Book prefaces in basic, applied and social sciences: A genre-based study

Abstract

Genre- based studies have recently focused on different types of professional and academic texts to identify their communicative purpose(s), generic structure and linguistic features. However, analyzing the generic and linguistic structure of book prefaces as a subcategory of academic genres seems to have been significantly underresearched. This study focuses on academic book prefaces in three disciplines of management, metallurgy and mathematics to identify their generic structure, linguistic features and potential disciplinary differences. Identifying similar generic structure for book prefaces in the three disciplines, the researchers suggest that book prefaces in the above-mentioned areas are very similar in terms of their communicative purpose(s), generic structure and readers' expectation. Furthermore, the study did not identify any significant difference in the use of the moves and steps among the book prefaces in the three disciplines on the whole, which suggests that writers in the three disciplines generally use the same moves and steps with rather similar frequencies. Finally, analyzing the generic structure and linguistic features of book prefaces indicated that book prefaces fulfill a promotional purpose besides their common informative purpose.