Language Value
December 2019, Volume 11, Number 1 pp. 1-22
Copyright © 2019, ISSN 1989-7103
A Genre Analysis of Biography Texts on the IMDB Website
Özgür Çelik
Balıkesir Üniversitesi, Turkey
ABSTRACT
Genre analysis is among the core areas of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and has been gradually
gaining importance because it offers clear, to-the-point and fruitful implications in the field of ESP. The
radical increase in the digitalisation helped genre studies be more specific and accurate. The participation
of users to the Web as the content writers maximised the specificity of genres and online communities
started to form their own sub-genres. Biography texts represent an excellent example of this. This study
aims to make a genre analysis of the biography texts on the Internet Movie DataBase (IMDB) website
which were created by the members of an online community. The texts were chosen from the biographies
of the last 20 Oscar-Winning actors and actresses, and a corpus was compiled. Casañ-Pitarch’s (2017)
Analysis of Multi-Genre Structures (AMS) model was adopted to analyse the texts. According to the
analysis results, a genre-based instruction as a part of an English for General Academic Purposes course
was proposed.
Keywords: Genre, Genre Analysis, Biography Texts, Genre-Based Instruction, IMDB
I. INTRODUCTION
Categorisation has always been an instinct endeavour of humanity towards complexity
or chaos. The principal-agent of a categorisation process is the concept of genre.
Classifying the kinds of texts based on their characteristics dates back to Ancient
Greece, first practised by Aristotle
(Beghtol 2001). In time, this process radically
evolved from a classification mechanism to more complex, comprehensive and
influential genre studies.
Although the concept of genre has ancient roots, genre studies can be regarded as
relatively new and emerged as a natural outcome of English for Specific Purposes (ESP)
studies. First introduced by Tarone (1981), genre studies owe its advent to the seminal
work of Swales (1981). Since then, genre studies have been vigorously embraced by
researchers and have turned out to be one of the focal points of ESP studies.
Regarded as a fruitful field of ESP studies which is mainly concerned with procedures
and practical outcomes, genre analysis has evolved considerably with the contribution
of prominent figures in ESP research (Swales 1990, Bhatia 1993, Berkenkotter &
Copyright © 2019 Language Value, ISSN 1989-7103
1
Articles are copyrighted by their respective authors
Özgur Çelik
Huckin 1993) and gained a more systematic nature with the help of genre analysis
models
(Swales
1990, Bhatia
1993, Casañ-Pitarch
2017). Another significant
contribution to the development of genre analysis is the integration of computer-based
tools which can be regarded as a milestone in genre studies. Regarding text analysis,
computer-based tools led to more time-saving, to-the-point, practical and more
straightforward analysis.
A crucial characteristic of genres is specificity. Principally, a genre analysis aims to
scrutinise a specific text and draw specific conclusions. The level of this specificity is
generally bound to the content, context, communicative purposes or discourse
community. Furthermore, even a context-specific text may vary per se according to the
discourse community. Biography texts constitute an excellent example of this. For
instance, biography texts of actors and actresses on movie websites like IMDB and
Fandango can be created in a different way since these websites offer different
guidelines to their discourse communities to write biographies. In this respect, it can be
put forward that genres are context and content-specific texts that serve for specific
communicative purposes and belong to a specific discourse community.
In the light of these assumptions, this study set out to conduct a genre analysis on the
biography texts of Oscar-winning actors and actresses on the IMDB website. IMDB is
acknowledged as “the world’s most popular and authoritative movie and celebrity
content source” (Press Room 2018). The content is created by the contributors, and the
publication of the content requires a review process. Also, IMDB offers a guideline on
how to, what to and how not to write the biographies. Celebrity biographies on IMDB
can be regarded as a genre because (1) it has a framework on what to and how to write,
(2) it has a specific discourse community (the contributors) and (3) the production of
biography texts continues and seems to be continued in the future. For the analysis
process, a corpus was compiled using the biography texts of the last 20 Oscar-winning
actors and actresses and Casañ-Pitarch’s (2017) Analysis of Multi-Genre Structures
(AMS) model for genre analysis was adopted. Detailed information related to AMS
analysis model will be given in the methodology section. Lastly, a framework for
Genre-Based Instruction on biography texts will be offered.
