Textual Genres

Outline:
1) Genres as linguistic behaviour
2) Three schools in genre analysis: main issues and
legacy
3) ideology, and interactive rhetorical resources in
academic genres
4) Focus on Introductions and Abstracts
Genre analysis as a derivation of Textual
and Discourse Analysis

Linguistics as a whole has tended to find genre

indigestible […] genre is a recent appendage found to
be necessary as a result of important studies of text
structure.
Swales (1990, p. 41)
 Customer: What kind of book would you say this is? Where would you put it on your
bookshelves?
Sales assistant: Well .. I suppose you’d call it a biography because it’s got some of her
earlier life in it. It’s not a memoir ... I don’t know ... It’s not very interesting. She got
someone else to help her write it. It should have been in the first person, I only read
about half of it ... I don’t know ... Maybe it’s an expose …

Assigning a text to a genre category

Research in cognitive psychology has established that
efficient comprehension of a text is dependent on the
reader’s ability to relate its skeletal design to a familiar
stereotypical pattern called a schema

Formal schemata (Carrell, 1983) constitute knowledge

about text types and are indispensable to
understanding, enabling the reader to correctly identify
and organize information by locating it in a
conventional frame.

Cognitive aspects
Exemplars of a genre exhibit various patterns of similarity in
terms of structure, style, content and intended audience (Swales
1980: 58).

Prototypicality: If all high probability expectations (that is, more

or less not either/or) are realized, the exemplar will be viewed
as prototypical by the discourse community. (Swales, 1990: 58).

THEY ARE RESOURCES FOR MEANING, NOT SYSTEMS

OF RULES

Defining a genre category

A bit of History
Three main schools:
• Systemic Functional Linguistics, also known as the
Sydney School (see, M.A.K Halliday, J. Martin,
etc)
• North American New Rhetoric studies (Caroline
Miller (1984/1994) and Berkenkotter and Huckin
(1995)
• English for Specific Purposes (ESP): (Swales,
Hyland, Paltridge Bhatia (1993).
Sydney School

Genres
A staged,aregoal-oriented,
how things get done,activity
social when language is used toengage as
in which speakers
accomplish
members of them. They range
our culture (John from literary
R. Martin, to far
1984: from literary
25)
forms: poems, narratives, expositions, lectures, seminars, recipes,
manuals, appointment
Social because making,inservice
we participate genresencounters, news
with other people.
broadcasts
Goal-orientedandbecause
so on. The
we term genre to
use genres is used here to
get things embrace each
done.
of the linguistically
Staged realized
because it usually activity
takes types
us a few which
steps comprise
to reach so
our goals.
much
(2007,ofp.our
8) culture (Martin, 1985: 250).
Draws upon the work of anthropologist Malinowski:

M.A.K. Halliday had connected:

context of culture range of potential texts that are open
to language users for the creation of texts
context of situation with actual texts

J.R. Martin goes further to connect:

Genre context of culture;

Register context of situation.

Genres are culture specific and meaning has to be interpreted

according to cultural and social context. We can assign a text to a
genre based on the discourse structure.
• North American New Rhetoric studies or Rhetorical Genre
Studies
• Genres as social action (Miller, 1984/1994)
• A genre is defined not in terms “of the substance or the form
of discourse but on the action it is used to accomplish.”
(1984, p. 151).
• This action is recognized by other people and the genre is
accepted, over time, as a way of doing something.
• Genre is thus a kind of social agreement about ways of
doing things in particular social and cultural settings.

Miller, Carolyn R. “Genre as Social Action.” Quarterly Journal

of Speech 70 2 (1984): 151-67. 
Genres are part of social processes by which knowledge about reality and the world are
made. Meanings we want to say (social cognition…)….
They respond and contribute to the constitution of social contexts and the socialization of
individuals.
They are socially constructive.

They have causal effects (prolonged viewing of sexist advertisings, etc)

“Genres serves as keys to understanding how to participate in the actions of a community”

and the failure to understand genre as social action turns a practical art of achieving social
ends into an act of making texts that fit formal requirements. (Miller 1984, p. 165).

Multimodality
Ep 3 multimodality
https://youtu.be/xPIu4BYXpb0

(Miller and Bazerman 2011, youtube clips)

English for Specific Purposes (ESP):

Communicative purpose is what guides use in assigning

a text to a genre (1981)

“A genre comprises a class of communicative events,

the members of which share some set of communicative
purposes. These purposes are recognized by the expert
members of the discourse community, and thereby
constitute the rationale (i.e. social purpose) for the
genre. This (social purpose) shapes the schematic
(discourse) structure of the discourse and influences
and constrains choice of content and style” (Swales
1990: p.58).

Multiple, mutable and crosscultural (2001, 2004)

Swales’ parameters of genre
variation (ESP)
• Complexity of rhetorical purpose
• Prepared or constructed in advance or spontaneous
• Mode or medium
• Public or occluded
• Interactional orientation
• Contract with audience

John M. Swales, Genre Analysis: English in Academic and

Research Settings, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1990.
Constraints and choices

Practicing a genre is almost like playing a game, with its

own rules and conventions.

