A GENRE ANALYSIS OF SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL STAFF MEETING MINUTES ABSTRACT Interest in genre analysis has increased over the years with studies done by several scholars such as Swales, Bhatia, Berkonkotter, Hyon, Bazerman, Miller, to mention just a few, on various genre ranging from the research article in general to letters. Studies on genre analysis into meeting minutes are however, very limited and so the aim of this study is to investigate the communicative purpose, schematic structure and lexico grammatical features which characterize this genre. Swales' (1990) rhetorical approach to genre analysis was used to investigate eighteen meeting minutes which revealed the occurrence of seven moves with each having its own communicative purpose and linguistic features which characterize the genre as a formal one. The study has implications for genre studies in the area of pedagogy and further research.
Key words: genre, minutes, discourse, moves, steps, Ghana.
1.0 INTRODUCTION Minutes is a highly formal written genre situated in the domain of business discourse and is an official record and considered a legal document by auditors, IRS and the law courts. Oxford defines it as a written record of what is said and decided at a meeting. It is used by institutions, corporate bodies and varied organisations. Its main communicative purpose is to record and relay information to the members of that discourse community. It also gives members the platform to express their views and opinions and take decisions on pertinent issues and admonish or caution the users of that genre.
Swales and Feak (2009:1), define genre as ‘a type of text or discourse designed to achieve a set of communicative purpose’. According to Holmes, these communicative purposes are distinctive structural patterns which distinguish one genre from another and at the same time identify a group of different texts as belonging to one genre. So, as a genre, minutes can be studied from many linguistic perspectives including genre analysis which has been defined by Bhatia (1997:181) as the ‘study of situated linguistic behaviour in institutionalized linguistic academic or professional setting’.
Swales, (1981,1990) explains that genre analysis is described in terms of its rhetorical structure which are the constituent moves and defines moves as ‘a discoursal or rhetorical unit that performs a coherent communicative purpose in written or spoken discourse’(Swales, 2004). Each move has its own purpose and contributes to the overall communicative purpose of the genre but each rhetorical move can also be realized through a number of structural rhetorical elements, steps (Swales, 1990) or strategies (Bhatia, 1994) and both the moves and the steps can be optional or obligatory in a genre (Samraj, 2009). Hyon (1996) views genre analysis from three broad perspectives: ESP, North American New Rhetoric and Systemic Functional Linguistics. ESP proponents like Swales (1990) and Bhatia (1993) place great emphasis on the communicative purpose of a genre which influences its structure and style. Viewed from this perspective, minutes is a genre since its communicative purpose of relaying written information lends credence to its formal style and structure delineating conventional and typified moves realized through specialized lexico-grammatical features.
The North American New Rhetoric perspective of genre analysis, championed by genre analysts such as Miller (1984), Bazerman (1994) and Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995), sees genres as social actions or purposes that are achieved in social situations (cited in Hyon, 1996:696). Through the lens of the New Rhetoricians, minutes become social actions in social situations with regards to a specific discourse community with members who share similar goals and ideologies.
The Systemic Functional Linguistics perspective, propounded by Halliday and other scholars like Hasan (1985), Martin (1992), Frow (2006:3), Martin and Rose (2008) focus on the textual features of a genre (genre-as-text approach) which makes it one element in a complex social semiotic system. This perspective provides the platform for this study to investigate the typification of minutes as a distinct genre through its schematic structure and lexico-grammatical resources.
1.1 Aim of the Study
Though there have been some previous studies done on minutes such as ‘Participating in Meetings: A Genre Analysis’ (Yang), ‘Genre Analysis of Electronic Meeting Systems’ (Antunes et al. 2006) and ‘Meeting Minutes as a Rhetorical Genre’, (Wolfe 2006), these studies were conducted outside Africa and by researchers who were mainly concerned with the pedagogical implications of the studies for learners of the English Language.
Moreover, the present researcher has not read any study which specifically investigates the communicative purposes, moves and lexico-grammatical features which typify minutes as a genre. Specific investigation into the minutes of Ghanaian Senior High School (SHS) staff meetings also remain neglected so this study seeks to investigate the schematic structure and lexico-grammatical resources typified in the minutes genre as used in Ghanaian SHS staff meetings and how those conventionalized features contribute to its formality and instantiate the communicative purpose there is in the genre which makes it a genre.
