THE GENERIC PATTERNS OF THE MALAY WRITTEN WEDDING INVITATIONS: A PRELIMINARY STUDY

Abstract

In the Malay culture, a wedding invitation is regarded as one of the most essential parts of the nuptials. It does not only convey good news but also requests the presence of all relatives, friends and social acquaintances to gather at a certain place and time for solemnization and reception ceremonies. A wealth of research on patterns of wedding invitations has been conducted among various societies throughout the world. However, not much genre-analysis research relating to wedding invitations among the Malays can be found. Hence, the present preliminary study was conducted to explore various patterns of Malay written wedding invitations. Adopting the genre analysis model proposed by Swales, 60 samples of the Malay wedding invitation cards were analyzed in terms of move orders, obligatory and optional moves. The cards were randomly selected from a collection of invitations from 2015 to 2019. This study revealed that the Malays frequently employed seven generic moves in their written wedding invitations.