english genre

English Genre

• What is Genre?

• What is Genre Analysis?

• Approaches (schools) to Genre analysis

• Move structure analysis

• GSP

What is Genre?

• The word genre comes from the French (and originally Latin) word for 'kind' or 'class'.

• The term is widely used in rhetoric, literary theory, media theory, and more recently linguistics, to refer to a distinctive type of text.

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/intgenre/intgenre1.html#*

• Genre, which has traditionally been a literary concept, has recently become a popular framework for analyzing the form and rhetorical function of non-literary discourse, the research has firstly focused on academic genres, such as Swales’s (1990) description of the RA research articles introduction, and then Bhatia expand the genre analysis to the professional sittings, serving as a tool for developing ESP.

• The concept of genre is considered vague, for it takes on diverse meanings in different contexts.

• Most dictionaries apply the term genre exclusively to the fields of art, music and literature. The 2001 New American Oxford Dictionary defines it as:

• a category of artistic composition, as in music and literature, characterized by similarities in form, style or subject matter (Jewell & Abate 2001: 707).

• Martin points out, that speakers use language to accomplish culturally goal-orientated tasks and in so doing are obliged to use genres. Thus when shopping, a shopper converses with a sales person in a particular genre to achieve his/her purchase

Bakhitin’s definition

• Different scholars have different views of the definition of genre. For example, Bakhitin (1999:121) relates genre to human activity:

• All the diverse areas of human activity involve the use of language. Quite understandably, the nature and forms of this use are just as diverse as the areas of human activity.

• This, of course, in no way disarms the national unity of language. Language is realized in the form of individual concrete utterances (oral and written) by participants in the various areas of human activity.

• These utterances reflect the specific conditions and goals of each such area not only through their content (thematic) and linguistic style, that is, the selection of the lexical, phraseological, and grammatical resources of the language, but above all through their compositional structure.

• All three of these aspects － thematic content, style, and compositional structure--are inseparably linked to the whole of the utterance and are equally determined by the specific nature of the particular sphere of communication.

• Each separate utterance is individual, of course, but each sphere in which language is used develops its own relatively stable types of these utterances. These we may call speech genres.

Kress’ definition

• Kress (1994:19) [7] associates it with social occasions. In his words, “Genre has specific forms and meanings, deriving from and encoding the functions, purposes and meanings of the social occasions. Genre therefore provides a precise index and catalogue of the relevant social occasions of a community at a given time.”

James R. Martin’s definition

• Martin (1993) develops an alternative but ultimately complementary theory of genre by taking genre as a further abstract level than register.

• He offers two useful definitions, one of which defines genre as a staged, goal oriented, and social activity in which speakers engage as members of a culture.

• The other less technical definition is that “Genres are how things get done, when language is used to accomplish them”.

• A genre is a staged, goal oriented, purposeful activity, in which speakers engage as members of our culture.... Virtually everything you do involves you participating in one or other genre. Culture seen in these terms can be defined as a set of generically interpretable activities (Martin 1985: 25).

Characteristics of genre (Swales, 2001:45)

• 1. A genre is a class of communicative events.• 2. The principal criteria feature that turns a

collection of communicative events into a genre is some shared set of communicative purposes.

• 3. Exemplars of genres vary in their prototypicality.

• 4. The rationale behind a genre establishes constraints on allowable contributions in terms of their content, positioning and form.

• 5. A discourse community’s nomenclature for genres is an important source of insight.

Swales’ definition of genre (1990)

• 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 parent discourse community, and thereby constitute the rationale for the genre.

• This rationale shapes the schematic structure of the discourse and influences and constraints choice of content and style.

• Swales defines genre as a social or communicative event.

• But whereas Martin talks about inevitably participating in a genre as part of any goal oriented communication, Swales claims there has to be a relationship between the purpose accomplished by the genre and the schematic structure of the genre, the text and language employed, as follows:

• Communicative purpose is both a privileged criterion and one that operates to keep the scope of a genre as here conceived narrowly focused on comparable rhetorical action.

