring systems, or can be depictedquantitatively by counting cohesive ties or genre-specific text structureelements present in a written product (e.g., counting story grammar elements

in a narrative text, or marking whether an introduction, body, and conclusionare present in an expository text)

Two popular approaches to macrostructure analysis are: move analysisapproach by Swales (1990) and generic structure potential (GSP) analysis byHasan (1985)

Swales (1981, 1990) referred to ‗genre‘ as ‗a class of communicativeevent‘ in which its communicative purpose is shared by specific discoursecommunity members To gain insight into the text and its constituents, theway it is composed, interpreted and used, Swales employed genre analysis ofthe introduction section of each research article From his study, he proposedthe model Create a Research Space (CARS) as shown in Figure 2 Based on

this model, a text can be divided into ‗Moves‘ based on their function in thesection and a ‗Move‘ is further categorized into ‗Steps‘.

Figure 2 Swales’ (1990) model of research article genre

Swales‘ genre model shares a number of features of the functional tradition of SFL in that he examines genre in terms of the globalstructure of text and gives ideational labels to the structural elements such as

structural-‗establishing a territory‘, and ‗claiming centrality‘; similar to that found inHasan‘s GSP model (‗sale‘, ‗purchase‘, ‗closure‘) In addition, Swales alsocorrelates the structural elements with their linguistic signals thus describingthe elements in semantic terms and covering the grammatical analysis of theelements within a genre The concept of genre in Swales model includesdetermining the rhetorical organization of a genre aiming at

achieving a set of communicative purposes (contextual) and showing howthese communicative purposes are signaled by lexical and syntactic choices.Swales‘ genre model allows text to be analyzed in terms of its text structure

‗from above‘ and ‗from below‘, offering a practical method of text analysisthat can lead to the establishment of a genre-specific potential This modelcould be a resource for producing and recognizing the rhetorical organization

of texts of a specific genre

However, this study attempts to identify the generic structure of the textwithout strictly follow the steps or moves, as blog posts tend to be moreflexible and free-style, different authors have different ways to organize andemploy the elements of the text Therefore, the focus of the research lies onthe elements or stages that occurs/recur throughout the text, which is based onthe GSP analysis by Hasan (1985)

The model of Generic Structure Potential by Hasan (1985) summarizesthe commonality and variation of schematic structure among texts of the samegenre There are potential elements or stages that make a genre specific whengrouped and put in a certain order and constitution Hasan (1985) claims textswith the same utilizing purposes adopt the same textual structure, thereforewritten in the form of the same genre She states that for each genre, there areelements, or stages that occur/ recur throughout the text Within the limit of agenre, the full potential of occurrence is investigated by detecting the variableand invariable properties in the organization of a text, proposed by Hallidayand Hasan (1989) as follows:

(i) Obligatory elements- What elements must occur?

(ii) Optional elements - What elements may occur?

(iii) Sequencing of elements - what arrangement of elements is

obligatory and optional?

(iv)Reiterative - How often may the elements occur?

As can be seen, the GSP model consists of obligatory, optional andrecursive elements that incorporate into a specific sequence Obligatoryelements constitute the preferred structure of a text and make it genre-specific, which implies that without these, a text would not be considered asany genre Optional ones, on the contrary, do not contribute to a genre‘sdeterminers Lastly, iterative elements ―encompass those recursive elementsthat appear more than once in a communicative event, without following anystrict order‖ (Motta-Roth, 1995, p 38).

Hasan (1985) also proposes the stages of a genre of buying and selling,which include Greeting, Sale Initiation, Sale Enquiry or Sale Request, SaleCompliance, Sale Purpose and Purpose Closure The activity may start witheither one of the first four stages and the order may be flexible, however thelast three stages are static and should be in a fixed sequence (Halliday andHasan, 1985, p 64) It should be noted that in other cultures, bargaining may

be take into more thorough consideration in a selling and buying activity As aresult, the GSP of the genre ―Service Encounter‖ of a ―Shop Transaction‖ ispresented as follows

[(G).(SI)^][(SE.){SR^SC^}^S^]P^PC(^F)Hasan (1989) suggested that every shop transaction in Englishpotentially includes the following macro-structural elements: Greeting (G),Sale Initiation (SI), Sale Enquiry (SE), Sale Request (SR), Sale Compliance(SC), Sale (S), Purchase (P), Purchase Closure (SC), and Finish (F) In theformula, the round brackets represent optionality of enclosed elements.Therefore, the G, SI, SE, and F are optional, and SR, SC, S, P, and PC areobligatory The dot between elements means ―more than one‖ option insequence The arrows indicate reiterative The curly brackets show that thedegree of reiteration for elements in the square brackets is equal, which means

that if SR happens twice, SC must happen twice as well The caret signs (^)show sequence.

