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The aim of this study was to discover and examine how verbs are used in the topic headings of four different mobile phone companies’ user manuals. The companies included in the study were Apple, Samsung, Nokia and Bullitt Group. In addition, the aim was to compare the different ways of using verbs in how usable they are according to some heuristics. The final purpose was to explore the differences between the four different mobile phone manufacturers and their respective uses of English. The study is based on primary data from the forementioned companies’ user instructions and background material focusing on technical communications, verbs, headings and the status and characteristics of English in the US, the UK, Finland and South Korea. The study was done by first collecting all relevant headings from nine instruction manuals from all four companies into excel files. Every manual had its own sheet in the excel file and all headings were organised onto their own rows. Different columns represented different characteristics of verb, for example active voice, present tense and auxiliary use. The headings were marked either one (1) or nothing in each column according to if they had the characteristic or not, for example if a heading had one lexical verb in present tense base form it would have 1 marked in the columns for verb, base form and present tense. When all headings and manuals were analysed, all results were collected into tables and the thesis presents tables for the collective results of all four companies results, results for each individual manual and the collective results of all the data. The results are presented in their own chapter and discussed in the “Discussion” chapter in two sub-chapters focusing on the first two aims of the study in the first one and then focusing on the third aim in the second one. The results show that the most common construction of topic headings did not have a verb at all. The average heading that included a verb had one verb and that verb was in present tense, active voice and in the -ing form. In addition, the verb was dynamic, and the heading does not have modal or auxiliary verbs or recognisable aspect. Some of these characteristics were expected, but it was interesting to see how the use of some characteristics divided, for example the use of -ing versus base form and if the headings had verbs or not. As for usability, the headings were mostly highly usable. The only threats to usability in heading construction are making the verb construction more complicated or longer than it needs to be for the user to understand what it precedes or using a verb where it is not needed. As for the final aim of comparing the results from different companies, the study showed that there were differences in how the four companies used verbs in their headings. Apple had the most variability across all characteristics compared to the other companies and internally across different manuals, for example Apple was the only company that went from preferring -ing form to preferring base form. Other companies were more uniform internally but had some differences between them. Nokia was the most uniform internally with little headings and very little variability. |
