The impact of marketization on higher education genre: A CDA perspective on the international student prospectus of universities in Mainland China

• Main Author: Yang, Wang
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2010
• Subjects: Critical discourse analysis > China; CDA (Critical discourse analysis); Discourse analysis; Higher education > China; Applied Linguistics; Linguistics
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/3870; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etd_masteral/article/10708/viewcontent/CDTG004742_P.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

The present study investigates the impact of marketization on the discourse level of higher education genre. Taking Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as the departure point, and combining genre analysis theory and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) theory, the focus of this study is the international student prospectuses from twenty universities in mainland China, particularly those members of Project 985 and Project 211. The study mainly addresses three issues: the realization of marketization on higher education genre in terms of rhetorical moves; the realization of marketization on higher education genre in terms of representational meaning of language, specifically action and attribution; and the realization of marketization on higher education genre at the interpersonal level of meaning in terms of mood types and pronouns. The analysis of this study focuses on the way the rhetorical moves and the grammatical features used to represent the two main participants in the prospectus: university and prospective student. The results indicate certain common patterns and features in terms of rhetorical moves in the international student prospectus. Based on the identified rhetorical obligatory moves, a move pattern is suggested. Furthermore, the promotional nature of the higher education genre is evident, such as the frequent use of personal pronouns (personalization), and the abundance of positive 8 declaratives to present the best possible light side to prospective student. The purpose is clear: to attract the fee-paying student to choose the university or the program. The study confirms the earlier related studies done by Fairclough (1993, 1995), Askehave (2007), Osman (2008), and Du (n.d.) by stating that the genre of consumer advertising has been colonizing professional and public service orders of discourse. Hence, to a certain degree, the marketization of discursive practices in Chinese higher education is realized at the discourse level of the international student prospectus.