TED Talks: A genre analysis

José Augusto Simões De Miranda,Maria Ester Wollstein Moritz

doi:10.5380/rvx.v16i6.82070

Abstract

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.

Highlights

Genre studies have gained significant status during the past decades (BAZERMAN, 2010; BONINI, 2001; MARCUSCHI, 2004; MARTIN, 1984; MEURER, 2003; MORITZ, 2006; SWALES, 1990; DUBOIS, 1980; THOMPSON, 1994; ROWLEY-JOLIVET; CARTER-THOMAS, 2005), and genres are present in different areas of human activity
The results presented deals with the overall findings of the communicative purpose as well as the comprehension of the outcome of the rhetorical organization characterized by the moves and steps of the talks analyzed
When it comes to the investigation of the communicative purposes, there were two analyzes which were taken into account: i) the examination displayed on the website in order to identify the texts materialized in the talks presented by the speakers; and ii) the researchersevidences while watching the talks, which were based on the literature discussed

Summary

Introduction

Genre studies have gained significant status during the past decades (BAZERMAN, 2010; BONINI, 2001; MARCUSCHI, 2004; MARTIN, 1984; MEURER, 2003; MORITZ, 2006; SWALES, 1990; DUBOIS, 1980; THOMPSON, 1994; ROWLEY-JOLIVET; CARTER-THOMAS, 2005), and genres are present in different areas of human activity. According to Miranda (2018), in the last few decades — with the advent of the internet — new means of communication have appeared and, as a consequence, other channels for spreading information have been created and new genres are evident. Caliendo (2014) points out that TED talks encompass a number of genre types, university lectures, newspaper articles, conference presentations and TV science programs, mixing different semiotic modes, including spoken, written, video and audio. Given the potential of the genre for spreading quality information within the reach of many people around the world, more research should be carried out on TED talks

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion