EXPERIENTIAL FUNCTION IN MICROECONOMICS TEXTS OF DIFFERENT GENRE

This study was intended to describe the types and the ways how experiential functions are used in Microeconomics texts of different genre. For this purpose, economic texts Microeconomics and Financial Accounting Theory were taken as the sources of the data. To achieve the first goal, 270 clauses were randomly taken from the Microeconomics texts and 250 clauses from the Financial Accounting Theory. To achieve the second goal, narrative and descriptive paragraphs were randomly chosen from the two economic texts. These data were analyzed by applying Mile’s and Huberman’s procedures of data analysis and, overall, this study was conducted with descriptive qualitative design. The results of the analysis show that (1) all of the experiential function types, namely relational, material, behavioral, verbal, mental and existential processes were used in the microeconomic texts, but only five of them were used in the Financial Accounting Theory; existential process was not used; (2) both of the narrative and descriptive paragraphs of the two economic texts use experiential functions in three ways. Firstly, what to describe and/or what to narrate were taken into account, secondly, the result of this account was used to select the types of experiential functions appropriate to accommodate the intention and finally the selected type of the experiential functions was used in the first clause of the paragraphs to initiate the narration or description. Based on these results, it was concluded that (1) Microeconomics and Financial Accounting Theory may not be considered as two different social genre since they use almost the same types of experiential functions considered to be one of the lexicogrammar aspects regarded as one of the distinctive features of different social genre; (2) there is no difference between narration and description of the two texts in the ways how the experiential functions were used. These conclusions lead to suggestions that (1) no special attention should be paid to experiential functions in the teaching of English for Economics, (2) The concepts of relational, material, and behavioral processes and how to apply them to initiate the narrative and descriptive paragraphs of Economic texts should be treated intensively in the teaching of English for Economics, and (3) further researches focusing on different discoursal aspects are suggested.