2.2 Blog posts as a special kind of genre

The exact origin of the blog remains unknown, however, it is widelyagreed that the term weblog was coined by weblog writer Jorn Barger in 1997(Blood, 2000; Jerz, 2003; Safire, 2002; Turnbull, 2002) It appears that blogsoriginated as a way to share information of interest These early blogs hadthree primary features: they were chronologically organized, contained links

to sites of interest on the web, and provided commentary on the links

There is a strong agreement on the central features that make a blog ablog Most commentators define blogs on the basis of their reversechronology, frequent updating, and combination of links with personalcommentary The Weblog Review, a blog reviewing site, evaluates threefeatures on a 5-point scale: design, consistency, and content, with the lion'sshare of the rating's weight, 80-90%, dedicated to the blog's content TheWeblog Review classifies blogs by grouping them into fourteen content-focused categories: adult, anime, camgirl, computer, entertainment, humor,movies, music, news/links, personal, photography, Spanish/Portuguese, teen,and video games Another classification is offered by Jill Walker(2003), in hercontribution to appear in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory:she notes that blogs can vary in their media content, with most blogs primarilytextual but others classified into "subgenres" such as photoblogs, videoblogs,and audioblogs

Rebecca Blood's widely cited blog entry on the history of weblogsoffers a classification of blogs into two "styles," based largely on content: anoriginal filter-style, where the blogger is primarily an editor and annotator oflinks, and a later, more personal "blog-style" weblog, where bloggers engage

in "an outbreak of self-expression" (Blood, 2000)

Blogs take many forms On most blogging sites, bloggers can choosefrom a number of boilerplate formats or customize their own pages But thebasics of blogging are consistent across portals and individual blogs Asblogger Meg Hourihan puts it, "If we look beneath the content of weblogs, wecan observe the common ground all bloggers share the format"(Hourihan,2002) All blogs contain dated entries, starting with the most recent, and amajority include external links Blogs are composed of "posts," which include

a date, a time stamp, and a permalink and often include a link for commentaryand the author's name, especially if multiple authors contribute to a blog.Hourihan (2002) finds that the combination of links and accompanyingcommentary is the distinguishing feature of the blog, creating connections that

"bind" bloggers into a community

When bloggers talk about blogging, two themes relevant to these

questions are ubiquitous: self-expression and community development expression is a salient theme among some bloggers, who find the same

Self-opportunity that television talk shows afford their participants: the Self-opportunity

to tell their stories in a mediated forum to a potentially large, though distant and invisible, audience Bloggers mark both their linking and their

commentary as means of self-expression: as ways to foster "a unique voice, a definite attitude, a clearer motivation"(Graham, 2002), to explore old interestsand discover new ones (Blood, 2000), to provide a "forum for the voices in

my head" (Powazek, 2002) or to "experiment [with] self-expression" (Barrett, 1999)

Relationship development and social control are primarily external,directed outward, functions that use self-disclosure to build connections withothers or to manipulate their opinions These second two dimensions of blogdisclosure support the second omnipresent theme, community building Even

as they serve to clarify and validate the self, blogs are also intended to be

read Maintaining traffic and link statistics seems important to bloggers, andmany provide readers the opportunity to provide feedback either by postingcomments directly on the blog or through email Some even invite readers topurchase items for them from their Amazon.com wish lists Many areconscious of the fact that they have readers and, to varying degrees,consciously write for them.

Adespresso, a famous American advertising website, founded in 2013,provides some advice for writing blog Firstly, blogs should be postedregularly so readers can visit the website and read your blog as a habit.Besides, top ranking posts need updating regularly Secondly, blogs have to beoptimized for leads or sales More specifically, they must always include acall to action (CTA), some information about how the product solve theproblem mentioned and/or headquarter of the company Thirdly, plenty ofinternal linking should be deployed for users who bounce around the bloguntil they are ready Finally, keywords should always be included for the site

to be found Each blog post should be optimized for the keywords that bringthe most relevant traffic to the site (Adespresso, 2016)

Ultimately, blog posts belong to the Internet genre They are created fortwo purposes One the one hand, they express the authors‘ personal opinions,perspectives and emotion; therefore, bloggers often mark their commentary as

means of self-expression (Blood, 2000) On the other hand, bloggers can

develop relationship and manipulate others‘ opinion (Hourihan, 2002).Serving either purpose, blogs all share the same features, i.e reservechronology, frequent update, containing links to site of interest, combination

of links with personal commentary, along with related elements such as a date,

a time stamp, author‘s name, external links, commentary, top ranking posts,CTA, internal links ,and key words (Adespresso, 2016) Contents of blog arediverse and flexible, with most blogs mainly textual; however, they

can be categorized into subgenres such as photo blogs, video blogs and audioblogs (Walker, 2003).

