07/11/2022

Discourse Analysis

Lecture Four
Texts and their social functions

Lecturer
Prof Albashir Ahmed

Autumn 2022/2023

Introduction
• How do structures and expectation associated with
texts contribute to how they function in the social
world?
• How do they help to define social activities and the
groups of people who take part in them?
• To understand why textual conventions are
associated with each type of text, we need to
understand who produce it and consume it and
what they do with it.
• The study of the social functions of different kinds
of texts is called genre analysis.

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• Vijay Bhatia defines genre as follows:

‘A genre is a recognizable communicative event
characterized by a set of communicative purposes
identified and mutually understood by members of
the community in which it occurs’.
Most often it is highly structured and
conventionalized with constraints on allowable
contributions in terms of their intent, positioning,
form and functional vlaue.
These constraints, however, are often exploited by
expert members of the discourse community to
achieve private intentions within the framework of
the socially recognized purpose’. (Bhatia 1993)

• There are three important aspects to this definition

which need to be further explained:
1. Genres are not defined as types of texts but rather
as types of communicative events;
2. These events are characterized by constraints on
what can and cannot be done within them;
3. Expert users often exploit these constraints in
creative and unexpected ways.
I. Genres are communicative events
• Seeing texts as ‘events’ highlights the fact that all
texts are basically instances of people doing things
with or to other people:

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a newspaper article is an instance of someone

informing someone else about some recent event;
 a recipe is an instance of someone instructing
another how to prepare a particular kind of food;
a job application letter is an instance of someone
requesting that another give him or her a job.
• The ways different kinds of texts are put together is
inseparable from the things the text is trying to ‘get
done’ in a historical, cultural and social context.
• The communicative purposes of texts are often
multiple and complex.
A recipe, for example, may be persuading you
to make a certain dish (or to buy a certain product)

A newspaper article not just to inform you about an

event, but also to affect your opinion about it.
• The different people using the text might also have
different purposes in mind:
While a job applicant sees their application as a way
to convince an employer, the employer sees it as a
means of weeding out unsuitable candidates.
II. Conventions and Constraints
• The way genres are structured and the features
they contain are determined by their purposes.
The information you include in a job application
would be designed to convince an employer that
you are the right person for the job.

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This information would not include my recipe for

chocolate or my opinion about some other event.
• Genres come with ‘built-in’ constraints related to
what to include and in what order based on the
purposes and aims.
• A job application letter begins by indicating the post
applied for, describing qualifications and ends by
requesting an opportunity for an interview.
• This order of things in a genre is called ‘move
structure’ and often determines how successfully
the communicative purpose is fulfilled.

III. Creativity
• That is not to say that all job application letters, or
newspaper articles & recipes, are always the same.
• Successful texts are often those which break the
rules and defy conventions and constraints.
• Expert text producers sometimes mix different texts
or alter their moves or the order.
• Of course, there are limitations to how much genre
can be altered and still be successful as creativity is
often associated with risks.
• There are some important points to be made here:

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1. creativity would not be possible without

conventions and constraints.
2. Creativity must have some relationship to the
communicative purpose of the genre & its context.
For example, an application letter for a job as an
editor has a different purpose and contexts from
one to obtain a job as a software engineer.
3. Being able to successfully ‘bend’ and ‘blend’
genres is a matter of expertise: to break the rules
effectively, you must master them first.

• Discourse Communities
• Genres are associated with certain groups of people
who have goals and ways of reaching these goals.
Doctors use medial charts and prescriptions to do
the work of curing people.
Solicitors use contracts and legal briefs to defend
people’s rights.
Teachers and students use certain things to
accomplish the tasks of teaching and learning.
• These different genres not only help in getting
things done but also define groups to keep out
people who do not belong in them.

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• John Swales calls these groups discourse

communities and describes some of their features:
They consist of ‘expert’ members whose job is to
socialize new members into ‘how things are done’.
Members have ways of communicating with and
providing feedback to one another.
Members tend to share certain vocabulary or jargon
Members have common goals and common means
of reaching these goals.
• Thus, genres not only link people together, but also
link people with certain activities, identities, roles
and responsibilities.

• Genres, then, help to regulate and control what

people can do and who can be in various contexts.
• This regulation and control is exercised in a number
of ways.
Goals to be accomplished are ’built-in’ to the texts
daily used by members of a discourse community.
Since mastery of the genre is a requirement for
membership, members must also accept the goals
of the community.
When text conventions and constraints become
fixed and difficult to change, the relationships and
roles also become fixed and difficult to change.

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ALL THE RIGHT MOVES

• Texts that are structured according to a particular
generic framework are called genres.
• What determines the way a particular genre is put
together is its communicative purpose and so this
must be the focus in analyzing genres.
• Typically the constraints and conventions regarding
how a genre is structured involve
1. which steps must be included, and
2. the order in which they should appear.
• Also, the communicative purpose of a genre can be
broken into steps (moves):

• John Swales, the father of genre analysis, illustrated

the idea of moves in his analysis of introductions
to academic articles which typically:
1. Establishes the field in which the writer of the
study is working;
2. Summarizes the related research or
interpretations on one aspect of the field
3. Creates a research space for the study by showing
a gap in current knowledge or by raising questions
4. Introduces the study by indicating what the
investigation will accomplish for the field.
• However, not all academic articles will contain all
steps or will have the same order.