1.2 Research Questions
The following research questions underpinned the study: 1. What is the communicative purpose of meeting minutes? 2. What are the moves that typify meeting minutes as a genre? 3. What lexico-grammatical features characterise meeting minutes as a genre? 2.0 Review of Previous Studies on Minutes
Upon completion of the discussion on genre theory and analysis in the introductory part of this paper, I proceed to review some studies done on minutes. One of such studies is ‘Participating in Meetings: A Genre Analysis (Yang) which attempts to examine the meeting genre. According to Yang, the current era of globalization creates the need for many people in Taiwan to acquire the skills needed to communicate in English especially at the workplace and at meetings. This study used Textalyser to analyze thirty meeting minutes randomly selected from the internet showing the types of organisations, number of participants, length, and time of the meetings to understand how meetings are carried out by English native speakers to enable teachers assist learners to improve their skills in participating in English meetings. The findings showed that certain words and phrases associated with meetings occurred often in the texts like ‘motion’, ‘called to order’ in addition to the reporting structure like ‘He said he would…’, ‘According to Chris…” The language of meetings treated in five business English textbooks in Taiwan were compared with the findings which revealed that enough attention had not been given to meetings in the textbooks to adequately prepare learners in Taiwan for the competitive global workplace.
Further studies were recommended by the author to investigate the communicative features of the meeting genre using meeting transcripts. This study though an insightful one, dwells more on meetings in general and fails to examine in depth, the communicative purpose of the different moves which typify the minutes genre.
Another study is ‘Genre Analysis of electronic meeting minutes’ (Antune et al., 2006), which postulates that applying genre analysis to the design of electronic meeting systems has not been done in the past and so it describes how genre analysis was used to develop electronic meeting systems for numerous organisations and meeting genres.
The results showed that using the genre approach provided electronic meeting systems which highlighted organizational integration suitable for communities of users. This paper investigated the impact genre analysis has on the design of electronic meeting systems based on two arguments. The first is that communication being a fundamental component of meetings has a direct impact of the genre analysis outcomes on the design of electronic meeting systems. The second is that, so far, electronic meeting systems have been unable to achieve its goals for a number of reasons. The paper thus explicated how genre analysis produces creative and productive electronic meeting systems for effective meetings. This study focuses on the design of electronic meeting systems and makes no attempt to identify the schematic structure and lexico-grammatical features of minutes.
Yet another work is ‘Meeting Minutes as a Rhetorical Genre’ (Wolfe, 2006) which explains to student teams how effective documentation of their meetings can function as a management tool because her observation had made her realize that professional writing textbooks rarely mention minutes in their chapters which leave students handicapped in that area. This was a short exercise prepared to show students the importance of meeting minutes in propelling a team forward since a record of decisions taken become binding on members. As a result, no attention is paid to the moves and lexico-grammatical resources which characterize the minutes genre.
2.1 Point of Departure
The review of the literature reveals that the previous studies have paid less attention to a genre-based analysis and consequently neglected an in-depth investigation into the schematic structure and lexico-grammatical features which initiate the communicative purposes of the genre and its various moves. This study thus aims to examine the communicative purpose, moves (paying attention to their frequencies, sequencing and textual space) and the linguistic features (with regards to the vocabulary and grammar). 3.0 Methodology
The research design employed was a qualitative one and being exploratory, helped the researcher to obtain specific information about the characteristics, social contexts and processes of the transcripts which reflect the values and opinions of the discourse communities sampled (page 1).
According to Lincoln and Guba (1985), convenience should be the principle which guides sampling in qualitative research and so the sample size originally comprised a corpus of sixty meeting minutes, ten each from six senior high schools in the Eastern Region of Ghana but after an initial careful study of three samples from each school, data saturation was reached and there was redundancy to the extent that the researcher could identify consistent patterns. Considering the fact that arriving at valid findings in research does not depend on collecting data from everyone but rather on data richness and theoretical saturation when new data cannot yield additional insights to the research questions (pg 5), eighteen minutes consisting of three from each of the schools were purposely sampled from the data collected for the purposes of this study.
In addition to that, quantitative research design was used to formulate the facts after uncovering patterns and to generate numerical data and quantify the data that had been analyzed. Two of the schools are church schools and were coded as C1A, C1B, C1C and C2A, C2B, C2C while the other four are secular schools and coded as S1A, S1B, S1C; S2A, S2B, S2C; S3A, S3B, S3C and S4A, S4B, S4C.
