Cross-Cultural Genre Analysis:Application Letters

Analyzing genre means investigating instances of conventionalised or institutionalised textual artifact in the context of specific institutional and disciplinary practices, procedures and cultures in order to understand how members of specific discourse communities construct,interpret and use these genres to achieve their community goals and why they write the way they do. The genre of application letters written by English natives have been studied (Bhatia, 1993) and some ‘moves’ have been identified. The purpose of the present study was to do a similar investigation on the same genre written by Iranian applicants and to explore and trace any possible similarities and differences in terms of the moves applied. In so doing, twenty seven unsolicited application letters were randomly selected. Data analyses revealed that although Iranian applicants do follow regular,conventionalised and institutionally-encouraged patterns similar to English natives’; they also differ in some other respects. Crosscultural and institutional differences are referred to provide possible explanations for points of departure.