English Sentence Patterns in Cameroonian Book Blurbs

Abstract

This paper examines Cameroonian book blurbs, with a focus on identifying and analysing the various sentence patterns used by Cameroonian blurb writers in producing their blurbs. Data for the study are collected from 80 blurbs of books written and published in Cameroon, and in English. The books are randomly selected from four main fields: language, social sciences, hard sciences and fiction. The data are analysed based on the multidimensional perspective of the genre theory; with an inclination on the grammatical features of genres. The analyses focus not only on presenting the frequencies of the various sentence patterns identified in Cameroonian blurbs, but also on determining the functions of the patterns used in these blurbs. The findings reveal that Cameroonian writers make use of simple sentences, complex sentences and elliptical syntactic patterns in the various moves of their blurbs to realize different communicative intentions of the moves. These communicative intentions combine to realize the academic and promotional communicative purposes of the genre.