Jordanian Wedding Invitation as a Genre: An Analysis of Rhetorical Structure and Linguistic Features

Abstract

The present study is an attempt to conduct a genre analysis of Jordanian wedding invitations. Drawing on the model of genre analysis proposed by Bhatia (1993), a sample of 200 Jordanian wedding invitation cards has been collected and examined to provide an overview of the main linguistic devices used in the texts and analyze to what extent such devices have a social purpose. The corpus analysis revealed that Wedding invitation cards go beyond announcing the wedding of two people to mirroring and deconstructing the social practices, values and beliefs of the Jordanian society that shape the construction of this genre. I hope that the results of this study will be of help in further raising cultural awareness.