2.2.1 Overview about content marketing and blogging

Starting with the 2.0 webs and current 4.0 webs, traditional marketing

is losing its priority and advantages, therefore, marketers need to find otherways out of the situation to maintain the popularity of their brand tocustomers (Adespresso, 2016) Content marketing1 was born and has been thesavage for copywriters, making the marketing race more and morechallenging, yet intriguing According to the Content Marketing Institute1, anonline resource providing information about content marketing related things,defines content marketing as the following: ―Content marketing is amarketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant andconsistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with theobjective of driving profitable customer action.‖2 From the definition, it isshown that the content marketing must bring value, so that the customers willgain something, normally what they want or are interested, before taking anyprofitable actions such as buying a product or registering a service Therefore,copywriters have to make sure that for any piece of content marketing theycompose, the recipient must receive value from it The goal here is to provide

as much value from the content marketing to as much of target audience aspossible Content marketing is superior to traditional advertising andmarketing because they encourage the buying process by raising awareness ofsolutions and educating customers about a product they may have neverconsidered before

1 Content Marketing Institute is a website launched in 2007 as Junta4, its initial name Content

Marketing Institute is the leading global content marketing education and training organization, teaching enterprise brands how to attract and retain customers through compelling, multichannel storytelling.

2. What is content marketing? Retrieved from: marketing/

https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/what-is-content-Content marketing is different from traditional product-marketingwhich contains sales collateral and product-specific information Contentmarketing includes educational articles, blog posts, e-books, videos,entertainment, and webinars that answer specific questions and providereaders with something they cannot get elsewhere It‘s the best way to makeyour product unique and attract customers.

In various consumable formats, content marketing refers to the act ofeducating, sharing knowledge, advice or entertainment The following aresome of the most popular format: blog articles, videos, podcasts, social mediamarketing, emails, webinars, info graphics, cartoons, quizzes, generators/calculators, assessments, apps

According to Ruffolo (2017), blogging is the foundation of Contentmarketing Blogs pioneered content marketing They have become popularand common place where people can access high-quality and well writteninformation for free Although blogs are just a gateway for other mediums ofcontent marketing, they are often on the shorter side which is quick andthorough at addressing industry topics Before digging deeper down, it isimportant to understand what blogging (blog article or blog post) really is.According the Oxford learner‘s dictionaries, blog is a website where a personwrites regularly about recent events or topics that interest them, usually withphotos and links to other websites that they find interesting So as a noun, it is

a regular updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual orsmall group, that is written in an informal or conversational style As a verb,blog is to write something in a blog So it can be understood that to blog is toadd new material to or regularly update a blog Once a blog is made publiclyaccessible, it can be typically found through links on the website, emails andonline keyword search engines Everyone can also find them on the blogowner‘s social media profiles which are hugely prevalent these days Via afew clicks, people can find blog content of the related topic on one continuous

streaming page or posts on individual pages accessible through one or morepages They can be in form of post title links, excerpts and related tags, whichare typically presented to readers in reverse chronological order, in which themost recent content often appears first.

Writing blog is more than just posting something on your businesswebsite According to Guillory (2015) the blog seems to be more attractive if

it is various in length and types Normally, 400 to 600 words sounds perfect,but in-depth contents or skyscraper contents have to be of great length Theseposts should be about 2,000 words of useful and informative knowledge with

a frequency of one or two of them a month There are diverse types of postssuch as instructional post (how-to), product review, lists, roundups of yourbest posts, interviews and tips

Rowse (2005) argued that instructional blog posts are one of the mostpopular and effective types of blog in content marketing They focus onteaching people how to do something of a specific topic, therefore the title ofthese posts often begin or contain the words ―how to…‖ or ―the way to…‖.Figure 3 below is an extract from an instructional blog post

Figure 3 Instructional blog post sample

Retrieved from:

perform two major functions: (i) provide readers with comprehensible,

concise but in-depth guide which solves a specific problem and/or address their concerns; and (ii) combining with subtle messages to trigger profitable action.