• In addition to purpose, exemplars of a genre exhibit various patterns of similarity in terms of structure, style, content and intended audience.

• If all high expectations are realized, the exemplar will be viewed as prototypical by the parent discourse community. (Swales:1990)

• The communicative purpose is the criterion that defines a genre. Discourse communities share conventional public aims and communication mechanisms, and make use of one or more genres to communicate within or between discourse communities.

• To be part of a discourse community one needs to know how and when to apply the conventions of each genre.

• In this sense, the features of genre can be summarized as communicative, goal-directed, highly structured, professional- or academic - oriented.

• The underlying premise of this approach is that any linguistic act is a social or communicative event in that it occurs at a particular time in a particular place and between particular people for a particular purpose.

• Everyone engages in these events. • If, for example, you go shopping for shoes, you will

expect the interaction to be fairly consistent with your past experiences of shopping for shoes. You will expect some kind of acknowledgement or greeting, to have your questions answered about availability of your size and preferred color, to be told the price, and finally to be thanked for your business.

• Not all of these may occur (you may find the perfect size and color immediately and not need to ask any questions), and they may not occur in this order.

• If, however, you go shopping for a car, you would expect this service encounter to be somewhat more complex, involving explanations of features and add-ons, as well as financing options.

• In the shoe-shopping example above, your expectations are determined by your wanting to procure shoes (purpose) in the year 2003 AD (rather than in the years 1500 BC, 1945 AD, or 3000 AD), in Sydney (rather than Moscow, Bali, or Tehran), in a shop with a shop assistant (rather than a supermarket with a checkout, for example).

• If you change any of these conditions, the interaction between you and the person from whom you wish to procure the shoes would change--the text produced would be different.

• This is similar for written texts: love letters to your life partner, advertisements for local plumbers, posted lists of rules for the use of the gym, essays, newspaper editorials, obituaries, and doctoral theses.

• Each of these examples is written at a time, in a place, for a purpose, by one or more writers for a defined reader.

Conclusion of Swales’ Definiftion

• Swales’ approach to genre is basically functional, and genres are envisaged as social or communicative events.

• Furthermore, the relationship between the purpose accomplished by a genre and the structure of the genre is such that “the communicative purpose of a genre shapes the genre and provides it with an internal structure － a schematic structure”(Swales 2001:197)

• This definition of genre tries to establish a relationship between the purpose accomplished by a genre and the structure of the genre by suggesting that the communicative purpose of a genre shapes the genre.

Bhatia’s definition

• Dr. V. K. Bhatia’s (1993: 13-15) successful genre analysis of English promotional literature represents an extension of Swales’ framework from academic writing to business writing. He elaborates on Swales’ definition in the following aspects:


• Firstly, a genre has a set of communicative purpose(s). Although there are a number of other factors, like content, medium or channel, intended audience and so on, that influence the nature and construction of a genre, it is primarily characterized by the communicative purposes that it is intended to fulfill (1993).


• Secondly, a genre is a highly structured and conventionalized communicative event. Specialist members of any professional or academic community are generally credited with the knowledge of not only the communicative goals of their community but also the structure of the genres in which they regularly participate as part of their daily work.


• It is the cumulative result of their long experience and/or training within the specialist community that shapes the genre and gives it a conventionalized internal structure. Any major change in the communicative purposes is likely to give a different genre; however, minor changes of modifications help distinguish sub-genres (1993).


• Thirdly, a genre displays constraints on allowable contributions of the participants. This means that although the writer has a lot of freedom to use linguistic resources in any way he or she likes, s/he must conform to certain standard practices within the boundaries of a particular genre.


• A genre is a recognizable communicative event characterized by a set of communicative purpose(s) identified and mutually understood by the members of the professional or academic community in which it regularly occurs. Most often it is highly structured and conventionalized with constraints on allowable contributions in terms of their intent, positioning, form, and functional value. These constraints, however, are often exploited by the expert members of the community to achieve private intentions within the framework of socially recognized purpose(s)


• Bboth Swales and Bhatia identifies the relationship between the communicative purpose and genre.