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• Also, the ways these moves are realized might differ

for articles about engineering or English literature.
• It is important to remember that not all genres are
equally conventionalized.
• While some have very strict rules about which
moves to be included and in what order, others
exhibit much more variety.
• One genre which has consistent communicative
moves is the genre of personal advertisement.
• The following is an example given by Justine
Coupland in her 1996 study of dating advertisement
in British newspapers.

• Advertisements like this tend to consist of 5 moves:

1. The advertiser describes himself or herself
2. The advertiser describes the kind of person he or
she is looking for
3. The advertiser describes the kind of relationships
he or she wishes to engage in with the target
4. The advertiser gives additional information, makes
a humorous remark or issues a challenge

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• Bending and blending

• Despite the fact that this genre is conventionalized,
it is not uncommon for ‘expert users’ to try to make
their ads stand out by ‘playing with’ conventions.
• One way of playing with conventions is genre
bending, which involves flouting the conventions in
subtle ways while not altering the move structure.
• This bending makes a particular realization of a
genre seem creative or unique.

• Another way of playing with the generic

conventions is called blending and in which the
conventions of one genre are mixed with another.
• In the following example the advertiser blends the
conventions of dating ad genre with the
conventions of ads for automobiles genre:

• The two advertisers, by playing with the genre,

succeeded in resisting the commodifying nature of
the genre and humanizing themselves, one through
modesty and the other through humour

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• It is a way of saying, ‘even though I am posting a

personal ad, I am not the usual kind of person who
posts such ads.
• In order for blending to be effective it must
contribute to the overall communicative purpose
being achieved more effectively and efficiently.
• Similarly, when bending a genre, one must be
careful not to bend it to the point of breaking,
• Whether a use of a genre is considered a creative
innovation or an embarrassing failure is a matter of
whether or not the communicative purpose is
achieved.

• Modes, Media and Context

• Other factors determine how genres are used and
how they change.
• One has to do with the different modes (e.g. writing,
graphics, video) that are available for constructing the
genre.
• Another has to do with the media through which
genres are produced and distributed.
• Both factors are important in relation to personal
advertisements.
• Nowadays such advertisement is more likely to be
encountered on the internet than in a newspaper.
• As a result the genre has changed dramatically:

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1. It has changed in terms of modes available to users

and personal ads are not dependent on text alone
since it is easy to upload digital photo, videos, etc.
2. Host websites require users to fill out web forms
which specify the information included which
makes it easier for users to search through
thousands of ads using key words.
3. Internet-based dating ads include all ways for the
advertiser and target to interact such as online
messages, real-time video chat, etc.
4. With the development of mobile technology, users
can access such genres anywhere.

• Genres inevitably change because communicative

goals change and because technologies introduce
new more efficient ways of accomplishing these
goals.
• Consequently, new sets of conventions and
constraints are introduced and new methods are
invented to bend or blend the genre creatively.

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ANALYZING GENRES
• Besides analyzing the structure of texts, analyzing
genres involves understanding
how these text function in social groups
How they reinforce and reflect the concerns of and
the relationships in these groups
How they change over time as societies and groups
within them change.
• Therefore, analyzing genres requires as much
attention to social context as it does to texts.
• Part of this context includes other genres that the
genre under consideration is related to.

• Genres are related to other genres in different

ways:
1. Actions or communicative events associated with
genres are usually part of larger (sequential) chains
of events that involve different genres.
For example, a personal ad might be followed with
letters, emails, phone calls and dinner dates, etc.
2. Genres are also related to other genres in non-
sequential relationships that are called networks.
A job application letter, for example, is related to
the job ad that prompted it, the applicant’s resume
and any accompanying reference letters.

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• Genres are linked together in networks when they

have the same sort of intertextual relationship with
one another.
• Genres exist in larger genre ecologies in which texts
not directly related in a chain or network can affect
one another in subtle and dramatic ways.
Like natural ecologies, genre ecologies are not
static: conditions change; old discourse
communities dissolve and new ones form;
• Genres change and evolve as users creatively bend
or blend them, or else become extinct if they can no
longer fulfill the communicative goals of their users.

• Online personal ads, for example, are replacing

print-based personal ads since they offer more
efficient ways to fulfill users’ communicative goals.
• Similarly, online news sources are giving rise to
changes in print-based news magazines such as
containing shorter articles and including more
pictures imitating their online counterparts.
• A good example of the dynamic nature of genres
and their adaptability to different discourse
communities and different communicative purposes
is the genre of the weblog or blog.
• A blog is a dynamic web page frequently updated
with entries shown in reverse chronological order.

