How to Write an American Death Notice: Some Guidelines for Novice Obituarists



Abstract

The article aims at helping non-native speakers of English to write death notices, following the requirements of American tradition of the genre. It is based on the theoretical research into the genre, carried out by its author, who analyzed 1076 contemporary New York Times notices, according to Moves and Steps model of genre analysis by J. Swales and V. Bhatia. Having distinguished the death notice from the obituary, the author presents the communicative functions of the genre and its structure, consisting of seven moves, each made up of one to seven steps. Their presentation and brief analysis is accompanied by 100 patterns and
templates, which allows intermediate (B1–B2) students of English to create their own texts successfully step by step.


Keywords

American obituary; death notice; genre analysis

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Published : 2016-09-07


CebratG. (2016). How to Write an American Death Notice: Some Guidelines for Novice Obituarists. Theory and Practice of Second Language Acquisition, 2(2). Retrieved from https://journals.us.edu.pl/index.php/TAPSLA/article/view/4738

Grzegorz Cebrat  gcebrat@poczta.okay.pl
Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Zawodowa w Tarnowie  Poland



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