3.1 Analytical Framework
This mono-generic study adopted Swales’ (1990) rhetorical approach to genre analysis, grounded in the ESP approach in analyzing the data based on the important niche it occupies in the literature. The appropriateness and suitability of Swales’ model for this study cannot be overemphasized as it enabled the researcher to identify the schematic structure and lexico-grammatical features that typify the genre of the samples analyzed.
Swales’ definition of a genre as ‘a type of text or discourse designed to achieve a set of communicative purpose’ (Swales and Feak 2009:1) and moves as ‘a discoursal or rhetorical unit that performs a coherent communicative purpose in written or spoken discourse’ (Swales, 2004), laid bare the genre’s communicative purpose, rhetorical moves, textual and linguistic realization in displaying the genre’s specificity, versatility, forms and integrity. The research questions that underpinned the study formed the basis of the analysis and so the researcher began the analysis by using the semantic criterion in investigating the various moves. In any given text, the moves identified embody units of meaning and as such they should be identified based on the functions those semantic units have in the texts. After consultations with five student researchers as to the reliability of the moves identified, an inter-rater reliability of 80% was reached. The moves were then labeled and their frequency of occurrence as well as sequencing to determine the core (obligatory) ones from the optional ones were recorded. The textual space allocated to each move was also identified using the sentence as the unit of measurement. Drawing on the researcher’s in-depth knowledge of Grammar rooted in theories like Halliday’s in Systemic Functional Linguistics, Semantics and Lexis, the next phase of the research dealt extensively with the lexico-grammatical resources that characterize each move and in turn, instantiate the communicative purpose of the genre.
4.0 Schematic structure and lexico-grammatical features identified from the sample
The main communicative purpose of minutes is to record proceedings and relay information to members of the discourse community which makes it informational. This purpose is instantiated through various moves and steps. (Refer to appendix A for a summary of the moves and steps that were identified).
In the six schools studied, seven moves with some being realized through various steps and each having its own distinctive communicative purpose were identified and are as follows: caption (name of institution and location, activity, date, venue); introduction (opening, attendance/apologies, welcoming); reading of previous minutes (corrections, adoption, matters arising); agenda; any other business; adjournment and signatures. Some of the moves were identified to be core and others optional and a discussion of them and their linguistic features are evident below.
4.1 Caption
The first move identified in the data was the caption and it serves as the title of the minutes. The data set revealed that the title is a core move occurring in all the samples. The caption, I believe, serves referencing and documentation purposes and which is realized by four steps. The first step is name of institution and location and it aims at identifying the particular institution which owns the minutes as well as its location. Its communicative purpose is clearly served in line with Swales and Feak (1994) that an appropriate title should be self-explanatory and yet informative. The second step which is activity serves the purpose of indicating the kind of activity that necessitated the writing of the minutes which is a staff meeting and occurred as a core step in the data analyzed. Date is the next core step and spells out clearly the exact date of the writing of the minutes. Venue is the last step which indicates the actual location for the meeting because the venue for a particular staff meeting could change and is optional.
The lexico-grammatical features of this move in the data showed that the captions are mostly captured in complex noun phrases and clauses. Below is a table detailing this assertion.
Table 1: Figure presenting the realizations of some of the captions in the data. NOUN PHRASES | NOUN CLAUSES | First General Staff Meeting For Third Term 2010/2011 (S4C) | Minutes of Staff Meeting Held on 24th August, 2010 at the Staff Common Room (S2A) | End of Term Staff Meeting (C2B) | Minutes of Staff Meeting held on 5th May, 2014 at the School Library (S1A) | | Minutes of General Staff Meeting Held on Friday, 17th December, 2011 at the Staff Common Room (S3B) | | Minutes of Teaching Staff Meeting Held on 10th April, 2014 (C1C) |

With regards to the sequencing of the moves it was noted that the caption move occurred as the first move in all the data except that it was realized as a core step in others and as an optional step in others.
