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Article published In: Pragmatics
Vol. 15:2/3 (2005) ► pp.205–228

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Genre conventions, speaker identities, and creativity

An analysis of Japanese wedding speeches

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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 1 June 2005
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https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.15.2-3.03dun
Recent approaches to genre as discourse practice have examined how genres as “orienting frameworks” allow speakers to creatively adapt conventional forms to specific situational contexts. This article analyzes congratulatory speeches at Japanese wedding receptions to show how the interaction of conventionalization and creative contextualization varies across both different parts of the wedding speech and different categories of wedding speakers. The analysis demonstrates how the wedding speech genre provides speakers with a spectrum of performance possibilities which are systematically linked to different speaking roles and social identities.
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