ABSTRACT
The two main analytical methods employed in the present study derive from two conceptually distinct traditions of discourse analysis. The first is the tradition of rhetorical text analysis, which has a well-established history of use in university English departments in the United States and Britain. This approach has found a contemporary place in nonliterary studies of written language with the advent of rhetoric/composition as a more or less distinct academic discipline (Lauer, 1984; Phelps, 1988), and a “rhetorical turn” in the humanities and social sciences. The second main tradition of discourse analysis informing the present study is that of sociolinguistic register research (e.g., Biber & Finegan, 1994a; Ferguson, 1983; Halliday, 1988). In particular, this study adopts the Multidimensional (MD) approach to register analysis developed by Douglas Biber (Biber, 1986, 1988), and subsequently used in a number of synchronic and diachronic studies of discourse variation and change (e.g., Biber, 1987, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1994; Biber & Finegan, 1988, 1989, 1992; Besnier, 1988; D.Atkinson, 1992, 1996; Kim & Biber, 1994; Biber & Hared, 1994).
