KHẢO sát TIỀM NĂNG cấu TRÚC THỂ LOẠI của PHẦN 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, 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 fair
dealing and for permitted purposes and any excerpt or extract from, or
reference to or reproduction of any copyright work has been disclosed
expressly and sufficiently and the title of the work and its authorship have
been acknowledged in this Work;
(4) I do not have any actual knowledge nor do I ought reasonably to know
that the making of this work constitutes an infringement of any copyright
work;
(5) I hereby assign all and every rights in the copyright to this work to the
University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS), who henceforth
shall 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 written
consent of ULIS having been first had and obtained;
(6) I am fully aware that if in the course of making this work I have infringed
any copyright whether intentionally or otherwise, I may be subject to legal

action or any other action as may be determined by ULIS.
Date: June 22nd, 2019
Candidate‘s Signature

Kiều Thị Lệ

i


ABSTRACT

Blog posts have been widely considered to be an effective tool in
content 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 popular
type 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) of
English and Vietnamese instructional blog posts, based on the framework of
Hasan (1985). The corpus consists of ten English and ten Vietnamese blog
posts which were collected from blogs whose views per month surpass
150,000. Moreover, this research also seeks to find the similarities and
differences between the two categories.
The analysis reveals that 36 types of potential elements might occur in
the instructional blog posts. Based on the obligatory, optional and iterative
elements found in the data, the GSP of English and Vietnamese instructional
blog posts is proposed. In conclusion, While English instructional blog posts
accomplish the mission of advertising, instructing and increasing leads;
Vietnamese posts serve the purpose of instructing and increasing traffic to the

page.
The result of the study can be employed to evaluate the necessity and
reasonability of the elements in the instructional blog posts and propose the
most efficient factors to compose successful instructional blog posts.
Key words: generic structure potential (GSP), blog post, content
marketing
ii


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This is a great pleasure for me to thank the people who had some
contribution in the process of completing the present study.

I wish to say thanks to all the staff in the Faculty of Postgraduate,
University of Languages and International Studies, especially doctor Huynh
Anh Tuan, the dean of our faculty that made this research possible and gave
me the chance and the trust to work on this area of research despite the
obstacles.
I‘m grateful to my dear supervisor professor Dr. Nguyen Thi Minh
Tam for all her valuable guidance and encouragement. She always supported
me with valuable suggestions and positive criticism. I‘m thankful for all the
help and the flexibility she had with me despite being busy.

I have a great joy thanking my dear friend Vu Thi Thu Huong who has
been very generous in her friendship with me. I wish to show my gratitude to
her for introducing this field of study to me and helping me to learn it. Thank
you 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 and

sacrifices to grow me up. Thank you for being patient with me in my down
times and tolerating my absence at home as well as encouraging me to pursue
all my dreams since my childhood.

iii


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
iv


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

v


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

vi


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

vii


CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

This introductory section presents a broad outline of this thesis
regarding 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 as
tools to bring value and attract target audiences. People do not simply use
advertisements to introduce and describe their products but to draw
audience‘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, or
particularly the target customers and the copy writers. The text which is not
able to make the intended relationship within a specific discourse community
will not be capable of engaging the readers as insiders and cannot be
comprehensible enough within that specific genre. However, this aim is
satisfied by recognizing the textual variations within specific genres and to
see how texts resemble or vary in accordance with their discourse
organizations and the linguistic features applied. Many materials and writings
about how to write an effective blog are tremendously accessible on the
internet, but to the best of my knowledge, little has been done on the specific
structure of a blog, the factors that make it successful, and the factors that
bore the readers. Given such a gap, this study attempts to investigate generic
structure and typical features of blogs to see whether there is the a specific
formula for a successful blog post and how a blog is written to attract target
audiences, boost customers‘ loyalty and finally create more traffic for the
products or services. The results can have good implications for the members
of this discourse community such as copywriters and blog writers as well as
advertisers.

1

2. Aims and objectives of the study
The study aims to explore the generic structure potential (GSP) of a
type of content marketing blog posts – instructional blog posts - in English
and Vietnamese. In order to reach this aim, three objectives are set out as
below:
+ 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 to
analyze the distinctive rhetorical structures and to find the Generic Structure
Potential (GSP) (Hasan 1989) that is inherent in the instructional blog posts.
Halliday and Hasan (1989) hold that the notion distinguishing any text from
non-text is its textual unity. The textual unity of any written or spoken text
primarily is categorized into two essential features: unity of structure (macro
level) and unity of texture (micro level). However, the main purpose of this
research is to analyze the generic structure, not the component of each
element, only the macro level is put under focus.

