Genre Analysis of Move Structures in Job Interviews by the Judicial Service Commission of Kenya in 2011
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Publication Date
2017Author
Anne Obinju1 Dr. Pamela Oloo 2 Lydia Akuno3
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Many scholars have carried out research on genre analysis (Swales, 1990, Bhatia,1993, Bruce, 1993),
Flowerdew, 2002, Fairclough,, 2006, and others) and their findings have opened many avenues for research
and analysis of many genres. However, much of their studies have scarcely attempted to analyze move
structures of job interviews conducted by a judicial commission in any country. A literature gap therefore exists,
thus motivating the authors to analyze the move structures of JSC’s interviews using Genre analysis theory. A
genre analysis involves a survey of certain aspects, including : the identification of communication purposes and
overall schematic structure of the target text, the analysis of lexico-grammatical features which involves
quantitative corpus studies, the analysis of text patterning, which includes the analysis of conventionalized
patterns of language use at lexical, syntactic and discourse levels and lastly, the analysis of content-based
organization, conventionally described as substance specific moves (Swales, 1990). A move is a unit that
incorporates both purposes and content that the writer intentionally communicates to the reader (Bhatia, 1993).
The present study aimed at investigating how the move structures of job interviews conducted by the Judicial
Service Commission of Kenya in 2011 correspond to the interview process models as designed by Huffcut &
Roth (1998), Adelsward (1998) and other scholars. Through a genre analysis of interviews texts extracted from
the interviews conducted by the Judicial Service Commission of Kenya, the present study is aimed at exploring
the moves employed in the interviews for certain communicative purposes. The results of the study indicate that
the JSC interviews make use of certain moves that are usually textually realized through certain linguistic forms.
The study has identified some linguistic realizations that are used to develop the moves of job interviews and it
has attempted to offer solution to some language challenges that emerge in the process of using language as a
tool to address some problems in our society.