CHAPTER 4

DISCOURSE AND GENRE

4.1 WHAT IS A GENRE?
(p.62-63)
- Ways in which people get things done through their use of spoken and
written discourse.
E.g. letters to the editor, news reports, business reports, speeches, lectures,
academic essays, conference posters, …
- Characteristics of genres:
 Spoken or written
 Have a common function and purpose
 Typically performed by a particular person aimed at a particular audience
 Occur in certain contexts
 May change or evolve with time
(p64)
- Genre: a ‘staged, goal-oriented, purposeful activity in which speakers
engage as members of our culture’.
- Genre is a kind of ‘social agreement’ about ways of doing things with
language in particular settings.
 Typification: typical forms, typical content, typical action that the
genre performs.
- Genres may vary in terms of their typicality.
- A text may be a typical example of a genre, or a less typical one, but still
be an example of the particular genre.
(p.66)
Choice and constraint in genres
- In a genre, there are both choices and constraints, regularity and chaos.
- Genre are dynamic and open to change, but it is not the case of
‘anything goes’.
 conformity among genre users
 ‘Genres provide an expected way of acting’
“Practising a genre is almost like playing a game, with its own rules and
conventions (…) it’s more like acquiring the rules of the game in order to
be able to exploit and manipulate them to fulfill (…) purposes.”
(p.66) Assigning a text to a genre category:
 Author/ speaker
 Intended audience
 Purpose
 Situation
 Physical form/ title
 Discourse structure
 Content
 Level of formality, style or register
- Not necessarily involve an exact match in terms of characteristics or
properties
 ‘sufficient similarity’ to have a relationship with other examples of
the genre.
4.2 RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN GENRES
(P.68)
- The use of one genre may assume or depend on the use of a number of
other interrelated genres.
 genre network or genre chain
E.g. job interviews
Job advertisement  position description  letter of application 
resumé  job interview  offer of appointment  negotiation of offer
4.6 STEPS IN GENRE ANALYSIS
(P.77-78)
- Collect samples of the genre (a few randomly chosen texts for
exploratory investigation, a single typical text for detailed nalysis)
- What is already known about the genre (knowledge of the settings or
conventions/ expectations that are typically associated with the genre 
existing literature, research articles or books)
- Refine the analysis: the participants and their relationship, the purpose.
- Typical discourse patterns: generic structure, layout and format, typical
linguistic features
- Background knowledge, values, beliefs, assumptions assumed or
revealed by the genre
 4 . 7 T H E S O C I A L A N D C U LT U R A L C O N T E X T O F G E N R E S
- THE SETTING OF THE TEXT
- THE FOCUS AND PERSPECTIVE OF THE TEXT
- THE PURPOSE(S) OF THE TEXT
- T H E I N T E N D E D A U D I E N C E F O R T H E T E X T, T H E I R R O L E A N D P U R P O S E I N R E A D I N G T H E T E X T
- T H E R E L AT I O N S H I P B E T W E E N W R I T E R S A N D R E A D E R S O F T H E T E X T
- E X P E C TAT I O N , C O N V E N T I O N S A N D R E Q U I R E M E N T S F O R T H E T E X T
- B A C K G R O U N D K N O W L E D G E , VA L U E S U N D E R S TA N D I N G S T H E W R I T E R S H A R E S W I T H T H E I R R E A D E R S ( E . G W H AT I S I M P O R TA N T T O T H E R E A D E R A N D W H AT I S N O T )
- T H E R E L AT I O N S H I P T H E T E X T H A S W I T H O T H E R T E X T S
- > H AV E A N I M PA C T O N W H AT A W I T E R W R I T E S A N D T H E WAY T H E Y W R I T E I T