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A Genre Analysis of Biography Texts on the IMDB Website
I.1. Biography Texts as a Genre
Biography is a nonfictional form of literature telling the life of an individual and
regarded as one of the oldest forms of literary expression (Kendall 2018). Baud (2005)
acknowledges that biography texts are the most specific textual genre of Ancient
Egyptian culture. As such an old literary form, biography texts developed specific
characteristics in time and gained historical, sociological, psychological, ethical and
aesthetic aspects. Kendall (2018) draws attention to the difficulty in classifying the
biography texts since they can easily shade into another, but a broad classification can
be made on the basis of the source of knowledge as those written from personal
knowledge and those from research. However, in a broad sense, biography texts can be
classified as, but not limited to, critical biographies, standard biographies, interpretive
biographies, fictionalised biographies and special purpose biographies. Biography
writing is not only an individual endeavour but also attracts the attention of institutions
and governmental organisations. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which
includes over 60,000 biographies of people who shaped British history, serves as a good
example of institutional perspective to biographies. Similarly, American National
Biography includes over 19,000 biographies of people from American history written
by prominent scholars.
The central focus of this study is on the biography texts of Oscar-Winning actors and
actresses on IMDB. Askehave (1999) asserts that genres have basically two types of
communicative purposes: official communicative purpose and hidden communicative
purpose. In the official sense, the biographies on IMDB are created to inform the
readers about the life events of actors/actresses including where the person grew up,
who their parents were, which school they attended to, how they were discovered, what
their debut and breakthrough were and so on. Since the biography texts on IMDB can
be classified as informative biographies, the primary communicative purpose is to,
simply, inform the reader about the person. On the other hand, it can be argued that
biography texts on IMDB can serve for a ‘hidden’ communicative purpose. IMDB has
two membership plans; IMDB and IMDB Pro. The former is free membership plan
allowing access to basic information about the movies and the staff while the latter
requires paid membership and offers comprehensive and expanded data for industry
professionals. Biography texts act as the showcase of comprehensive data about actors
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and actresses. In this respect, the hidden communicative purpose of the biographies on
IMDB can be regarded as giving an insight into the comprehensive data and directing
readers to IMDB Pro to access detailed information.
The biography texts on IMDB are written by the ‘contributors’. A contributor is anyone
who submits information to the website (IMDb Contribution, 2018). It can be claimed
that the contributors form the discourse community of biography texts on IMDB.
Swales (1990) defines discourse communities as groups that have goals or purposes and
use communication to achieve these goals and draws six characteristics of discourse
communities. The first characteristic is that a discourse community has a broadly agreed
set of public goals. In the contributor’s charter, the main goals of contributors are listed
as
(1) helping users make informed choices about what to see, (2) helping users
discover titles they might not otherwise have found and (3) enriching users’ viewing
experiences by providing information and content. The second characteristic is having a
mechanism of intercommunication among the members. To enable intercommunication,
IMBD provides a community zone for the contributors in which they can communicate
with each other. The third one is using participatory mechanisms to provide information
and feedback. The aforementioned community zone enables the contributors to ask
questions, share ideas, get their problems solved and help others. The fourth
characteristic is utilising one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its
aims. In this context, biography texts serve as the genre for the contributors with which
they can fulfil community goals and maintain communication. The fifth characteristic is
acquiring some specific lexis. Biography texts have a special form and cover a range of
frequently used words that will be detailed in the analysis part. And the last
characteristic of a discourse community is having a threshold level of members with a
suitable degree of relevant content and discourse expertise. The contribution mechanism
of IMDB is a very dynamic one including 21 badges for contributors determined
according to their contribution level. As can be seen, the contributors reflect all the
characteristics of a discourse community proposed by Swales (2011).
