How Are Conference Opening Remarks Structured? A Corpus-Based Move Analysis of 74 Speeches (Wu, 2026, FORUM)

Conference English #5

Summary

Opening remarks are a conference genre with its own structure. Their job is to welcome the audience and set the tone for the event. This study carried out a corpus-based move analysis of 74 opening remarks (54,504 words) given by leaders of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) at international conferences, workshops, forums, summits and symposiums from 2018 to 2022. It identified 8 rhetorical moves and 30 component steps. Seven of the eight moves are obligatory, meaning they appear in at least 60% of the remarks. Yet no two remarks order their moves and steps the same way. The genre is regular and flexible at once. The study ends with a five-step teaching procedure and a function-based list of formulaic expressions for interpreter trainees and for anyone who has to give or interpret opening remarks in English.

Full citation: Wu, Yinyin. 2026. "The rhetorical structure of conference opening remarks: A corpus-based move analysis." FORUM: International Journal of Interpretation and Translation, 24(1), 1–36. https://doi.org/10.1075/forum.25007.wu

Access: Open access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. The full text includes Appendix B, a list of useful expressions and sentence frames for opening remarks, grouped by rhetorical function.

Author: Yinyin Wu, Graduate Program in Translation and Interpretation, National Taiwan University

Funding: Taiwan's National Science and Technology Council (NSTC 112-2410-H-002-067)

Why study opening remarks?

An international conference usually has three main parts: opening remarks, keynote speeches and panel discussions. Panel discussions are mostly spontaneous. Opening remarks, especially those given by government officials, are usually read from carefully prepared scripts, so they have features of both written and spoken discourse.

Interpreters often interpret opening remarks, but these remarks have received little research attention. If interpreters know the structure and typical wording of the genre, they can better predict what comes next and produce output in the right conference register. This study focuses on conferences in Taiwan, where simultaneous interpreting between Mandarin Chinese and English is usually provided.

Corpus and method

• Data: 248 speeches titled "remarks" were collected from the AIT website ("Speeches and Statements"). Only opening remarks at conference-type events were kept, which left 74 remarks.
• Size: 54,504 words in total. The shortest remark has 183 words and the longest 1,894, with an average of 737 words.
• Speakers: mainly the three AIT directors of the period: Brent Christensen (41 remarks), Sandra Oudkirk (9) and Kin Moy (3). The other remarks were given by other AIT leaders (17) and U.S. officials (4).
• Event themes: technology and innovation, economics and commerce, environment, crime, media literacy, education and talent, society and security, supply chains, women's empowerment, health, disaster relief and religion.
• Framework: the top-down corpus-based move analysis procedure of Biber, Connor and Upton (2007), building on Swales' genre analysis.
• Coding: a pilot stage and three rounds of coding by the researcher, then independent coding by two trained graduate interpreting students. Agreement among the three coders on 71 remarks reached 0.86.
• Obligatory threshold: a move or step counts as obligatory if it appears in at least 60% of the 74 remarks, wherever it occurs in the speech.

The eight moves of conference opening remarks

The overall purpose of opening remarks is to put the event in context, welcome the audience and unite them around a common goal. The eight moves are listed below with the share of remarks in which each one appears. Steps marked "obligatory" appear in at least 60% of the remarks.

Move 1. Set the scene (100%)
Steps: greetings (obligatory), personal background, introduction (obligatory), purpose or value of the event (obligatory), agenda, origin of the event, and the structure of the remarks.

Move 2. Acknowledge organizers, distinguished guests, and attendees (94.6%)
Steps: thanking organizers (obligatory), recognizing distinguished guests, and welcoming attendees (obligatory).

Move 3. Highlight the significance of the theme (94.6%)
Steps: explaining the theme's context and significance (obligatory), quotation, relevant events, problems, relevance to the audience or the world, and call for action (obligatory).

Move 4. Highlight the organization's efforts and commitments (86.5%)
Steps: personal efforts, the organization's efforts and accomplishments (obligatory), and the organization's commitments and stance (obligatory).

Move 5. Recognize the host's efforts and significance (82.4%)
Steps: the host's efforts and accomplishments (obligatory), and the host's significance (obligatory).

Move 6. Emphasize friendship and collaboration (73%)
Steps: friendship and partnership, shared values, collaborative efforts, and the impact of collaboration. The move itself is obligatory, but none of its steps are.

Move 7. Highlight global efforts (9.5%)
The only optional move. Speakers use it to show that the host is not alone and that other countries are working on the same issue.

Move 8. Conclude the remarks (100%)
Steps: hopes and wishes (obligatory), a gesture of goodwill, resources or other event highlights, invitations to other events, and gratitude (obligatory).

Regular and flexible at the same time

The rhetorical elements of opening remarks are largely fixed, but none of the 74 remarks orders its moves and steps in the same way. The corpus contains 1,782 step occurrences, about 24 per remark, or one step every 31 words. By comparison, an earlier move analysis of TED talks (Chang and Huang 2015) found about one step every 384 words. Opening remarks therefore seem to be a highly condensed genre: speakers follow the overall rhetorical structure while weaving moves and steps into a different pattern in each remark. One 127-word paragraph in the corpus contains six steps.

