ANALYZING GENERIC STRUCTURES IN SONGS OF BLOOD AND SWORD: A GENRE-BASED APPROACH

Abstract

The purpose the current study is to achieve a macro genre analysis of the recount, Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir by Fatima Bhutto, with a specific focus on discovering generic stages as encapsulated in the text, by adopting the Sydney School approach that is inspired by Systemic Functional Linguistics. The analysis has been achieved through historical recounts genre framework (Martin & Rose, 2008), which includes biographical recount genre as its subcategory. The significant events are staged in the text and events are unfolded in a sequence by analyzing the selected chapters of the recount, Songs of Blood and Sword: By applying the biographical recount macro genre strategy, the analysis has been achieved through three generic structures, namely Orientation, Record of Events and Evaluation. The first two are the compulsory elements while the third label is the optional. The findings state that there is harmony in obligatory stages and optional stage in the chapters while there are some chapters in which the optional stage is missing in the generic structures.