IMDB dictates guidelines (Biographical data guidelines 2019) that frame what to and
what not to include in a biography text and highlights some concerns about style,
wording and technical details. The contributors are expected to provide a broad,
objective overview of the person in chronological order, avoiding subjective opinions.
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A Genre Analysis of Biography Texts on the IMDB Website
Biographies should be in the English language and in the third person singular.
Sentence structure should be preferred rather than a rêsumê format. Additionally,
guidelines inform the contributors about the content that should be avoided in the
biography texts. The contributors should avoid giving information about physical
measurements (e.g. weight, height, clothing size etc.), personal details
(e.g. sexual
orientation, medical history, political views, and religion), and information about dating,
rumours and gossips about the person. The guidelines serve as a clear-cut framework
that make biography texts on IMBD a genre.
Analysis results of biography texts provide valuable information and insights for
biography writers and EFL learners in that the analysis suggests a clear roadmap that
simplifies the writing process. In this respect, this study set out to answer the following
research question:
(i)
RQ-1: What are the microstructure and macrostructure features of
biography texts at IMBD Website?
II. METHODOLOGY
This study aims to analyse the biography texts of actors and actresses at IMDB. For the
sample size, 20 biography texts were chosen by filtering the last 20 Oscar-Winning
actors and actresses. Since IMDB proposes a clear framework
(biographical data
guidelines), the texts are quite similar in macro and microstructure. However, it is likely
that some biographies may have particular shortcomings. The reason why the
biographies of Oscar-Winning actors and actresses were chosen is that these biographies
meet all the criteria dictated in the biographical data guidelines. A corpus was compiled
from 20 biography texts, and the texts were analysed quantitatively based on the
Analysis of Multi-Genre Structures (AMS) model (Casañ-Pitarch 2017).
AMS model is based on the analysis models by Swales (1981) and Bhatia (1993) and is
a combination of both. Casañ-Pitarch (2017) defines the purpose of the model as to
analyse, describe and produce genres by analysing the oral and written discourse forms.
The model comprises two main sections and 9 sub-sections to analyse data. The
sections of the AMS model are shown in Table 1 below, and a detailed description of
each section will be presented in the analysis part.
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Table 1. Analysis Sections of AMS Model.
Elements
Software
Macrostructure
Quantification of forms and structures
analyzemywriting.com
Moves and steps forming the genre
Manuel analysis
Microstructure
Language Typology
Tropes Software
Morphology
Tropes Software
Formality, Readability and Lexical Density
analyzemywriting.com
Terminology
analyzemywriting.com
Verbal analysis
Tropes Software, Voyant Tools
Analysis of personal pronouns
Tropes Software
Syntax
Tropes Software
Tropes Software
III. DATA ANALYSIS
AMS Model proposes an analysis procedure which consists of two sections and nine
sub-sections. In this part, the analysis results of the data will be presented in accordance
with the analysis steps of AMS Model.
III.1. Macrostructure
The primary focus of macrostructure analysis is on major forms and structures. These
major forms and structures refer to the semantic structures related to the coherence and
unity of the text (Van Dijk 1995) and concerns on meaning (Ruiz-Moneva 2011). AMS
model offers two ways to analyse the macrostructure of a text: (1) Quantification of
forms and structures and (2) Moves and steps forming the genre. In this section, the
macrostructure of the biography texts on IMDB will be described and analysed under
two sub-sections.
III.1.1. Quantification of forms and structures
This stage serves as a preliminary work for further analysis by focusing on the number
of words, sentences and paragraphs in general and other frequency statistics in
particular. Quantification analysis captures the frequency overview of the text
(see
Table 2). In this stage, the analysis is conducted via an online text analysis tool
(analyzemywriting.com).
