Explanation Genre in the Mostly Viewed TED Talks: Contribution of the Generic Structure to the Appeal of the Talks Iwa Lukmana * , Riesky, Luthfi Variant Hanif Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia * Corresponding author. Email: iwa@upi.edu ABSTRACT The control over the way a genre is structured is meant to achieve the social function of the text, i.e., the purpose for which the text is written. A good generic structure provides the audience with logical cues so that they can easily follow the flow of ideas presented in the text. This study aims to analyse the generic structure of the mostly viewed explanation genre in TED Talk, a public speaking program which has been widely known for its audience engagement. Being largely descriptive, this study applies genre theory as it is discussed in Systemic-Functional Linguistics. Data were collected from TED YouTube channel and were analysed through the identification of how information was organised, leading to the generic structure of the talks. This study finds three occurrences of explanation genre in the top five TED Talks. It is also found that the compulsory and optional stages in the genre appear to support to the appeal of the talks. Keywords: Explanation, genre, generic structure, TED Talk 1. INTRODUCTION Public speaking includes an exchange of information between a speaker and one or more addressees. Public speaking differs from everyday communication with regard to several concerns (Coopman & Lull, 2014). First, the speaker in public speaking holds a special status. In a normal everyday communication, people can freely take turns. However, in public speaking, the communicative event is dominated by the speaker (Rossete-Crake, 2019). Second, unlike everyday communication, public speaking is almost always a planned communicative event (Beebe & Beebe, 2010). Public speaking has several intrinsic elements including message and structure (Coopman & Lull, 2014). Message further contains topic and purpose. Topic is what the speaker wants to discuss. In contemporary time, the selection of topic considers the nature of the audience (Mehl, 2017). Purpose concerns what the speaker wants to achieve with his/her speech (Beebe & Beebe, 2010). It includes both general and specific purposes. The general purpose is the total objective of a speech (Coopman & Lull, 2014). Public speaking, in general, has one of the three identified general purposes: to inform, to persuade, and to entertain (Zarefsky, 2016). The specific purpose concerns the speaker’s expectation on the listener after hearing his/her speech (Beebe & Beebe, 2010). Both general and specific purposes will influence the way a speaker develops his/her topic. The structure of public speaking often follows the formula of introduction, content, and conclusion (DeCoske & White, 2010). Structure serves to help the speaker deliver ideas systematically. DeCoske and White (2010) claim that structure in public speaking provides logical cues for speakers to deliver their ideas more clearly. Structure also helps the audience understand what the speaker is talking about. A clear and coherent organization of thought will help the audience trace ideas and expect what to appear next in the talk. Both message and structure work together to create an engaging public speech. What first engages the audience in public speaking is the topic (Coopman & Lull, 2014). However, the topic alone cannot maintain the interest of the audience. What is needed further is a clear and easy-to-understand train of thought, i.e., the structure of public speaking (Beebe & Beebe, 2010). In short, an interesting topic and a clear structure are two inseparable aspects of an engaging public speech. Examples of engaging public speeches can be found in TED Talks, which discuss a broad range of topics. With the slogan ‘ideas worth spreading’, TED Talk has become a platform in which public speakers deliver their ideas on topics regarding global issues. As explained in their website, TED has so far published Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 546 Proceedings of the Thirteenth Conference on Applied Linguistics (CONAPLIN 2020) Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL. This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license -http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. 259