Variation in Phrase-Frames and Rhetorical Moves: A Corpus-Based Approach to a Non-Academic Genre

This study explores variations in the connection between phrase-frames (p-frames) and rhetorical moves within a non-academic genre across different media types. Employing a corpus-based genre approach, it analyses a Footballer Obituary Corpus (FOC) of 50 texts drawn from broadsheets, tabloids, institutional obituaries, radio, and video platforms, with a total of 44,957 tokens. The research identifies patterns of linguistic and rhetorical features across media, employing a novel time-based rhetorical framework to categorise communicative moves. The findings reveal significant variation in how p-frames are employed across media. For example, while tabloid texts focus on announcing death with straightforward p-frames, broadsheets and institutional sources also highlight professional achievements. The study notes disparities in the prevalence of specific rhetorical moves, with “Recognition as an Established Professional” (Move T-4) dominating in most media, except in radio, which uses emotionally resonant language. Methodologically, the study integrates a function-first approach to move annotation and a frequency-dispersion threshold tailored to the small corpus size. Despite the limited size of the corpus, the study highlights how linguistic forms align with rhetorical functions within a multimodal and cross-media framework. It further introduces a time-based move structure and underscores the importance of semantic grouping in p-frame analysis. These insights extend the scope of corpus-based genre studies into non-academic domains and demonstrate the utility of p-frames in understanding genre-specific communicative strategies.