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A Genre Analysis of Biography Texts on the IMDB Website
Table 2. Quantification of words, sentences, paragraphs, question marks and quotation marks
Total Count
Average Per Text (/20)
Word Count
11610
581
Sentence Count
473
24
Paragraph count
131
7
Question Mark Count
1
-
Quotation Mark Count
130
7
Figure 1. Word Lengths
Figure 2. Sentence Lengths
III.1.2. Moves and steps forming the genre
In this part, rhetorical moves of the text and the steps are identified. Swales (1990)
defines the rhetorical moves as the parts of the texts that correspond to a communicative
purpose, and each move has specific steps that function as the components of the
moves. In this context, the rhetorical moves and the steps of the biography texts on
IMDB are identified in Table 3.
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Table 3. The Moves and Steps in the Biography Texts on IMDB
Moves
Steps
Descriptions
Codes
Move 1
STARTING WITH A LOGLINE
L
Move 2
GIVING INFORMATION ABOUT EARLY LIFE
EL
Step 1 Giving information about the birthdate and birthplace
EL1
Step 2 Describing the person’s family
EL2
Step 3 Describing the person’s childhood
EL3
Step 4 Describing the person’s education
EL4
Move 3
GIVING INFORMATION ABOUT HIS/HER CAREER
C
Step 1 Giving information about how s/he started his/her career
C1
Step 2 Identifying his/her debut work
C2
Step 3 Giving information about his/her breakthrough
C3
Step 4 Listing significant movies s/he acted
C4
Step 5 Listing the significant nominations/awards in his/her career
C5
Move 4
GIVING INFORMATION ABOUT HIS/HER PERSONAL LIFE
PL
Step 1 Presenting interesting facts about his/her life
PL1
Step 2 Describing the person’s personality
PL2
Step 3 Describing the person’s physical appearance
PL3
These moves and steps constitute the conveyors of communicative purposes in
biography texts on IMDB. Primarily, the texts are composed of the moves and steps
above, but the sequence of the moves differs according to the writers’ style and
preference. The variety in the sequence of moves and steps are illustrated in Table 4.
Tabe 4. The Variances of Move Sequences
BIOGRAPHY TEXT
MOVE AND STEP SEQUENCES
Frances McDormand
EL1 EL2 EL4 C1 C3 C2 PL2 C5 PL1
Gary Oldman
L
PL1 EL1 EL2 EL4 C1 C2 C5 C4 C3 PL1 C5
Casey Affleck
L
EL1 C3 C4
Emma Stone
EL1 EL2 C1 C2 PL1 C3
Leonardo DiCaprio
L
EL1 EL2 C1 C2 C3 C4 PL1 PL2
Brie Larson
L
C1 C3 C4 PL1
Eddie Redmayne
L
EL1 EL2 EL4 C1 C2 C3 C4 C5
Julianne Moore
EL1 EL2 EL4 C1 C2 C3 C4 C5
Matthew McConaughey
EL1 EL2 C1 C4 C5
Cate Blanchett
EL1 EL2 EL4 C2 C4 C5 PL1
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Daniel Day-Lewis
EL1 EL2 EL4 C2 C1 C4 C5
Jennifer Lawrence
L
EL1 EL2 C1 C2 C5 C4
Meryl Streep
C5 EL1 EL2 EL4 C1 C5 C4
Colin Firth
EL1 EL2 EL3 PL1 C1 C5
Natalie Portman
L
EL1 EL2 EL3 EL4 C1 C2 C3 C4 C5
Jeff Bridges
EL1 EL2 EL3 C1 C5 C4 C5 PL1 PL2
Sandra Bullock
EL1 EL2 EL3 EL4 C1 C3 C4 PL1
Sean Penn
L
EL1 EL2 C1 C3 C4 C5 L
Kate Winslet
L
EL1 EL2 EL3 C1 C3 C5 C4 C5 PL1
Marion Cottillard
EL1 EL2 C2 C1 C3 C4 C5 PL1
III.2. Microstructure
Microstructure in a text refers to the in-depth study of sentences and the connection
between sentences and the words (Glowalla and Colonius 1982) corresponding to an
analysis at morphological and syntactic levels (Casañ-Pitarch 2017). This section will
cover the analysis of Language Typology, Morphology, Morphological Formality,
Readability, Lexical Density Terminology, Verbal analysis, Analysis of personal
pronouns and Syntax.
