A corpus-based genre analysis of quality, health, safety and environment work procedures in Malaysia Petroleum Industry

Abstract

This research was framed within the perspectives of English for Specific Purpose or ESP for short. Using mainly Hutchinson and Waters’ (1987), Strevens’ (1988) and Robinson’s (1991) definition of ESP, this research investigated the communicative events produced by engineers in the petroleum industry in Malaysia. As a case study, this research focused on a particular division of the petroleum industry in Malaysia, where previous studies have been scarce. The corpus-based genre analysis conducted was based fundamentally on Swales’ (1990) and Bhatia’s (1993) models of genre analysis. The data is drawn from a corpus compiled using the written communicative event of work procedures in three companies under the petroleum industry in Malaysia. This study presented a corpus-based genre analysis which consisted of a move analysis and a linguistic structural analysis in order to propose a guided framework for designing suitable ESP courses. The areas investigated are the moves used, the frequency of the moves and a structural analysis of the identified linguistic features. In order to add validity to the findings of the genre analysis, a series of interviews with the specialist informants from the selected Quality, Health, Safety and Environment (QHSE) departments of the three companies were conducted. The findings included a nine-move structure used by engineers while preparing the work procedures. The structural analysis also highlighted the ten most recurring part-of-speech (POS) used in each move identified in the move analysis. The data triangulation provided a fundamental base to construct a set of guiding principles to be employed into a guided framework of a corpus-based genre analysis. The proposed corpus integrated framework (CIF) consists of four integrated dimensions namely: purposeful communication, contextual awareness, structural knowledge and grammatical accuracy which were found to be supporting the fundamental construct of the genre of work procedures. The proposed CIF will be useful for ESP course designers as well as researchers engaged in exploring authentic materials for the purpose of producing effective ESP courses.