A. E. Kongo

Death is an unpleasant but common human phenomenon that usually puts humans in a state of unrest and grief. When such an unpleasant incidence befalls us, our neighbours, acquaintances, and friends try to sympathize with us, and the same gesture is reciprocated when they are in the same situation. The primary objective of this study is to analyze messages of condolence in terms of its schematic structure and linguistic features. Using the rhetorical approach to genre analysis, the study examined a data set of thirty (36) letters of condolences which were downloaded from the portal of International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICPT). The research identified nine moves. Out of the nine, six of the moves are obligatory and the rest are optional. In addition, each move has distinctive lexico-grammatical features. Furthermore, the schematic structure in addition to the lexico-grammatical features highlights the social functions of condolence messages in the world in general since the letters of condolences used for this study were written by people all over the world. This research has implications for genre studies in general, and further studies.