Ceremonial, informative and persuasive

Moves 1, 2 and 8 do the ceremonial work: introducing the event, welcoming and thanking people, and wishing the conference success. Moves 3 to 7 inform the audience about the theme and about what has been done. They are also persuasive. Together they build a narrative along these lines: we and our host have each made efforts as partners, the issue matters to everyone in the room, so your contributions count and we need to work together. This mix of informing and persuading makes opening remarks resemble TED talks, which aim to inspire change, more than academic presentations.

Useful expressions for opening remarks (Appendix B)

Appendix B groups formulaic expressions and sentence frames by move and step, so learners can connect each expression with its communicative function. A few examples:

• Introduction (Step 1-3): "It is my honor and distinct pleasure to welcome everyone to [event] on [theme] held under the auspices of [framework]."
• Purpose of the event (Step 1-4): "This very forum is a testament to the fact that…"
• Structure of the remarks (Step 1-7): "I wanted to take this opportunity to share a few of my thoughts about…"
• Problems (Step 3-4): "As you are all well aware, disasters can happen at any time and any place."
• Call for action (Step 3-6): "It is incumbent upon all of us to ensure…" or "…requires a whole-of-society approach."
• The organization's commitments (Step 4-3): "We are committed to / will continue to / will remain steadfast in our vigorous commitments to…"
• Complimenting the host (Step 5-1): "We applaud the success of…" or "[The host] is perfectly positioned to…"
• Hopes and wishes (Step 8-1): "I hope that the people in this room will form lasting connections…"

The paper also notes a common habit among interpreter trainees whose B language is English: overusing a few sentence starters such as "I am impressed with…". It suggests learning a range of ways to compliment a partner, including sentence starters that begin with the receiver of the compliment, such as "Taiwan has extensive experience with…", rather than with "I" or "we".

A five-step teaching procedure

Remarks archived on U.S. embassy and consulate websites are usually available in English and in local-language translation, which makes them good teaching material. The paper proposes five steps:

1. Understand the rhetorical structure. Before class, trainees read the results section and the move/step overview.
2. Analyze the structure. In pairs, trainees take the speaker's point of view and ask why each segment is there: to excite the audience, unite the room, or stress how serious a problem is.
3. Present and predict. Trainees present their analysis and pause at key points so classmates can predict what comes next.
4. Analyze the language. Trainees compile glossaries of useful phrases, sentence starters and sentence frames, grouped by move and step.
5. Sight translate back into English. Trainees sight translate the published translations of U.S. officials' remarks back into English and compare their versions with the originals.

Steps 1 to 3 build a top-down mental schema of the genre. Steps 4 and 5 add bottom-up work on phraseology. The author has used this unit in four semesters of a required graduate course in translation and interpretation, and end-of-term surveys gave an average score of 4.87 out of 5.

Where this study fits in research on conference English

This is the fifth study in a research series on conference English. The earlier studies worked bottom-up, finding recurrent multiword units from their co-occurrence patterns in corpora: phrasal verbs (Wu 2023), lexical bundles (Wu 2021), and multiword constructions (Wu 2024). The present study switches to a top-down, genre-level view. It ties formulaic language to specific communicative functions and positions within a speech, so learners know both what to say and when and why to say it.

• Wu, Yinyin. 2023. "Phrasal Verbs in European Parliament Conference English: A Corpus-Based Pedagogical List." The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 17(2): 301–318.
• Wu, Yinyin. 2024. "Multiword Constructions in European Parliament Conference English: A Corpus-Driven Pedagogical List." The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 18(3): 423–441.

Frequently asked questions

What is the structure of a conference opening remark?

Based on 74 opening remarks by AIT leaders, Wu (2026) identifies eight moves: (1) set the scene; (2) acknowledge organizers, distinguished guests, and attendees; (3) highlight the significance of the theme; (4) highlight the organization's efforts and commitments; (5) recognize the host's efforts and significance; (6) emphasize friendship and collaboration; (7) highlight global efforts; and (8) conclude the remarks. All moves except Move 7 are obligatory.

What is move analysis?

Move analysis is a genre analysis method developed by John Swales. It breaks a text into "moves", functional units that each serve a communicative purpose, and into smaller "steps" that carry out each move. Corpus-based move analysis, as described by Biber, Connor and Upton (2007), applies the method systematically to a collection of texts of the same genre.

How can interpreters prepare for opening remarks?

Interpreters can learn the typical move structure so they can predict how a speech will unfold, and build a repertoire of ready-made expressions for each move. Appendix B of Wu (2026) offers such a list, grouped into 8 moves and 30 steps.

Is the paper free to read?

Yes. The article is open access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license at https://doi.org/10.1075/forum.25007.wu

How to cite

Wu, Yinyin. 2026. "The rhetorical structure of conference opening remarks: A corpus-based move analysis." FORUM 24(1): 1–36. https://doi.org/10.1075/forum.25007.wu

Keywords: conference opening remarks, opening speech structure, move analysis, genre analysis, corpus-based research, conference English, interpreter training, formulaic language, sentence frames, diplomatic speeches, American Institute in Taiwan, Mandarin Chinese–English interpreting