• However, Bhatia’s definition of genre differs from Swales’ in that it brings in the psychological, particularly cognitive level of genre construction.

What is Genre Analysis?

• Genre analysis is a developing multi-disciplinary approach to the study of texts, both verbal and written, drawing from studies in Linguistics, Anthropology, Sociology and Psychology.

• Genre analysts look for the common patterns of grammar usage, key vocabulary, and text structure in particular text types.

Three schools

• There are three schools of genre analysis:

• New rhetoric schools (North American School)

• Australian systems school (Functional Systemicists method)

• Swalesian school (ESP school)

Genre Analysis in New rhetoric schools

• Carolyn Miller is the main exponent of the New Rhetoric School that is also known as the North American School.

• In her 1984 seminal article entitled “Genre as Social Action”, she rejects the notion of genre as a recurrent pattern of forms used for simple classifications, something easily leading to reductionism and formalism.

• For her, the notion of genre is essentially a means of the situation and the motives, the intention and the effect (Miller, 1984).

Genre Analysis in New rhetoric schools

• The New Rhetoric view towards genre gives less emphasis to the form of discourse and more to the action it is used to accomplish.

• In line with their theoretical focus on socio contextual aspects of genres, New Rhetoric scholars stress more on “helping university students and novice professionals understand the social functions or actions of genre…”(Hyon, 1996:698).

Genre Analysis in Australian School

• Martin and his colleagues have developed what is termed the Functional Systemicists method (or Australian School).

• Main researchers: Martin’s schematic structure, Hasan’s GSP and Ventola, Kress--social semiotics model, Freadman’s template

• For more, see 李美霞 . 西方语言学界话语类型研究述评 [J]. 外语教学 , 2004/01

• The Australian school draws upon systemic functional linguistic (SFL) theory, in which the forms of language and functions are always considered together.

• Its appeal and success lies in the fact that SFL provides “a theoretically consistent, classroom-test and, by now, well-documented set of tools by which researchers and educators can exploit the social and linguistic construction of texts for the benefit of students” (Bronson, 2001).

• The Functional Systemicists system derives from the work of Michael A. Halliday.

• Halliday contends that language: • (a) is functional (i.e. it builds meaning); • (b) is involved in the processes by which human

beings construct social experience; and • (c) accomplishes its tasks in the context of the

situation which gives rise to a communicative activity -- i.e. in a social exchange or interaction between speakers.

• In his view, the context of a situation consists of its field (subject matter), its tenor (the relationship between participants), and its mode (oral or written). These denote the social context of a text in its environment.

• SFL, which was influenced by British anthropology and linguists(e.g., Malionowski, Firth) and developed by Halliday, seeks to establish a pragmatic relationship between text and context by viewing language in a social semiotic way as a resource people use to accomplish their purposes while at the same time they express meanings in context.

• His Australian student, Martin and his colleagues as well as other educational linguists have developed genre theory within the framework of SFL and worked out the SF model for genre analysis.

• Martin’s definition for the notion of genre has provided the basis for the work of Australian School. For Martin, a genre is “a staged, goal-oriented, purposeful activity in which speakers engaged as members of our culture”.

• Within this systemic functional framework, genres are actually approached from three different levels.

• Genres are defined as staged because it usually takes more than one step for participants to achieve their goal and this level actually is related to the perspective of textual metafunction.

• Genres are referred to as goal-oriented because they have evolved to get things done, which can be dealt with from the perspective of ideational metafunction. Genres are referred to social processes because these processes involved the interaction of participants using language, which can be approached from the perspective of interpersonal metafunction.

• Based on this thinking, the Functional Systemicists model (which is designed specifically for secondary school students in Australia) divides genres into two main categories, story genres and factual genres.

story genres

• Story genres comprise recount and narrative genres. Recounts are personal. They typically comprise an activity sequence, most frequently in chronological order, and use the past tense. Typical examples are: a diary, a medical history, or a resume.