III.2.1. Quantification of forms and structures
This section focuses on the type of the text and why it is written for. In general, texts are
classified according to their style and purpose. Fundamentally, there are four types of
writing styles; narrative, descriptive, expository and argumentative. In addition, text
types vary according to their purpose such as informative, persuasive, promotional,
critical and so on. The analysis of language typology can be conducted in two ways; by
using software and manually. The manual analysis yields more reliable results when
compared to software analysis. A trope is a text analysis tool that can analyse the text
and decide the language typology along with the setting. The analysis results of Tropes
software indicate that biography texts are narrative texts. Along with the manual
analysis it can be claimed that biography texts on IMDB are narrative in style and
informative in purpose.
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Figure 3. Language Typology Analysis Results with Tropes Software
III.2.2. Morphology
Morphological analysis refers to a statistical overview of the words in the text including
nouns, verbs, adjectives, determiners, adverbs, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions etc.
Tropes software and analyzemywriting.com website were used for morphological
analysis. The statistical analysis of these components is made in line with the frequency
of use. Table 5 shows the morphological analysis results of the words in biography
texts.
Table 5. Morphological Analysis Results of the Biography Texts
Factive
Stative
Reflexive
Performative
Verbs
63,6%
25,4%
11,0%
0.0%
(665)
(266)
(115)
(0)
Condition Cause
Goal Addition Disjunction Opposition Comparison
Time Place
Connectors
0.2%
0.7%
0.4%
64.6%
0.7%
5.4%
20.9%
7.2%
0.0%
(1)
(4)
(2)
(361)
(4)
(30)
(117)
(40)
(0)
Time
Place
Manner Assertion
Doubt
Negation
Intensity
Modalities
39.0%.
13,0%
19.9%
1.1%
0.8%
3.4%
22.8%
(147)
(49)
(75)
(4)
(3)
(13)
(86)
Adjectives
Objective
Subjective
Numeral
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A Genre Analysis of Biography Texts on the IMDB Website
69,5%
21,3%
9,2%
(808)
(247)
(107)
I
You
We
They
He
She
Pronouns
2,8%
0,9%
0,6%
3,7%
86,6%
50,4%
(10)
(3)
(2)
(13)
(304)
(177)
III.2.3. Formality, Readability and Lexical Density
Formality is related to the variation between styles or registers. Proposed by Heylighen
and Dewaele (1999), the formality of language is measured by a formula which
attributes an ‘F score’ to the text that determines the formality of language. Heylighen
and Dewaele (1999) suggest that there are two types of formality; deep and surface
formality. Deep formality refers to the components that minimize the content-
dependence, fuzziness and expression to avoid ambiguity. While nouns, adjectives,
prepositions and articles are more frequent in formal style, verbs, adverbs, pronouns and
interjections are more frequent in the informal style. In order to determine the formality
of a text, Heylighen and Dewaele (1999) propose the formula below:
F = (noun frequency + adjective freq. + preposition freq. + article freq. - pronoun freq.
- verb freq. - adverb freq. - interjection freq. + 100)/2
The frequencies, here, indicate the percentages of words with respect to the total
number of words. The higher the F value is, the more formal the text is. When the
frequencies are put in the formula, the F value of biography texts is 76.9 which indicates
that biography texts on IMDB are above-average formality level.