4.2 Introduction
The introduction, a core move, gives the background information or it serves as the peripheral or prologue of the minutes. The move is realized by three steps with only one of the steps welcoming being optional and is a call by the chairperson (usually, the head of the school) for the meeting to commence. The three steps are: opening which indicates the time the meeting begins with a prayer by a member of staff and appears in all the eighteen samples; attendance/apologies detail the number of staff members present and those absent and accounts for the reason for their absence and welcoming was revealed to be an optional step with the communicative purpose of welcoming members to the meeting. C1 and C2 had the additional step of exhortation after prayer in two of their samples A and B each where the school chaplain admonished and encouraged the staff with the word of God. The reason for this step is due to the fact that these are mission schools and there is a high regard given to the word of God at all times.
The linguistic features revealed that the move is characterized by complex sentences: 1. The Headmistress, Ms Amma Adu Larbi called the House to order and Mr Samuel Ofori Asare prayed for the meeting to begin at 10:14am. (S1A) 2. She mentioned that it is heart-warming when we have people who agree to work together and that it was her hope that Teachers were going to work very hard this term, especially this time of the year when the final year students would write the WASSCE. (C1B) 3. The headmaster finally commented on selling on campus at wrong time periods and the frequent movement of stray goats everywhere on the compound. (S4B)
There is also the use of passivization. These are preferred to the active sentences. The passives are also dominantly agentive. The agentive passives are captured in phrases and this is done to keep records of who said what at the meeting. The use of passives signals the formal nature of the genre. Examples from the data set are: 1. The opening prayer was said by Mr Thompson. (S2A) 2. The meeting commenced with an opening prayer by the School Chaplain at 11:29am. (S4C) 3. The opening prayer was said by Mr. Siameh. (S2C) 4. The meeting began with an opening prayer by Mr. M.W.N. Amamoo at 3.25pm. (S4A)
With the sequencing, this move followed the first move, caption, in all the data. 4.3 Reading of previous minutes
The third move identified was reading of previous minutes. This again, was a core move, occurring in all the samples. This move is necessary because as a business genre, the minutes is also meant to evaluate how far the teachers have implemented the decisions they decided to implement in previous meetings. It is typified by three steps to remind members of the issues discussed in the last meeting. The first step corrections is where any omissions, additions or corrections to the minutes read are made by members and the second step, adoption, has the secretary moving for the acceptance or adoption of the minutes read as a true reflection of proceedings and another seconds the move for it to be accepted which makes the minutes a binding or legal document. The last step matters arising offers the opportunity for members to discuss pertinent issues raised by the previous minutes and actions taken, yet to be taken and feedback on issues.
The linguistic features exhibit the use of nominalization, a recurrent lexico-grammatical feature indicating the formality of the minutes gathered. This was more preferred to verbalization which tends to make a text more informal. Examples of nominalization are boldened in the following sentences: 1. ‘… moved for the discussion of the previous minutes…’. (S1A) 2. He called for corrections of the minutes. (C1A) 3. ‘The staff secretary then moved for the acceptance of the minutes. (S1C) 4. The minutes of the previous meeting was read and below are the corrections made to that effect. (S3A)
With regards to the sequencing, it occurs after introduction in the samples gathered.
4.4 Agenda
The fourth move, agenda, is core, occurring in all the samples from the data set. This, unarguably, is the most important move as it is the agenda that is allocated much textual space. This could probably be due to the general truth that minutes of business meetings are meant to document decisions made by a particular institution. It is based on these decisions that the institution implements policies aimed at advancing the growth of the institution.
Concerning the linguistic features, it was realized that at the sentential level, the data set revealed the dominant use of complex and compound complex sentences as typical of minutes. Like the structure of sentences in most formal genres such as the legal genres, the use of complex structures indicates that there is the heavy use of subordination and this is due to the seriousness of the issues discussed at such meetings. Examples to illustrate this assertion are as follows: 1. The Headmistress, Ms Amma Adu Larbi called the House to order and Mr Samuel Ofori Asare prayed for the meeting to begin at 10:14am. (S1A) 2. The headmaster informed the members of staff that the military had been tasked to build a six-unit classroom block with a recreational centre for the first year students and that they had come to survey the site. (S2A) 3. A member pointed out that for the crash programme to be effective, he was convinced that whatever amount parents were to contribute should be made known to members. (S4C) 4. Teachers must work within the time frame proposed so that reports reach parents before school re-opens so as to prevent parents from coming to the school as happened previously. (S3B)
The use of reporting verbs such as ‘informed’, ‘said’, ‘reported’, ‘briefed’, ‘suggested’, ‘announced’ and ‘asked’, ‘explained’, ‘observed’, ‘presented’ is dominant. These reporting verbs indicate that the minutes is a record of proceedings that occurred in a past time. The reporting verbs are also used by the secretary to distance or subscribe himself from the propositions made by others at the meeting and in consonance with the constraints of the genre, for the secretary to record proceedings devoid of his opinions. The use of the reporting verbs also contributes to the impersonal tone that is characteristic of most formal discourses.
