Representation on university prospectuses: A comparative discourse and genre analysis of the text of the prospectuses of Kenyan universities

Abstract

Globalisation has had a huge impact on institutions of higher learning and there is need for these institutions to publicise themselves. Prospectuses are increasingly important to the admissions and marketing practices of colleges and universities due to their ability to rapidly communicate a significant amount of content to a vast audience. Colleges and universities use language, whether textual (i.e., written) or visual (i.e., images), to position and differentiate themselves from other institutions and promote their efforts. This corpus-driven study attempts to identify the generic features of the prospectuses from six public and private universities in Kenya. It also aims at establishing the intention of public relations officers in the production of the prospectus and the subsequent interpretation by prospective university students. A six move generic structure was identified in the prospectus. Analysis reveals that public relations and marketing officers intention is to market the institution while prospective students have divergent reading focuses of the text. The researcher used both interview schedule and questionnaire in collection of data and content analysis in describing the text of university prospectuses.