Readability calculation is related to how difficult a text is to read by measuring the
complexity of a text with special formulas (DuBay 2007). There are several readability
indexes measuring the complexity of a text from different aspects (e.g. Gunning fog,
Flesch-Kincaid, SMOG, Coleman-Liau, Automated). Table 6 shows the readability
scores and the corresponding level of the biography texts.
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Table 6. Readability Scores and Corresponding Level of Biography Texts
Readability Index
Readability Score
Corresponding Text Level
Gunning fog
15.18
College Junior Level
Flesch-Kincaid
12.42
College Graduate Level
SMOG
13.49
Undergraduate Level
Coleman-Liau
12.61
Undergraduate Level
Automated
12.5
College Student
Table 6 shows that, based on the readability scores, the biography texts at IMDB appeal
to college level students.
Didau (2013) calculates lexical density by dividing the lexical words to the total number
of words in the text. The aim of a lexical density analysis is to measure how informative
the text is since meaning is conveyed through lexical words. In lexical density analysis,
words are divided into two categories; lexical words (nouns, verbs, adjectives and
adverbs) and function words (articles, prepositions, conjunctions, to be, do, have).
Lexical words directly provide information about what the text about while function
words give little or no information about the text. In this case, the lexical density of
biography texts is found as 57.36%. Since lexical density focuses on the amount of
information of a text, this result can be interpreted that biography texts are informative
texts.
III.2.4. Terminology
Terminology analysis aims to reveal the most frequent words used in the text. It is a
significant stage in terms of determining the genre-specific terminology. The analysis
can be conducted using a text analysis software or web tools. Among all, Tropes
software yields more comprehensive results classifying the terminology in certain
categories such as verbs, nouns and adjectives. Table 7 shows the most frequently used
10 words in biography texts.
Table 7. The most frequently used 10 words in biography texts
VERBS
ADJECTIVES
NOUNS
1
Win
Best
Role
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2
Play
First
Film
3
Have
Young
Actress
4
Make
Great
Performance
5
Receive
Old
Actor
6
Appear
Small
Award
7
Nominate
High
Year
8
Give
Big
Movie
9
Include
Same
Career
10
become
leading
Drama
Additionally, the figure below schematises the interrelation of the frequently used
words. The analysis is made with an online analysis tool called Voyant Tools (Sinclair
and Rockwell 2019).
Figure 4. The Interrelation Scheme of the Frequently Used Words
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III.2.5. Verbal Analysis and Syntax
The verbal analysis primarily aims to determine the frequency of grammatical
structures, especially tenses, by focusing on the verbs. Analysing the grammatical
structures reveals valuable insight about the structure of biography texts. Table 8 lists
the most frequently used words, and with which structures they are used.
Table 8. The Most Frequently Used Words, and With Which Structures They are Used.
VERBS
PAST
PRESENT
FUTURE
PASSIVE
1
Win
2
Play
3
Have
4
Make
5
Receive
6
Appear
7
Nominate
8
Give
9
Include
10
Become
III.2.6. Analysis of Personal Pronouns
Pronouns are indispensable agents of both oral and written communication and tell
much about the type, content, context, style of the text. The results of a pronoun
analysis can be a significant indicator of the style of the text. In this context, pronoun
use in biography texts reveals valuable information about the formality of the texts.
Table 6 lists the frequency of pronoun usage in biography texts.
Table 9. The frequency of Pronoun Usage in Biography Texts
Subject Pron.
Object Pron.
Possessive Deter. Possessive Pron.
Reflexive Pron.
Pron.
Freq.
Pron.
Freq.
Pron.
Freq.
Pron.
Freq.
Pron.
Freq.