2


4. Scope of the study
This research focuses on analyzing the instructional blog posts which
are a popular and widely recognized type of blog posts. They are also highly
employed as an effective content marketing blog as they can subtly generate
demand and encourage customer to click buy. The study was premised on
theory of genre analysis, proposed by Halliday and Hasan (1985). The aim of
this study is to discover the data‘s generic structure potential (GSP) and
discover the obligatory structure used to differentiate a particular genre from
any others.
The data is categorized according to language uses and origin, which
are English and Vietnamese. Macro-structure analysis is performed on the
blog 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 blog
posts in English and Vietnamese. The mutual schematic structures of each
group are expected to assist copywriters and blog writers, as well as
businesses to enhance the quality and promotional values of blog posts. The
results of this study may also serve as a reference for further research
conducted 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.

3


-

Chapter 4 presents Results and Discussions, which reports the

analytical results of the study, answers three research questions based on the
research 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.

4


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 text
structure (1989). From the definition, it can be seen that genre describes the
impact of the context of culture on language as genre is related to culturallyspecific purposes. Genre is identified by its social purposes, which give
meaning to the social activities being described. These distinct purposes
influent the differences in the stages of the activities used to accomplish these
purposes. The stages of description imply a structure, into which texts are
arranged. The reason why genres have stages is that normally people cannot
make all the meaning they want to at once. The stages are vital to construe the
organization of text, as describing the procedure of achieving goals is
necessary.
Nonetheless, the context of culture or genre is often considered an
abstract and general concept. It cannot be directly recognized in the language
and its encoding in the language is mediated in two ways. On the one hand,
the mediation is recognized by specifying common staging organization, or
schematic structure. On the other hand, it is mediated by the second level of
context, which is register, by specifying the genre potential of a particular
culture in terms of the possible configurations of register variables allowed
within a given culture at a given time (Eggins, 1994, p. 35)
In terms of describing the schematic structure, constituency and
labeling are two basic concepts. Eggins (1994) purports that constituency
refers to a part/whole relationship between elements of some structure.
Constituents are identified by functional labeling accordingly the function of
different constituents. In a schematic structure, constituents are either
5


obligatory, optional or recursive and a genre is defined according to the

obligatory elements. Different genres contain different patterns of schematic
structure and these differences also depend on what activities are considered
purposeful in particular cultures. Texts of the same genre perform similar
stages of organization or schematic structure.
2.1.1. Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)
Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) inspired by ideas from Michael
Halliday in the mid nineteenth century has received a spate of interest in
applied linguistics. As Eggins (2004) explains, the central theoretical claim
about 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 main
accounts 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 contexts
people make specific choices of language features in contrast with the other
possible choices. To Halliday and Matthiesen the prominence of naming
functional categories lie in the fact that they ―provide an interpretation of
grammatical structure in terms of the overall meaning potential of the
language‖ (2004, p. 52).
The system in this model refers to ―a set of features which stand in
contrast with each other in a specific environment of which one will be
chosen whenever the environmental conditions obtained‖ (Halliday &
Webster, 2009, p. 65).This mainly implies that any feature of the language
6

chosen is only one option taken from a diversity of options in a language
system. By this it takes into consideration the paradigmatic elements of
language referring to ―a set of oppositions or choices in a particular context‖
(Eggins, 2004, p. 192) as well as syntagmatic elements which are ―a sequence
of ordered elements in a linear arrangement‖ (ibid) within language.
However, SFL perceives language as ―a system network of meaning
potential‖ (Morley, 1985, p. 42) and describes it as being built up from
various systems 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 it
from a social perspective which is relevant to the notion of culture. In SFL
theory, it is believed that while other aspects are rather relevant to look
through language but above all, the language is acquired in a social process
and the knowledge is exchanged in a social environment either on
institutionalized settings like the school system or in natural settings like
parent- child conversations (Halliday & Hasan, 1989, pp. 4-5). The semiotic
explains that language as one of the sign systems, mainly a prominent one as
other systems are learnt and translated through it, makes the whole of culture
with 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 notable
works 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 structural
one, genre is defined as ―typified rhetorical actions based in recurrent
situations‖. Recurrent situations can be defined as socially relevant events,

which are categorized, interpreted, and acted on in certain ways. He holds that
7


what recurs is not the material situation such as a factual event but our
construal 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 genre
from the ESP approach has continued to be one of the most extensive
definitions of genre. Swales (1990, p. 58) describes genre as a class of
communicative event exposing some shared set of communicative purposes
which are often identified by members of the specific professional or
academic community where the genre appears. This rationale shapes the
schematic structure of the discourse and influences and constrains choice of
content and style. Eggins (1994, p. 36) purports that the primary determinant
of genre membership is that of ‗purpose‘ whereas schematic structure and
linguistic features are regarded as dimensions to the realisation of genres.
Bhatia (1993) has also mentioned the fact that social motive is a
defining factor of genres by using other terms such as communicative goal,
purpose or end. Bhatia (2004, p. 23) holds that genre refers to language use
within a conventionalized communicative situation to achieve a specific set of
communicative goals of a disciplinary or social institution, which cause
―stable structural forms‖ by restricting the use of lexico-grammatical and
discoursal 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 share
common notable characters, containing the characters that represent for using
the language in specific and repetitive situations. These characters allow
members of a language community to recognize the common features of the
texts in the same genre, to read and understand effortlessly or create a similar

text (p. 543).

