7.3.1　Emic View and Genre Analysis

The method used in the study can be employed in the analysis of other genres.Study 1 investigates the schematic structure of Master’s Theses.To gain an insider’s view,previous studies typically solicit the practicing members’views by interviewing or consulting specialist informants,who typically hold varied opinions,making the validity and reliability of findings hard to check.I propose a different approach to obtain an insider’s perspective in genre analysis,namely analysing the metatexts of theses which are employed by writers to describe and justify the organization of the main text.A thematic analysis of metatexts reveals a new move compared with previous models,namely Establishing a Theoretical Framework.Based on the functions identified in metatexts,this study analyses the schematic structure of thirty thesis opening sections and provides a genre-based description of these initial chapters.Although the study examines only one academic genre,I believe that the way of gaining emic views is relevant to a range of academic and non-academic genres since the use of metatexts in writing is common across genres.