Author: Xie, Xiaoying
Title: Genre analysis of insurance promotional brochures in Hong Kong
Advisors: Li, Lan (ENGL)
Degree: M.A.
Year: 2016
Subject: Pamphlets.
Commercial catalogs.
Discourse analysis.
Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations
Department: Department of English
Pages: 63 pages : color illustrations
Language: English
Abstract: This research sets out to study the structural moves and the linguistic features of insurance brochures in Hong Kong. Totally forty insurance brochures are collected from the top four insurance companies in Hong Kong: AIA, AXA, Manulife and Prudential. Based on Bhatia's model of promotional genre analysis, the writer examines the structural moves which are employed in the insurance brochures. It is found that "introducing the offer", "soliciting response" and "important notes" are obligatory moves in insurance brochures while "establishing credential", "using pressure tactics", "offering incentives" and "enclosing documents" are optional. The structure moves employed in the insurance brochures are to sever the communicative purpose of promoting the service or product. Besides, linguistic strategies are exploited to serve the communicative purpose of insurance brochures, like the use of personal pronouns, the use of company names, the use of modal verbs, the use of imperatives, the use of interrogatives and the use of lexical boost. In a word, the moves and linguistic strategies are exploited to promoting the insurance product. It is also found that AIA are more effective in promoting its products. "Offering incentives" is only found in the AIA brochures among the four companies. As well as the use of 'we' and 'you' orientation, AIA has a high frequency of company names, which presents itself as a professional image. AIA also uses imperatives and interrogative more frequently.
Rights: All rights reserved
Access: restricted access

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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://theses.lib.polyu.edu.hk/handle/200/8632