8


According to Bawarshi and Reiff (2010) genre represents how language
is organized to present and respond, or behave in a reasonable way, they help
people reinvent the situation in which the language is used. Thus, from a
functional approach on the classification of texts, or genres, the
aforementioned approaches classify genres according to their functional
features. All of the authors mentioned above share the same opinion that the
purpose of using a text plays a key role in realizing genre of that text, and
texts are categorized based on the purpose of which they are used. Base of the
purpose, necessary characters can be identified to recreate the genre. Figure 1
below represents genre with their functions. Under each is a list of some
commonly used text types that often deploy those genres.
The notion of genre and the classification of genres are summarized by
Knapp & Watkins in Figure 1 below:

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

9


Genre has also been put in Halliday‘s theory of language which is
Systemic Functional Grammar (SFL). What SFL is fundamentally concerned
with link the language and its functions in social settings. In SFL, language is
views as a social semiotic. SFL considers genre as ―a staged, goal-oriented,
and purposeful social activity‖, in which people engage as members of their
culture (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 and
realization patterns (Eggins, 2004). Therefore, genre is a social process
aiming at interpreting the organization and structure of language in
identifying its 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 dynamic
relationship between language and contexts. While the former realizes social
purposes, 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)
wisely describes the ―context of situation‖ as register, in which language is
regarded as a form of socialization and acts as an assistant to help people
socializing and performing meaningful actions. Based on this, Martin (1984)
associates genre to register in order to create the relationship between the two
and make them realize each other in important ways. He argued that register
functions at situational 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 what
texts are about (representation of action- corresponds to field), interpersonal
meaning refers to how relationships are made through language (describes
interactions between participants- corresponds to tenor), and textual meaning
makes reference to how information is organized (describes the flow of
information within and between texts- corresponds to mode).
10


In conclusion, genre is a purposeful use of language which possesses
specific schematic structure and linguistic features and serves to achieve
particular communicative goals.
2.1.2.2. Genre analysis in SFL

In the 1980s, genre analysis arose as a sub-discipline of applied
linguistics and then bloomed in the 1990s. A genre is regarded as a highly
structured and conventionalized discourse existing among the members of a
community. According to Bhatia (1997), genre analysis focuses on the study
of written discourse that happens naturally beyond the sentence level‖. In
attempting to elaborate the term of genre analysis, Dudley-Evans and St. John
(1998) claim that discourse study is any study of language or text above
sentence level. This may be involved in the study of cohesive links between
sentences, of paragraphs, or the structure of the whole text. This is called
applied discourse analysis where text analysis focuses on the regularities of
structures that differentiate a text form one another. In genre analysis, it is
optimal to identify the communicative purpose, purposes of the texts or
genres under investigation and the use of language in institutionalized settings
controlled 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 integrated
approach to genre analysis so as to produce evidence of knowledge employed
in the professional settings. Genre analysis is also called discourse
investigations. Connor (2004) asserts that attention towards genre analysis has
rocketed in terms of contrastive rhetoric research, with works concentrating
on textual or structural analysis. In contrastive analyses, a generic analysis
focuses mainly on generic structures and rhetorical function, such as move,
stages, schematic or generic structures. According to Bhatia (2013), genre
analysis is a special method of analyzing text, conducted by identifying
elements contributing to building text and interpretation to answer the
11


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

‗Move Analytic Approach‘ (Swales, 1990) and ‗Generic Structure
Potential‘(GSP) analysis (Halliday & Hasan, 1985).
During any process of genre analysis, three activities have to be
followed 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 of
the text (Martin, 1985). In other word, when analyzing generic structure, it is
necessary 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 a
horizontal organization, texts also have a vertical organization, or
macrostructure, corresponding to the hierarchical organization of text content
around its main ideas, or macropropositions. Dijk (2007) holds that as the
source of a text's global coherence, the process of constructing a
representation of a text's macrostructure is central to the process of text
comprehension.