The use of modals that carry an imperative tone is also worth noting. These sentences are used to capture recommendations meant to be implemented by the participants present at the meeting. Examples include the following: 1. Teachers should be regular and punctual in class. (S1A) 2. Teachers must work within the time frame proposed so that reports reach parents before school re-opens so as to prevent parents from coming to the school as happened previously. (S3B) 3. All continuous assessment forms must be submitted to Heads of Department. (S3B) 4. Teachers must inform their HODs and Assistant Head Academic if they have genuine reasons to be absent from class. (S1A)
The sequencing of this move has it occurring after reading of previous minutes in the data set.
4.5 Any other Business
This move is aimed at giving the opportunity for the teachers to bring to the fore, matters that were not discussed or included in the agenda for the meeting. The move is obligatory and has no steps. The presence of this move emphasizes the collegiality that usually characterizes professional genres. In another sense, everyone invited for the meeting is seen as important to the meeting or as a team player and one who has the interest of the organisation at heart. Hence, the opportunity is given for every member to voice his opinions.
The lexico grammatical features in this move also have the use of complex sentences: 1. The Assistant Headmaster (Administration) informed the house that due to the difficulty of recruiting Physics tutors, all Integrated Science teachers should be prepared to teach all areas under Integrated Science. (S4A) imperatives: 2. Teachers who cannot enter their marks should consult other colleagues to help them out. (S1C) and reporting verbs such as ‘told’, ‘informed’ and ‘said’.
In terms of sequencing, this move follows agenda in all the data that it occurs in.
4.6 Adjournment
This move marks the official closure of the meeting and is core. Here, the secretary records the movers of the motion that the meeting be adjourned, the time this motion was moved, the seconders of the motion and any other information that is related to the adjournment of the meeting. This move has one step closing remarks which is optional to some of the data and has the head of the school expressing gratitude to members for their presence and wishing them well for the vacation or beginning of the term as the case may be.
The linguistic features of this move is characterized by genre specific words like ‘moved’, ‘closure’, ‘seconded’, ‘adjourned’, ‘unanimously’, ‘absence’, ‘issues’, ‘discussion’, ‘motion’, accepted’ and phrases such as ‘to bring the meeting to a close’.
4.7 Signatures
This is the last move and is an optional one indicating the writer of the minutes and the endorsing party. Its linguistic features revealed the use of clauses like ‘recorded by’, ‘documented by’, ‘prepared by’, ‘approved by’ and ‘endorsed by’ followed by the full name of the person.
The formal nature of the minutes is also seen in terms of how address terms are captured throughout the minutes in all the data. The data set revealed that honorifics and full names are used to refer to the participants in the meeting. Dominantly, the Title + Full Name (TFN) and Title + Last name (TLN), rather than first names (FN), are used in capturing names of the participants who make contributions at the meeting. Examples to buttress this point are: ‘Miss Naana Mansa Blay’ ( C1A), ‘Mr Nicholas Odame Gyane’( C1C) and ‘Mrs Hilda Yaa Yeboah’ (C1B), ‘Mr Patrick Attobrah (S3A)’, ‘Miss Doris Essiem (S3B), ‘Mr. Mohammed Aminu’ (S1C), ‘Mrs. Amoako Adjei’, (S4A) , ‘Mr. J. T. Batsa’(S2A), ‘Miss Priscilla E. Klu’ (S2C).
Also worth mentioning is the strict adherence to grammar rules which characterize this genre with heavily reliance on the past tense forms of the verbs since the minutes mainly reports past events. This again reinforces the formal nature of minutes. Grammatical rules such as those concerning subject-verb and pronoun-antecedent concord and sequence of tenses, which are captured in past tenses are well adhered to. The texts are virtually free of sentence-level errors (spelling). Appropriate punctuation marks are also used.