2.2.2 Internet/ web Genres

The Internet and in particular the World-Wide Web provides aparticularly interesting setting in which to study the use and development ofgenres for several reasons First, the capabilities of the new medium have led

to the development of many new genres of communication (Crowston, 2000).Space limitations preclude a comprehensive review of the development of theInternet, but it‘s notable that the increased functionality of the Internet hasbeen paralleled by an explosion in Internet genres In particular, thetechnology of the Web extends the notion of a document—and thus the notion

of genre—because Web pages can provide functionality in addition toinformation (Crowston, 2000) Indeed, some Web pages are more comparable

to computer interfaces than to conventional paper documents As a result,functionality may be important in understanding genres on the Internet.Furthermore, the rapid development of this medium suggests a high level ofexperimentation with potential genres Bearman (1994), for example, notesthe rapid evolution in what he refers to as ―forms of material‖ in electronicmedia in general

Second, since many Web sites are open to the public, many examples ofWeb communication are easily available for study Furthermore, because there

is no central management of the Internet or the Web, there is no explicitmanagement or enforcement of genres of communication, as might happen inthe introduction of a communication system in a corporate environment(Orlikowski et al., 1995) Instead, individual Web developers individuallychoose how to present their information, drawing on their understanding asmembers of a community, what Orlikowski et al (1995) called implicitstructuring from the point of view of the Web page developer rather than the

recipient of the communication Yates and Sumner (1997) refer to the

―democratization of genre production‖ as ―communities evolve increasinglywell-defined genres to better support their particular communicative needsand work practices‖ However, even in this free-for-all, mutual acceptance ofgenre is important to enable communications Yates and Sumner (1997) arguethat on the Web, genres help in both the production and consumption ofdocuments because genre adds ―fixity‖ in a medium that does not otherwisedistinguish very well between text types

Finally, there are many communities meeting on the Web, bringingexperiences with different genres and using the Web for many differentpurposes The Web is sometimes used for direct communication wheresomeone with a Web server ―delivers‖ a document to members of a knowncommunity by giving them a URL (Yates & Sumner, 1997) For example,some academics use the Web to communicate with colleagues by publishingtheir own papers and with students by publishing syllabi and assignments.Another example of communication within a predictable community iscomputer companies announcing new products, publishing catalogs orproviding troubleshooting tips on-line for their customers However, in manyother cases the audience is unpredictable Unlike the Usenet or electronic mailgroups, there is no clear separation of communities into different channels ofcommunication as is the case for journals or talks given at conferences, forwhich the audience is likely to have shared interests

Indeed, it seems a stretch to say that there is a single Web community atall Instead, the genre repertoire reflected in a collection of Web pages will bethe result of interactions within and among multiple communities In somecases, a genre may act as a type of boundary object (Star et al., 1989),providing a common point of contact between different groups (Freedman &Medway, 1994) In others, this mixing may lead to genre confusion, meaningthat there is a practical need to understand the way genres enable

communication For example, organizations have used the Web to publishinformation such as product brochures, annual reports, country, state, and cityhome pages, government agency press releases, etc These organizations tend

to use familiar genres when putting information on the Web However, aperson happening to reach a document on one of their Web sites has a goodchance of being outside the community in which that genre evolved As aresult the document may be confusing and the communicative purpose lost

To conclude, internet/web is a new genre of communication, whichprovides not only information, but also functionality (Crowston, 2007),including interaction and sharing The Internet or the Web contain no explicitmanagement or reinforcement (Orlikowski et al., 1995) but still there is fixitygrounded by the genre (Yates & Sumner, 1997; Star et al., 1989) The web can

be used for direct communication (Yates & Sumner, 1997) to predictablecommunity or to unpredictable one; however these two are likely to share thesame interest (Crowston, 2007)

as an example, the GSP was generated as follows:

[TT^OR]^CA^1^2^RS^1^2^[F]^(MR)The elements generated in the catalogue include: Title TT, Orientation OR,Conflicting Action CA, Resolution RS, Finis F and Moral MR while MR is anoptional element, the remaining elements are obligatory