I
8
Me
6
My
5
Mine
0
Myself
0
We
2
Us
0
Our
1
Ours
0
Ourselves
0
You
2
You
1
Your
1
Yours
0
Yourself
0
She
160
Her
29
Her
148
Hers
0
Herself
1
He
120
Him
24
His
138
His
0
Himself
2
It
17
It
1
Its
4
Its
0
Itself
1
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IV. FINDINGS
This study aimed to analyse the biography texts on IMDB as a genre by defining
communicative purpose and discourse community along with the linguistic analysis of
the texts. The primary aim of biography texts is to inform the readers about the life of a
person (in this case, actors and actresses). Also, biography texts meet all the standards of
a discourse community, in this case contributors, as suggested by Swales (2011). Lastly,
linguistic analysis of biography texts discovers all the features of the biography texts on
IMDB and these features are listed below:
Quantification analysis revealed that a standard biography text is composed of
500-600 words with seven paragraphs. The number of quotation marks used (N
= 1) indicates that question form is generally avoided in biography texts. It can
be inferred from the average word and sentence lengths that in biography texts
average sentence length is preferred rather than long or short sentences which is
valid for the words, too.
With move analysis, the moves and the steps in a biography text were identified.
As can be inferred from the sequence table (Table 4), a standard biography text
on IMDB follows the move sequence of early life, career and personal life of the
person. In addition, starting with a logline can be preferred by the biography
writers.
Typology analysis suggests that biography texts are narrative in style and
informative in purpose. The informative nature of biography texts is validated
with lexical density analysis.
Morphological analysis records detailed results on the frequency of verbs,
connectors, modalities, adjectives and pronouns. According to the
morphological analysis results, a biography text makes use of factive verbs,
addition connectors, time modals, objective adjectives and third person singular
pronouns most. The results highlight the morphological components that should
be addressed in biography writing.
Heylighen and Dewaele’s (1999) formality formula indicates that biography
texts are formal texts and according to the readability score, biography texts on
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IMDB appeal to college students. The results of this stage give some clues about
the target group with which the biography texts should be studied.
Terminology analysis focuses on the frequency of verbs, adjectives and nouns
along with the links between the most used words along with the collocations.
This analysis will give an inside about the words that should be primarily
studied, especially the collocations from the perspective of the lexical approach.
The verbal analysis gives clues about the grammatical structures to be studied.
The results suggest that in biography texts the dominant grammatical structure is
the past tenses. Present and passive is seldom used while future tenses are
generally avoided.
Pronoun analysis revealed that while subject pronouns, objects pronouns and
possessive determiners are used in biography texts, possessive pronouns and
reflexive pronouns are almost never used.
V. CONCLUSION
This study aimed to conduct a genre analysis on the biography texts on the IMDB
website. The last 20 biographies of Oscar-Winning actors and actresses were chosen,
and a corpus was compiled. First, the communicative purpose and the discourse
community of biography texts on IMDB were identified and described. Then, a
linguistic analysis was conducted according to Casañ-Pitarch’s
(2017) Analysis of
Multi-Genre Structures (AMS) Model. The analysis is made in two parts: the analysis of
macrostructure and the microstructure. In the macrostructure stage, a statistical analysis
of the quantification of forms and structures were conducted. Additionally, the moves
and the steps of the texts were determined, and the variance of move sequences was
presented. In the microstructure part, language typology is identified; statistical
information about morphological items was presented; formality, readability and lexical
density of the texts were calculated; the most frequently used verbs, nouns and
adjectives were listed; frequently used tenses and pronouns were determined.
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A Genre Analysis of Biography Texts on the IMDB Website
The analysis results revealed that biography texts on IMDB can be regarded as a genre
in that they meet all the characteristics of a genre proposed by Swales (1990) and Bhatia
(1993). The main components of a genre were identified as the communicative purposes
and a discourse community. The primary communicative purpose of the biography text
on IMDB is to inform the readers about the actors or actresses in a structured way. The
contributors of the IMDB comprise the discourse community of the genre. This
discourse community meets all six features of Swales’ definition of discourse
communities. Lastly, with linguistic analysis, all the typical features of the biography
texts on IMDB were identified.
