Genre: Language, Context, and Literacy (original) (raw)
Related papers
A Review of Genre Approaches within Linguistic Traditions
Language for Specific Purposes International Journal, 2015
This paper reviews three major approaches to genre analysis; Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS), English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Based on the review, it is noted that RGS is an approach which regards genre as a form of social action involving analysis of genre through detailed accounts of the social and cultural contexts with an emphasis on how a genre fulfills its social purpose and actions. On the other hand, ESP is an approach which views genre as a communicative event characterised by their communicative purposes as well as rhetorical features where the discourse community acts as those which recognises and sanctions the acceptance of a genre. The final genre approach, which is SFL, perceives genre as the cultural purpose of texts, achieved through a genre’s structural and realisational patterns where meanings are made within the genre. Overall, the ESP and SFL approaches share fundamental view that linguistic features of texts are connected to social context and function. Thus both of the approaches take on a linguistic approach in describing genres. RGS, in contrast, investigates genres through the study of society in which genre is being used thus taking an ethnographic approach to analysis of genres. This paper concludes with a discussion on the concept of genre presented in the various approaches and the possible emergence of other approaches in the study of genre.
Genre in Language, Discourse and Cognition: Introduction to the volume
Genre in Language, Discourse and Cognition, 2016
The notion of 'genre' designates a conventional way of performing communicative activities using language. Examples of genres include novels, poems, songs, films, news broadcasts, news features, speeches, debates, meetings, classes, conversations, chat, email, web pages, and so on. All of these are text-based activities that people engage in for a wide variety of reasons and in a broad variety of manners. However, this variation is both enabled and restricted by concerted action a constant structure involving language, discourse, and cognition. This is captured by the notion of 'genre', which is a well-established concept in communication science, discourse studies, stylistics and applied linguistics. Genre has also proven to be a useful concept in the area of language pedagogy and other educational contexts. The concept has a long tradition in the study of arts and rhetoric, dating back to Antiquity. In view of the omnipresence of 'genre' across research domains, it is surprising that we hardly know how genre operates from linguistic, discoursal and cognitive points of view. This may be due to the fact that genre is a complex and multifaceted concept, comprising linguistic, pragmatic, and content-related knowledge with psychological, social and communicative aspects, and thus crosses traditional theoretical borders in linguistics and beyond. Another reason may be that research on genre faces a number of empirical problems, one crucial issue being that assumed models are not always unambiguously reflected in the linguistic form of 'real life' genre texts and events. This volume intends to explore how recent insights regarding the relation between language, discourse and cognition may contribute to solving a number of long-standing empirical and theoretical problems surrounding the concept of 'genre'. Examples of such questions are the degree to which genre is anchored in language use, the role of genre in discourse processing, the relationship between the concept of genre and schematic knowledge, etcetera. A second, and closely related goal is to advance our ideas about how to conceptualize and theorize about the role of genre in the study of language, discourse and cognition.
The Qualitative Report, 2024
This article discusses Conducting Genre-Based Research in Applied Linguistics: A Methodological Guide, edited by Matt Kessler and Charlene Polio, that addresses the theory-practice gap in genre-based pedagogy. The book emphasizes the importance of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and its integration into the teaching and learning cycle to improve students' understanding and production of different genres. Theoretical foundations of Halliday's SFL are discussed alongside practical methods such as case studies, ethnography and metadiscourse analysis. The volume offers a comprehensive framework for researchers and educators and describes tools and approaches for analyzing multimodal texts, understanding multilingual competence, and applying genre knowledge in diverse contexts. The strengths of the book lie in its interdisciplinary perspectives, clear methodological guidelines, and practical applications, making it a valuable resource for scholars and educators seeking to bridge the gap between language theory and teaching practice.
Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 2015
Drawing on bibliometric methods (citation analysis and content analysis) and literature review, this paper offers some critical reflections of how genre analysis has been used, applied, expanded and refined to address the challenges of a culturally and linguistically diverse academic and research community. The first reflection opens with a brief review of the privileged status of English as the international language of academic and research communication to discuss contrasting scholarly positions that regard 'Englishization' as either 'help' or 'hindrance'. The second reflection focuses on rhetorical move analysis, an aspect of genre theory that to date has been little considered outside ESP/EAP traditions of genre analysis. It discusses how move analysis, in cross-fertilization with various theoretical/analytical frameworks, can add to our understanding of the way L2 academic English writers accomplish meso-and micro-rhetorical manoeuvres. The final reflection touches upon the impact of internationalization and research assessment policies on the current knowledge exchange, dissemination and publication practices to emphasize the value of the Swalesian task-based approach and advocate a multiliterate rhetorical consciousness-raising pedagogy. The paper concludes with some suggestions for future genre research and proposes ways of articulating cogent language instructional intervention to empower members of bi-/multiliterate academic and research communities professionally.