• Narratives may resemble recounts, but are generally less likely to follow a sequential format. They have different communicative goals, and to achieve these, may wish to highlight certain events or actions and to omit others, with the aim of making their story interesting.

• They use both the first and third person and a variety of tenses. Examples could be: a witness account of an accident, or a description of a vacation trip

factual genres

• Factual genres comprise Reports and Expositions/Discussions.

• Reports store factual information, as in a scientific report, or an encyclopedia

• Expositions/Discussions provide explanations. They may involve causes and effects, and/or judgments of social issues that call for justification.

Expositions/Discussions

• They fall into two categories, analytical and hortatory. 劝告的

• Examples of analytical expositions are: how-to pamphlets, or trouble-shooting manuals. 排故手册

• Examples of hortatory expositions are: political pamphlets, government ‘white papers’, and newspaper editorials.

Genre Analysis in ESP School

• In ESP school genre has been primarily perceived as “a tool for analyzing and teaching the spoken and written language required of nonnative speakers in academic and professional settings”

• Genre research in ESP can be broadly divided into two phases.

• Firstly, earlier work based on analysing the moves and steps involved in discourse - structural move analysis - and,

• secondly, later work which has broadened the definition of genre analysis to look at how extra-linguistic features and more recently intercultural aspects, have affected both the form and sequencing of language.

• Swales’s work in 1981 and later in 1990 presents a detailed theoretical framework for genre analysis and contribute a great deal in shaping genre theory in ESP.

• He defines genre as social or communicative events on the basis of functional criteria, i.e., the communicative purposes.

• Scholars in this Swalesian tradition (e.g., Swales 1990, Dudley-Evans 1987, and Bhatia 1993) have tended to “focus pedagogically on the tertiary level and beyond, on their mission to enable students to produce the genres required in their academic or professional study”.

• Many of them particularly emphasize the descriptions of genre structures and grammatical features. Such preoccupation with the formal properties of specialized texts rather than programmatic teaching models and materials is regarded as Swalesian ESP tradition’s deficiency.

• The emphasis of ESP/EAP method is more on their internal structure.

• It analyses a text by discerning its internal ‘Moves’ (the topics by which it advances its argument), and within each ‘Move’ the ‘steps’ or stages by which the argument of each topic is developed.

Difference of the Three Schools

• The following table sums up differences of the three schools more clearly, though as swales (1990) believes, that since genre analysis for ESP draws form both other areas as parts of its explicit mission, these distinctions are heuristic rather than definitive.

Difference of the Three SchoolsDifference Australian school New rhetoric school Swalesian ESP school

Educational contexts

Mother-tongue education; primary and secondary schools

Mother-tongue education; advanced (post-) graduate level

Non-native speakers in university

Intellectual

Roots

from Martin’s connotative semantics, based on Hallidayan model of context and other work in SF linguistics

(1) post-structuralist Social and literary theories of Bakhtin, Foucault (2) developmental psychology of Vygotsky and Bourdieu

informed by the Hallidayan linguistic tradition but favors a more top-down ethnographic methodology and synthesis of diverse models of learning and discourse

Relations drawn between language & social functions

Explicitly hooks up grammar and lexicon as well discourse structure to social function

Focuses on the social purposes end of the spectrum

Brings more focuses to moves in discourse structure

Difference of the Three Schools

• In contrast to ESP and Australian school, New Rhetoric has generally lacked explicit instructional frameworks for teaching students about the language features and functions of academic and professional genre.

• 西方语言学界话语类型研究述评

• 李美霞• 外语教

学• 2004/01

• Genre analysis in ESP began with Swales’ pioneering work (1981 & 1990) on the introduction to an academic article.

• Swales notes that there is a regular pattern of “moves” and “steps” that appear in a certain order in the majority of introductions investigated.