Established genre participants, both writers and readers,

are like skilled players, who succeed by their
manipulation and exploitation of, rather than a strict
compliance with, the rules of the game

It is not simply a matter of learning the language, or even

learning the rules of the game, it is more like acquiring
the rules of the game in order to be able to exploit and
manipulate them to fulfill professional and disciplinary
purposes (V.J. Bhatia, 1998: 25-26)
• Flowerdew and Peacock (2001): knowledge of the
audience’s attitudes, beliefs and expectations is essential
for writing.

• Similarly, Paltridge (2002, p. 24) argues that focusing on

aspects of genre “beyond the text” into the social and
cultural context which surrounds the genre is very
important in order to fully understand its purpose and use
and the impact on the language choices.

Socially oriented ESP

Genre analysis
Setting of the text
Focus and perspective
Purpose
Audience, role and purpose in reading the text
Relationship between writers and readers
Expectations, conventions and requirements of the text
Background knowledge, values and understandings
Relationship the text has with other texts

Genre and Context

• Discussion
• Choose a genre. Consider what there is beyond the text
that you need to know about in order to fully understand
the texts. For instance, consider the social and cultural
setting of the text, the people involved or the social
expectations and values which underlie the particular
text.
Genres are the forms of action which language takes when
one is speaking or writing.
(Norman Fairclough, Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis
for Social Research, 2003, pp.65-86).

Strong focus on critical view of ideology and effects of

texts on power relations : “ideology is a modality of
power… this view contrasts with ‘descriptive views of
ideology as positions, attitudes, beliefs, perspectives, etc.
of social groups without reference to relations of power
and domination between groups” (p. 9)

Genres and Critical

Discourse Analysis
Discourse as part of the apparatus of governance

Social relations between social agents, power and solidarity, social

hierarchy and distance

Texts are never ideology free or objective

Texts cannot be separated from the social realities and processes they
contribute to maintaining

Dominant ideologies are reproduced, transmitted and potentially

changed in discourse

Discourse and ideology

 • Languages
Social • A set of possibilities (nouns, sentences etc)
structures

• Orders of discourse
• «A network of social practices in its language aspect»
• Discourses, genres and styles (control of linguistic variability for
particular areas of social life)
Social • Not purely linguistic, but social organization and control of
practices linguistic variation
• Genre as a particular way of acting

• Texts
• Overdetermination of language by other social
Social
elements
events

Fairclough, p. 24-25
Discussion
Think of a genre and the power relations it
contributes to maintain
A genre may assume or depend on the use of a number of
other genres (Tardy 2003, Devitt 2004, Swales 2004)

Relationship with other

genres
 Letter
Job Position Offer of
of Job Negotiatio
advertis descript Resumè appointm
applica interview n of offer
ement ion ent
tion

Genre chain
G
e
n
r
e • Academic genres

n
e
t
w
o
r
k Swales and Feak 2011
Discussion

Consider a field you would like to work in and elaborate a

Genre Chain or Network
Discourse structure
The CARS (Create a research space) Model by Feak and Swales (2011)

Introductions
• Move 1 Establishing a territory
• Step 1Claiming centrality (and/or)
• Step 2 Making topic generalization(s)
• Step 3 Reviewing items of previous research efforts
• Move 2 Establishing a niche
• Step 1 Counter-claiming (or) Weakening
• Step 2 Indicating a gap (or) knowledge
• Step3 Question-raising (or) claims
• Step4 Continuing a tradition
• Move 3 Occupying the niche
• Step 1 Outlining purposes (or)
• Step 2 Announcing present research
• Step 3 Announcing principal findings
• Step 4 Indicating R structure
Abstracts
According to Huckin (2001), JA abstracts have at least four
distinguishable functions:

1.They function as stand-alone mini-texts, giving readers a short

summary of a study’s topic, methodology and main findings;
2. They function as screening devices, helping readers decide whether
they wish to read the whole article or not;
3. They function as previews for readers intending to read the whole
article, giving them a road-map for their reading;
4. They provide indexing help for professional abstract writers and
editors. In addition, there are suggestions, at least in the medical
literature, (e.g. Bordage & McGaghie (2001)
5. They provide reviewers with an immediate oversight of the paper
they have been asked to review.
>Move Typical label Questions
Move 1 Background/ what do we know about the
introduction/situation topic?

Move 2 Present research/purpose what is this study about?

Typical labels Implied questions

Move 3 Methods/materials/subjects/ how was it done?
procedures

Move 4 Results/findings what was discovered?

Move 5 Discussion/conclusion/ what do the findings

significance mean?
Activity 2
• Summary
Genres may be spoken or written in
typical, and sometimes conventional, ways

Genres often have a common function and

purpose (or set of functions and purposes)

There may be certain contexts in which a

genre typically occurs
A text may be a mix of different genres

Genres change through time

We draw on our previous experiences

with a genre to produce, understand and
interpret new examples of a genre

Genre is not always a clear-cut category

Genres are activities that people engage in
through the use of language

Letters to the editor and academic essays

are examples of written genres

Academic lectures and casual

conversations are examples of spoken
genres