4.8 THE DISCOURSE STRUCTURE OF GENRES

- THE
1. Recount: to tell what happened, to record events for the purpose of informing.
- Orientation
- Events
- Reorientation
- Coda
2. Narrative: to entertain and engage the reader in an imaginary experience, to
tell a fictional story.
 Orientation
 Complication
 Sequence of events
 Crisis (climax)
 Resolution
 (Comment)
 Coda
3. Anecdote: an account of a particular incident or event esp. of an
unusual, interesting or amusing nature.
 Abstract
 Crisis
 Reaction
 Coda
4. Instruction/ Procedure: to tell somebody how to do or make sth
through a sequence of steps or actions.
- Goal
- Materials
- Steps
5. Explanation: to explain how sth works, to give reasons for some
phenomenon
 Phenomenon
 Explanation
6. Report: to provide information about natural and non-natural phenomena –
to classify and describe a whole class of things.
 Title
 General statement / general classification
 Description
7. Description: to describe a particular person, place or thing
 Identification
 Description
8. Argument: to take a position on some issue, to justify, to persuade.
 Thesis statement/ position
 Arguments
 Restatement of position/ summing up/ recommendation
9. Discussion: to present information about more than 1 point of
view
 Statement
 Arguments for
 Argument against
 Option/ recommendation
(summarized in Paltridge, B. (2002). Making sense of Discourse
analysis, pp. 109-111)
 CHAPTER 6
DISCOURSE GRAMMAR
6.1 GRAMMAR FROM A
DISCOURSE PERSPECTIVE
(p.114)
- Discourse-based grammar makes a strong connection between form,
function and context.
- Aims to place appropriateness and use at the centre of its descriptions.
- Acknowledges language choice.
- Promotes awareness of interpersonal factors in grammatical choice.
 6.2 THE TEXTURE OF A
TEXT
(p.114)
2 crucial attributes of texts: unity of structure - unity of texture.
- Unity of structure: patterns which combine together to create
information structure, focus and flow in a text
- Unity of texture: resources that make a text both cohesive and coherent
 language items that tie meanings together in the text as well as the
meanings in the text to the social context.
 a semantic relationship which connects the meanings of words to each
other as well as to the world outside the text.
6.3 COHESION AND
DISCOURSE
(p.115)
Cohesion refers to the relationship between items in a
text:
- Reference
- Collocation
- Lexical cohesion
- Conjunctions (clausal relationship)
- Substitution
- Ellipsis
 Unity of texture
 6.4 REFERENCE
- The identity of an item can be retrieved from within the text or outside the
text.
- Anaphoric reference: referring BACKWARD
gthieu item truoc, roi dung “it” de refer toi doi tuong
- Cataphoric reference: referring FORWARD
sd referecence word, for e.g: i wanna say this to you. Sau do explain “this”
la gi
- Exophoric reference: reference to SITUATIONAL items
hieu dua tren tinh huong, that’s him so who’s “him”
- Homophoric reference: reference to CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE
sth we can take it for granted, ai cung hieu
- Comparative reference: reference to COMPARED items
so sanh, for e.g. the opposite to,... vay minh phai xem no la gi de opposite
 6.5 LEXICAL COHESION
The relationships in meanings among lexical items in a text.
Repetition : make emphasis by keep mentioning words, phrases,..

Synonymy : same meaning

Antonymy : opposite meaning

Hyponymy: relationship general and specific

Meronymy: whole and part

Collocation: words what usually go together as fixed phrase

2 kinds of lexical taxonomies: SUPERORDINATION and COMPOSITION
- Superordination: ‘a kind of’ relationship
- Composition: a ‘whole-part’ relationship
HYPONYMY and MERONYMY
- Hyponymy: general – specific, ‘an example of’, a ‘class to member’
relationship
- Meronymy: a ‘whole to part’ relationship
These taxonomies can be very complicated, with many layers of organization
built into them, and sometimes require specialized knowledge.
6.5 LEXICAL COHESION
• Associations between vocabulary items that tend to co-occur
• Expectancy relations
E.g. to link nominal elements and verbal elements
to link an action with a participant
to link an event with its location
individual lexical items and their composite nominal group
• Lexical bundles:
• 3 or more words appearing in fixed combinations, repeated without
change for a set number of times in a particular corpus.
•
 6.7 CONJUNCTIONS
To join phrases, clauses or sections of a text to express the ‘logical-
semantic relationship between them.
• Additive
• Comparative
• Temporal
• Consequential
 6.8 SUBSTITUTION &
ELLIPSIS
Substitution: when a substitute form is used to replace a noun (phrase), verb
(phrase) or a clause.

e.g.: A: Has he had dinner yet?, B: he must have done,....

Ellipsis: when an item is omitted from the text and can be recovered by referring to a
preceding element in the text.

e.g.

Differences between reference and substitution

- Distant or immediate linguistic context
 6.10 THEME AND
RHEME
THE CONTRIBUTION TO THE FOCUS AND FLOW OF INFORMATION
• THEME: THE STARTING POINT OF A CLAUSE (WHAT THE CLAUSE IS ABOUT)
• RHEME: THE REST OF THE CLAUSE (WHAT THE CLAUSE HAS TO SAY ABOUT
THE THEME)
DIFFERENT KINDS OF THEME.
• TOPICAL THEME: EXPERIENTIAL MEANING (USUALLY SUBJECT, ADVERBIAL TERMS)
• TEXTUAL THEME: STRUCTURAL ELEMENT TO CONNECT THE MESSAGE TO THE
PREVIOUS TEXT (BUT, THEREFORE, BECAUSE,..)
• INTERPERSONAL THEME: INDICATING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PARTICIPANTS,
THE POSITION OR POINT OF VIEW TAKEN (OF COURSE, WILL)
6.11 THEMATIC
PROGRESSION
- The way in which the theme of a clause may pick up, or
repeat, a meaning from a preceding theme or rheme
 create information flow
Constant theme pattern Multiple theme/ split rheme pattern
T1 R1
T1 R2
T1 R3
Zigzag/ Linear pattern
T1 R1
T2 R2
T3 R3