• Move refers to a text segment with a specific rhetorical value. The combination of several of these moves creates a genre which, in turn, belongs to and defines a discourse community.

• A “move” is a unit that relates both to the writer’s purpose and to the content that s/he wishes to communicate.

• A “step” is a lower level text unit than the move that provides a detailed perspective on the options open to the writer in setting out the moves in the introduction.

• For example, “describing data collection procedure” is one of the moves that, together with others, defines the genre of the research article which belongs to all scientific discourse communities.

• The term move clearly shows that the construction of a text is an active process in which one tries to comply with the demands and restrictions imposed by a discourse community through several rhetorical steps that define and are recognized by that community.

• Swales’ work led to parallel research into other sections of the research article such as the Results, Discussions of Results and Abstract, e.g. Hopkins and Dudley-Evans (1988) adopted a similar approach to the discussion sections of both articles and dissertations. The fullest description comes from Dudley-Evans(1994) shown below:

• Move 1 Information Move• Move 2 Statement of Result• Move 3 Findings• Move 4 (Un)expected outcome• Move 5 Reference to Previous Research• Move 6 Explanation• Move 7 Claim• Move 8 Limitation• Move 9 Recommendation

• The moves are essentially options to the writer who will build his or her argument through careful choice and ordering of the moves into cycles.

• In the EOP area, Bhatia (1993) has shown that the techniques of genre analysis developed originally for the study of academic text can be applied to business letters and legal documents.

• He looks at two types of business letters which he calls promotional genres--the sales promotion letter and the job application letter--and finds that they use a virtually identical pattern of moves:

Sales Promotion Letter Job Application Letter

Move 1 Establishing Credentials Establishing CredentialsMove 2 Introducing the offer Introducing CandidatureMove 3 Offering Incentives Offering IncentivesMove 4 Enclosing Documents Enclosing Documents Move 5 Soliciting response Using Pressure TacticsMove 6 Using Pressure Tactics Soliciting response Move 7 Ending politely Ending politely

确定任职凭证 -- 提出或陈述候选身份 -- 提出足以激励对方接收申请的凭证 -- 附寄有关文件 -- 采用施压策略 -- 索求回音 -- 礼貌收尾

Bhatia’s Seven -Step Approach to Genre Analysis

• According to Bhatia (1993:22), in order to undertake a comprehensive investigation of any genre, one needs to consider some or all of the following seven steps, depending upon the purpose of the analysis, the aspect of the genre that one intends to focus on, and the background knowledge one already has of the nature of the genre in question.

• 1. Placing the given genre-text in a situational context. One needs to place the genre-text, which is a typical representative example of the genre, intuitively in a situational context by looking at one’s prior experience, the internal clues in the text and the encyclopedic knowledge of the specialist discipline as well as that of the communicative conventions typically associated with it.

• 2. Surveying existing literature. This will include, among other things, literature on: linguistic analyses of the genre / variety in question or other related or similar genres / varieties; tools, methods or theories of linguistic / discourse / genre analysis which might be relevant to the situation; practitioner advice, guide books, manuals etc. relevant to the speech community in question; discussions of the social structure, interactions, history, beliefs, goals etc., of the professional or academic community which uses the genre in question.

• 3. Refining the situational / contextual analysis. Having intuitively placed the text roughly in a situational / contextual framework, one needs to refine such an analysis further by: defining the speaker / writer of the text, the audience, their relationship and their goals; defining the historical, socio-cultural, philosophic and/ or occupational placement of the community in which the discourse takes place; identifying the network of surrounding texts and linguistic traditions that form the background to this particular genre-text; identifying the topic / subject / extra-textual reality which the text is trying to represent, change or use and the relationship of the text to that reality.

• 4. Selecting corpus. In order to select the right kind and size of corpus one needs to: define the genre / sub-genre that one is working with well enough so that it may be distinguishable from other genres either similar or closely related in some ways.