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• Since their emergence in 1990s, blogs have

developed certain conventions:
blog entries, for example, are typically short written
in an informal style and often contain links to other
blogs, web pages or online content such as videos.
Blogs also contain features such as opportunities for
readers to comment, ‘blogrolls’ ( a list of links to
related blogs and ‘permalinks’ (links that point to
specific entries contained in the blog’s archives).
Like personal ads, the genre of the blog also
contains many sub-genres used by different
discourse communities for different communicative
purposes.

• There are, for instance, art blogs, photo blogs, video

blogs, etc.
• However, there are two broad types of blogs: the
filter-type and the diary-type which have different
conventions and different discourse communities.
• The purpose of Filter-type blogs is to deliver news
stories and links to other media which are ‘filtered’
based on reader’ presumed membership in a
particular discourse community (usually
characterized by things like political beliefs, lifestyle,
or profession)
• Here is an entry from one of these types of blogs
called The Daily Dish, a political blog:

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• This entry illustrates many of the moves typical of

entries in filter-type blogs:
1. The usually begin with a title, followed by
information about when the entry was published
(Date/time) and who wrote it (Author).
2. The body typically begins with an introduction to
the material that will be linked to, quoted or
embedded, as well as a comment on the material.
3. The most important move in entries in filter-type
blogs is that of pointing readers to some news,
information or media external to the blog itself.
• This is sometime done with a link or a quote from
the original source or with some embedded media.

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• Some sort of attribution of the original source or

author of the material is also included.
• Finally, such entries give readers a chance to
comment on the entry or to share it through email
or social media like Facebook.
• Readers of the blog who choose to share this entry
are also likely to share it with other like-minded.
• Diary-type blogs tend to follow a slightly different
structure and include different kinds of moves.
• The example below is from the blog of a young
woman from Singapore attending Brown University
in the US.

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• As in filter-type blogs, diary-type blog entries begin

with a title and the date and time of the entry.
• Entries in this type do not contain the author’s
name since all entries are by the same author.
• The move structure of this type tends to be more
open and unpredictable than filter type blogs
• This is so since the purpose is for the author to
reflect on an experience, thought or memory, which
takes the form of a narrative, analysis argument, etc
• In the example above, the blogger begins by
introducing the topic , then she gave some
evaluative comment followed by some details.

• Diary-type blogs sometimes include embedded

media usually in the form of digital photographs.
• The communicative purpose of these entries (share
personal experiences, thought and impressions),
helps to define the discourse community.
• Although any one can read such blogs, they are
intended for author’s friends and serve the function
of developing/strengthening personal relationships.
• It is often the personal nature of the material in
such blogs expressed in a public forum that makes
this genre particularly unique.

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• This focus on creating solidarity within a particular

discourse community is something that both filter-
type and diary-type blogs share.
• Often this is facilitated through processes like
commenting and linking to blogs and blog entries
posted by other members of the community.
• these practices of commenting and linking also
serve to uphold the norms of the community and
police its membership, communicating things like
approval, acceptance and share values.
• Although links or references to other texts are not
as central a part of diary-type blogs as they are of
filter-type blogs, they do occur.

• In the example above, for example, the author

refers to pictures posted on her Facebook page.
• Blog entries exist in an intertextual relationship with
other texts and genres.
• They are sequentially linked in chains to previously
posted entries and are often entrained to a
sequence of external events
• They form networks with other texts like entries of
other blogs, web pages, social media sites, stories in
online newspapers and YouTube videos.
• They are playing an important part in the
management of social networks or in public debates
about important events or political issues.

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Activity
• Because of their short history and their multiple
purposes, their conventions and constraints are
difficult to pin down.
• Even the distinction between filter-type blogs and
diary type blogs is not hard and fast; many blog
entries combine features of both types.
• The advantage of analyzing blogs is that they give us
an opportunity to observe a newly emerging and
dynamic genre which has the potential to fulfill
many different kinds of communicative purposes for
different kinds of discourse communities.

• In order to understand something about this variety,

go to any blog directory and compare entries from
blogs from two different categories.
http://www.blogsearchengine.org/
• Categories include business, sports, politics, autos,
technology, living, green and science, etc.
• Use the following questions to guide your analysis:
What are the discourse communities these blogs
serve? How do you know?
In what ways do they fulfill Swales’s defining
characteristics of a discourse community (see D3)
and in what ways do they deviate from these
defining characteristics?

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How do the blogs you have chosen contribute to

defining and maintaining these discourse
communities?
What are the communicative purposes of these
blogs? How do they differ?
How are the move structures of the two entries
that you have chosen similar or different?
Do they resemble diary‐type blog entries or filter‐
type blog entries, or do they constitute a different
type altogether?
How do the moves and the ways they are
structured contribute to the realization of the
overall communicative purposes of the two entries?

 How do the moves and the ways they are

structured contribute to the realization of the
overall communicative purposes of the two entries
How are the blog entries that you have chosen
linked to other texts or genres in either genre
chains or genre networks?
How are they situated within larger textual
ecologies?
What other genres do they resemble?

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