It

consists,

first,

of

identifying

and

representing

macropropositions as they are encountered during reading and, second, of
determining the relations among the macropropositions. These processes are
guided by a variety of explicit signals and syntactic cues, as well as the
reader's knowledge of how macrorelevant information is conventionally
distributed within a text. In addition, processing depends heavily on the
reader's semantic knowledge to construct macropropositions that are only
implied in the text, and also to identify hierarchical relations among
macropropositions expressed or implied by the author.
The macrostructure is defined as the ―germinal idea‖ (or closely related
complex of germinal ideas) that acts as an overall plan in the development of
the discourse (Toews, 1992) while the microstructure is defined as a
12


collection of coherent basic units of text (e.g. sentences). Likewise, the
macrostructure is a network derived from the microstructure by application of
some semantic rules (Van Dijk, 1988).
Furthermore, according to Engebretsen (2000), the term macrostructure
denotes both a textual and a cognitive entity. The macrostructure has a
semantic representation in the text. And that representation has an encounter
with the reader‘s interpretive framework (mental schemas) and so, it is
established 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 the
abstract representation of the global meaning structure and macrostructure
analysis occurs mainly at the discourse level (Scott, 2009). Macrostructure
analysis examines a writer‘s conveyance of meaning at the discourse level
and may include measures of organization, cohesion, and genre-specific text
structure. Elements of macrostructure are often included in qualitative writing

analyses, such as in holistic or analytic scoring systems, or can be depicted
quantitatively by counting cohesive ties or genre-specific text structure
elements present in a written product (e.g., counting story grammar elements
in a narrative text, or marking whether an introduction, body, and conclusion
are present in an expository text).
Two popular approaches to macrostructure analysis are: move analysis
approach by Swales (1990) and generic structure potential (GSP) analysis by
Hasan (1985).
Swales (1981, 1990) referred to ‗genre‘ as ‗a class of communicative
event‘ in which its communicative purpose is shared by specific discourse
community members. To gain insight into the text and its constituents, the
way it is composed, interpreted and used, Swales employed genre analysis of
the introduction section of each research article. From his study, he proposed
the model Create a Research Space (CARS) as shown in Figure 2. Based on
13


this model, a text can be divided into ‗Moves‘ based on their function in the
section 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 structuralfunctional tradition of SFL in that he examines genre in terms of the
global structure of text and gives ideational labels to the structural elements
such as ‗establishing a territory‘, and ‗claiming centrality‘; similar to that
found in Hasan‘s GSP model (‗sale‘, ‗purchase‘, ‗closure‘). In addition,
Swales also correlates the structural elements with their linguistic signals thus
describing the elements in semantic terms and covering the grammatical
analysis of the elements within a genre. The concept of genre in Swales model
includes determining the rhetorical organization of a genre aiming at
14

achieving a set of communicative purposes (contextual) and showing how
these 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 analysis that can lead to the establishment of a genre-specific
potential. This model could 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 text
without strictly follow the steps or moves, as blog posts tend to be more
flexible and free-style, different authors have different ways to organize and
employ the elements of the text. Therefore, the focus of the research lies on
the elements or stages that occurs/recur throughout the text, which is based on
the GSP analysis by Hasan (1985).
The model of Generic Structure Potential by Hasan (1985) summarizes
the commonality and variation of schematic structure among texts of the same
genre. There are potential elements or stages that make a genre specific when
grouped and put in a certain order and constitution. Hasan (1985) claims texts
with the same utilizing purposes adopt the same textual structure, therefore
written in the form of the same genre. She states that for each genre, there are
elements, or stages that occur/ recur throughout the text. Within the limit of a
genre, the full potential of occurrence is investigated by detecting the variable
and invariable properties in the organization of a text, proposed by Halliday
and 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?

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As can be seen, the GSP model consists of obligatory, optional and
recursive elements that incorporate into a specific sequence. Obligatory
elements constitute the preferred structure of a text and make it genrespecific, which implies that without these, a text would not be considered as
any genre. Optional ones, on the contrary, do not contribute to a genre‘s
determiners. Lastly, iterative elements ―encompass those recursive elements
that appear more than once in a communicative event, without following any
strict 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, Sale
Compliance, Sale Purpose and Purpose Closure. The activity may start with
either one of the first four stages and the order may be flexible, however the
last three stages are static and should be in a fixed sequence (Halliday and
Hasan, 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 a
result, the GSP of the genre ―Service Encounter‖ of a ―Shop Transaction‖ is
presented as follows.

[(G).(SI)^][(SE.){SR^SC^}^S^]P^PC(^F)
Hasan (1989) suggested that every shop transaction in English
potentially 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 the
formula, the round brackets represent optionality of enclosed elements.
Therefore, the G, SI, SE, and F are optional, and SR, SC, S, P, and PC are
obligatory. The dot between elements means ―more than one‖ option in
sequence. The arrows indicate reiterative. The curly brackets show that the

degree of reiteration for elements in the square brackets is equal, which means

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