A number of Internet genres have been dedicated careful analysis Forexample, Suen (2009) pays attention to the generic characteristics of hotelhomepages, trying to identify the textual and image features that make a genreout of this digital reality Building on Bhatia‘s (2004) framework, this studyalso adopts Kress and van Leeuwen‘s (1996) multimodal analysis frameworkfor analysing images on hotel websites, as visual images also create meaning

in communication The ‗representational‘, ‗interpersonal‘ and

‗compositional‘ meaning of the images used on hotel homepages areinvestigated ―Representational meanings are about the representation of theworld They are revealed through narrative and conceptual images.Interpersonal meanings refer to the social relationship between theparticipants Contact, distance, point of view and modality contribute to therealization of interpersonal meanings Compositional meanings are therelations of the representational and interactive meanings of an image to eachother They are realized through the interrelated systems of information value,framing and salience.‖ Her corpus consists of 12 hotel homepages; thefeatures she analyses are the moves of the text, the lexical-grammaticalfeatures, the hyperlinks, and the use of the images

Schmidt (2007) recently developed a framework for studying bloggingpractice, which is grounded in social structuration theory He identifies anumber of important aspects to bear in mind for the study of blogs,emphasising in particular three structural elements, namely rules, relationsand code In the definition of both rules and relations, Schmidt includesstudying links as part of the analysis Schmidt uses the concept ofcommunities of practice (Lave and Wenger 1991), but in a more general sensethan Lave and Wenger do, to describe a group of people who share a bloggingpractice Schmidt further defines blogging practice as 'individual episodes inwhich a blogger uses specific software to attain specific communicative goals'(Schmidt 2007) However, it is not only linking practices and community

building which characterize the blogosphere Efimova and de Moor (2005)approach conversations in blogs not only by looking at the blogs per se, butalso with the socio-technical context of blogs in mind They emphasize thatconnections to phenomena outside a blog, including other media, have to betaken into consideration when studying a community According to them,even looking at a single specific blog conversation reveals very differentapproaches to writing, linking and commenting and also shows howconversational practices differ (Efimova & de Moor 2005).

Miller and Shepherd (2004) have studied the blog as social action andconclude that 'the blog-as-genre is a contemporary contribution to the art ofthe self' Their study is based on genre theory and includes a discussion aboutgeneric semantic content, syntactic or formal features and social action Theyproblematize the concept of a generic blog, since they note that, even thoughblogs have not existed very long, major differences already exist in how blogsare used However, their point of departure in the space between the publicand the private leads them to conclude that the blog can be regarded as agenre with a basic characteristic of cultivating and validating the self (Miller

& Shepherd 2004)

Herring et al (2005) suggest, based on a study of 203 randomlyselected blogs, that blogs should be treated as a hybrid genre Their contentanalysis of the distribution of blog types according to their communicativepurposes and structural characteristics shows that blogs are frequentlyupdated, include few links and few comments and are predominantly used forself-expression The idea of studying blogs as an evolving genre has beenused by Lomborg (2009) in her work to propose a definition of the personalblog In her framework, she uses three dimensions, content, directionality andstyle, to distinguish the personal blog from other blog types Puschmann(forthcoming) similarly uses genre theory as a basis for his study of corporateblogs He poses as a problem the possibility of seeing blogs as a genre

deriving from a certain community's textual habits and norms Instead, hepoints to the technology's role as passing on knowledge of formal conventionsthat are needed.

There are some attempts to identify the core elements of blog posts andfeatures of an effective and successful blog post Winner (2001) proposed thatblog posts canonically encode the following information: Title, text,Tags/Categories, Author, Time of publication and URL The Author, time ofpublication and the URL of the post is different from the other fields as theyconstitute extra-textual information that is automatically related to thesituation and not manually allocated by the blogger According to Vos (2018)business blogging is on the rise and is generating more leads for B2Bcompanies in comparison to those that do not blog If done well, the blog canbring more SEO benefits and long-term ROI for the business To create anexceptional blog, the blog should have high quality content, which means thepost need to be in-depth, data-driven and actionable In order to get peoplereading and finally converting, the blog post have to focus on solving reader‘spain points, visual storytelling is an effective tool Vos (2018) suggests thatpeople are 90% visual beings and blog articles with images get 94% moreviews Besides, videos are also powerful tool as they is going to make up to80% of all online traffic by 2021, so it is important to embed video contentinto your text posts Another factor that attracts readers‘ attention and hooksthem into the post is the cover images However, these images should beunique and exclusive to the blog only She suggests that a highly effectiveblog should contain the following components: (i) cover image is a picture toillustrate for the whole content of the blog post; (ii) visual contents includeimages, video content, info graphics to illustrate for the details of the blogposts; (iii) LSI keywords (Latent Semantic Indexing) are keywordssemantically related to the main keyword They can be synonyms, or simplewords that are frequently found together in the same context with the