A move analysis of English sms advertisements in Egypt

Abstract EN

The current study attempts to conduct a move analysis of English SMS advertisements sent to mobile phones in Egypt.

The recent prevalence of SMS advertisements led to the interest in the current study in analysing their linguistic features in order to reach their underlying structure.

The researcher adopts Bhatia's (1993) move analysis framework to examine the schematic structure of the English SMS advertisements collected from the researcher's family members, friends, acquaintances and students.

The findings revealed that some move patterns were recurrent in all SMS advertisements, while others were found in certain themes of these advertisements.

For example, the move pattern which occurred the most in all SMS advertisements was “Description of offer/promotion + Call-to-action”, achieving the purpose of advertising for certain products or services by providing information about them and then contact information.

Therefore, the move patterns used in the SMS advertisements analysed were found to be suitable for the genre of SMS advertisements.