Open AccessTED Talks: A genre analysis
Author(s) -
José Augusto Simões de Miranda,
Maria Ester Wollstein Moritz
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
revista x
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1980-0614
DOI - 10.5380/rvx.v16i6.82070
Subject(s) - genre analysis , rhetorical question , variety (cybernetics) , presentation (obstetrics) , gratitude , linguistics , rhetorical device , computer science , sociology , psychology , artificial intelligence , social psychology , philosophy , medicine , radiology
This research aims at investigating TED Talks as a genre. The analysis focuses on its rhetorical structure, characterized by moves and steps and the communicative purposes of the genre. The corpus comprises 10 talks selected from the website TED Talks. The data are discussed in the light of Bhatia’s (1996/2004) and Swales’ (1990/2004) theories of genre. Results demonstrate that, in terms of the analysis of the rhetorical structure, it reveals a constant pattern of moves and steps along the corpus, since every talk contained the five moves identified by the analysis. These cyclical and more frequent moves are: topic introduction, speaker presentation, topic development, concluding messages, and acknowledgments/gratitude. In terms of its communicative purpose, TED aims to celebrate ideas to a diverse audience worldwide, due to the variety of topics encompassed. This study also allowed us to develop a deeper view of this spoken genre, its features, and the way individuals may benefit from it in their lives.