5.0 Frequency, Sequencing and Textual Spacing
5.1 Frequency of the moves
Next, I sought to establish which of the moves identified were core or obligatory and which ones were optional. I used the descriptive statistical tool percentages to buttress my points. The frequency of occurrence is presented in Chart 1 below:

Chart 1: Pie Chart representing the frequency of the moves and steps in the data set.
Moves represented by a percentage of four or above were investigated to be core or obligatory and those below as optional since they did not occur in all the data set.
5.2 Sequencing of the moves
All the samples were similarly sequenced in a linear order which was fixed: 1~2~3~4~5~6~7 with variations having to do with the steps. For example, in S3A, Step 2.2 Welcoming comes after Step 2.3 Attendance/Apologies while C1 and S4 have it occurring before it. C1A, C1C, S4A and S4C have an optional step Closing Remarks occurring before M6 – Adjournment. This adherence to a fixed template goes a long way to give credence to the ESP view that genres are formulaic or institutionalized templates and so writers try as much as possible to organize the minutes to suit what is accepted as the norm in the discourse community in spite of the few variations.
5.3 Textual Space
I used the sentence count to determine the textual space allocated to each move. The recurring move with the highest textual space was identified as M4 – Agenda, with as many as 423 sentences. As already indicated, this is due to the communicative purpose of the minutes which is mainly to deal with pressing issues necessitating the call for that meeting. The recurring move with the lowest textual space was M7 – Adjournment with as little as 38 sentences and this is as a result of the fact that by that time, members have reached the saturation point for absorption. The table below explicitly explains the textual space allocated to each move in the samples collected. The Caption and Signature moves are not represented here because the unit of measurement for the textual space dealt with sentences and those two moves are realized in phrases and clauses in the data used.
Table 3: Table detailing the textual space allocated to each move in the data set. MOVES | TEXTUAL SPACE(NO. OF SENTENCES) | PERCENTAGE (%) | Introduction | 82 | 8.65 | Reading of Previous Minutes | 224 | 23.63 | Agenda | 423 | 44.62 | A.O.B. | 181 | 19.09 | Adjournment | 38 | 4.01 | TOTAL | 948 | 100.00 |

6.0 Conclusion, Key findings and Implications
This concluding section looks at a summary of the research findings which are related to the research questions and then the implications and recommendations for further study.
6.1 Summary of research
This study aimed at investigating the schematic structure and linguistic features of minutes writing in SHS schools. Swales (1990) rhetorical approach to genre analysis was adopted. The sample size originally comprised a corpus of sixty meeting minutes, ten each from six senior high schools in the Eastern Region of Ghana but after an initial careful study of three samples from each school, a total of eighteen were used for the study. A brief outline of the key findings is presented below.
The study revealed the communicative purpose of minutes in SHS schools is to record and relay information to the members of that discourse community. It is also to give members the platform to express their views and opinions and take decisions on pertinent issues and admonish or caution the users of that genre. In view of these and with reference to the second research question, seven moves, with some realized in different steps, were identified to characterize the genre: caption (name of institution and location, activity, date, venue); introduction (opening, attendance/apologies, welcoming); reading of previous minutes (corrections, adoption, matters arising); agenda; any other business; adjournment and signatures. Some of the moves were identified to be core and others optional. The linguistic features which refer to the third research question support the general view that meeting minutes are formal writings and as such the use of nominalization, address terms, strict adherence to grammar rules and passivization are very evident as in the Reading of previous minutes, Agenda and A.O.B moves. In addition, the reporting and instructing nature of the genre initiate the use of reporting verbs, varied sentence structure, modals and imperatives evidenced in the Reading of previous minutes, Agenda and A.O.B moves, complex noun phrases and clauses as in the Caption move.
Regarding the textual space, the study revealed that because of the main communicative purpose being informing and discussing, the Agenda move has the highest textual space with Adjournment receiving the least.
6.2 Implications
The implications of this study are two-fold. Firstly, it contributes greatly to the existing scholarship in genre studies since Swales (1990) model was adopted and the study confirms his move model and also assisted the researcher to identify seven moves and the steps and linguistic features which characterize the genre. This study thus, contributes to the already existing stock of knowledge on genre studies. Secondly, it serves as an impetus for further postgraduate work as well as having pedagogical relevance.
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