A linguistic Analysis of Book Reviews in English with Reference to Two Reviews on Crystal's: Txtng: the Gr8 Db8

Abstract

A book review presents a summary of what the author of the book wants to say. Reviewers state their opinions about the book at hand and attempt to evaluate and assess the book in terms of the recent developments of the particular field which the book tackles. The problem of this paper will address the question of what linguistic structures and rhetorical moves are employed in the two book reviews on Crystal's Txtng.It is hypothesized that moves are stable but sub-functions are notThe aim of this paper is to analyze two such reviews. The two reviews are about the same book which deals with the ongoing sociolinguistic phenomenon of texting via cellphones. The title of the book itself is written in this style of communication: Txng: the Gr8 Db8 by the prominent linguist David Crystal.The paper discusses these reviews which are written by Tagg (2008) and Carston (2008) in terms of their rhetorical moves and linguistic features. A model proposed by Motta-Roth (1998) is applied to these reviews. The analysis has revealed that sub-functions are subject to variation in comparison with the moves which are fixed. These variations in the sub-functions depend on how the reviewer deals with the book.