Biography texts can be accepted as one of the unique literary works with their function,
form and purpose. Though the studies on biography texts are relatively limited,
especially in genre analysis concept, there has been a growing interest in the biography
as a genre which suggests that particular concern should be devoted to the genre
analysis of biography texts.
VI. IMPLICATIONS
In this study, biography texts were analysed with a multi-dimensional perspective and
features of a biography texts are documented. In this sense, the communicative
purposes, discourse community and structural patterns were identified. Bearing on this
data, a Genre-Based Instruction for biography texts is proposed as a part of an English
for General Academic Purposes course. The course is based on Firkins, Forey and
Sengupta’s
(2007) genre-based instruction model which comprises three stages:
modelling of the text, co-construction of the text and independent construction of the
text.
Table 10. Suggested GBI for Biography Writing
Course Title Academic Writing
Course Domain
English for General Academic Purposes
Task Title
Biography Writing
Task Duration
Optional
Level
Intermediate / Upper Intermediate
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Özgur Çelik
Task Description
In this task, students learn how to write a biography of an actor or actress.
The task includes two sections; first the analysis of sample biographies and
second writing a biography from scratch.
Goals
At the end of the task;
Students will be able to distinguish the features of a biography text
as a genre.
Students will be able to write a biography text that is in line with
the generic organisation of the biography genre.
Materials
Biography corpus, text analysis tools, course portfolio
Assessment
Process-based and product based. Process-based in that students keep a
portfolio, product-based in that students are expected to write an
independent biography text at the end of the course.
100= (Portfolio Score)/2 + (Final Writing Score)/2
Procedure
1st Phase: Modelling of
In this phase, learners are expected to analyse the sample biography texts in
the Text
a systematic way. Casañ-Pitarch’s
(2017) Analysis of Multi-Genre
Structures (AMS) Model will be used for analysis. An analysis portfolio will
be used to record the analysis data and create the text (see the attachment for
the portfolio file). In the whole process, the teacher acts as a facilitator
guiding the learners to analyse the texts correctly. The first, teacher asks
students to analyse the quantification of the text and record the results to the
relevant page of the portfolio. In this way, learners will make a soft and clear
start which will help them understand the notion of text analysis before
going deeper.
Next, the teacher asks the learners to identify the moves and steps of the
texts. The teacher shows some examples so that the learners can have an
understanding of what moves and steps are. Then, the teacher asks them to
determine the possible move sequences by scanning at least five texts and
record the results to the portfolio file. After this part, learners are expected to
analyse the linguistic structures deeper. The next step is devoted to the
morphological analysis of the texts. By using an online text analysis tools
and software, learners analyse the morphological structure of the texts
regarding frequency. After each session, the teacher makes comments about
how the data gathered can be interpreted. At the next section, learners
calculate the formality, readability and lexical density of the texts and record
the results along with the interpretations of the results. The next session aims
to find out the most frequently used words in general and adjectives, nouns
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A Genre Analysis of Biography Texts on the IMDB Website
and verbs in particular.
2nd Phase: Co-
In this phase, the teacher and the learners start to co-construct the text by
Construction of the Text
following the bottom-up technique. Before starting to write, learners create a
profile page of the person so that they can collect data and use in their texts.
Then, learners and the teacher work together on moves one by one. Learners
write a paragraph for each move, and the teacher gives feedback about the
learners’ writings. After feedback session, learners update their writings
according to the teacher’s feedback. This process continues until all the
moves are checked and corrected.
3rd Phase: Independent
In the last phase, learners start to write the text independently considering
Construction of the Text
the teacher feedbacks and the features of the biography genre. When
finished, the teacher makes a last review of the final text and makes
corrections if necessary.
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Received: 19 June 2019
Accepted: 02 December 2019
Cite this article as:
Çelik, Özgür. 2019. “A Genre Analysis of Biography Texts on the IMDB Website”. Language
Value, 11 (1), 1-22. Jaume I University ePress: Castelló, Spain. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es.
ISSN 1989-7103
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