The legal provisions in memoranda of agreement (MOA) for academic collaborations: A critical genre analysis

Critical Genre Analysis (CGA) of legal texts has been done in a number of studies, particularly in the works of Bhatia. However, very little has been done on the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) for Academic Collaborations that have sealed partnerships among educational institutions in the ASEAN region. Anchored on the CGA framework of Bhatia (2010, 2017), this study investigates the text-internal features evident in MOAs for academic collaborations and expands its analysis to include text external factors that determine the interdiscursive and multidimensional framework of CGA in understanding academic and professional genres in particular the MOAs. The study reveals that the text-internal features of the MOA indicates a five-move structure and the emerging lexico-grammatical features include nominalization, the frequency of the modals shall and will, the predominance of the active voice over the passive, and the continued use of binomials, and legal lexis and archaism. The analysis of the text-internal features reveals the occurrence of genre-embedding such as promotional discourse, the discourse of internationalization and mobility, and financial discourse. Finally, the analysis of the MOAs is extended to include the text-external features on the professional genres, professional practices, and the professional cultures of the organizations from which the MOAs have been sourced. The analysis of text external features proves that despite the legal nature of the MOA as a genre, features of academic language, the professional practices of educators and their professional cultures remain apparent