• The definition may be based on the communicative purposes, the situational contexts in which it is generally used, and some distinctive textual characteristics of the genre-text or some combination of these; make sure that one’s criteria for deciding whether a text belongs to a specific genre / variety are clearly stated; decide on one’s criteria for an adequate selection of the corpus for one’s specific purposes – a long single typical text for detailed analysis, a few randomly chosen texts for exploratory investigation, a large statistical sample to investigate a few specified features through easily identified indicators.

• 5. Studying the institutional context. The next step of a good genre analyst is attempting to study the institutional context, including the system and / or methodology, in which the genre is used and the rules and conventions (linguistic, social, cultural, academic, professional) that govern the use of language in such institutional settings.

• These rules and conventions are most often implicitly understood and unconsciously followed by the participants in that communicative situation in which the genre in question is used – or even explicitly enforced in some institutional settings.

• 6. Levels of linguistic analysis. The genre analyst then decides at which levels the most distinctive or significant features of language (for his/her motivating problem) occur, and carries out the appropriate analysis, which may concentrate on one or more of the following three levels of linguistic realization: Level 1 is the analysis of lexico-grammatical features; Level 2 is the analysis of text-patterning or textualization; Level 3 is the structural interpretation of the text-genre.

• 7. Specialist information in genre analysis. Finally the analyst double-checks his findings against reactions from a specialist informant, who, generally, is a practicing member of the disciplinary culture in which the genre is routinely used. The specialist reaction confirms his findings, brings validity to his insights and adds psychological reality to his analysis. It is an important aspect of genre analysis, if one wishes to bring in relevant explanation rather than mere description in one’s analysis.

• Swales uses a three-move model (Swales op cit: 140-141), e.g. ‘move 1: Establishing a territory’, ‘move 2: Establishing a niche’, and ‘move 3: Occupying the niche’. Within each ‘move’ he identifies the component steps as step 1: claiming centrality, step 2: making topic generalization and step 3: reviewing items of previous research’ (Swales op cit: 141). Within this framework he identifies the author’s writing style and the genre conventions he is using, (see Swales op cit: 142-166).

• Dudley-Evans, whose particular concern is MSc dissertations, elaborates on the Swales model somewhat by increasing the number of moves to encompass more detailed descriptions of an article’s general and specific topics and of present and projected research (Holland & Lewis 2000: 84-85). His method is delineated clearly in his ‘Introduction-Evaluation-Conclusion’

• Bhatia too follows an analogous approach. In analyzing business letters, he specifies the following moves: 1. establishing credentials, 2. introducing the offer, 3. offering incentives, 4. referring to enclosed documents, 5. inviting further communication, 6. using pressure tactics, and 7. ending politely.

• The naming and analysis of steps and moves have been done on an intuitive level by the researcher and there is also the further problem of the sequencing of these steps.

Hasan’s GSP Model towards Genre Analysis

• Another approach to genre analysis is Hasan’s GSP model. Before we start, a theoretical framework of GSP theory is introduced first.

• Hasan(1989:58) introduced the concept of Contextual Configuration （ CC ） . It is “an account of the significant attributes of a social activity.” CC contains three variables: field (the topics of the language), tenor (the language users, their relationships, and their purposes.), and mode (the channel through which communication is carried out). Moreover, adopting this approach to text analysis, Hasan (1989:65) also introduce the concept of GSP.

• Definition of GSP • Generic Structure Potential(GSP) of a genre is

“descriptive of the total range of textual structures available within a genre” (Hasan, 1996:30). A formula of GSP should be able to specify the obligatory and optional elements in a genre, as well as their sequence and recursion. “the obligatory elements define the genre to which a text belongs” (Hasan, 1989:57);

• Previous Applications of GSP Formulation• Mitchell (1975:167-200) made one of the earliest

attempts to identify the GSP of a genre(the term GSP was not introduced at that time). He identified the rhetorical structure of the genre of shop transaction in Libya as S^IOS^EOS^B^C. Applying Hasan’s GSP approach, Ghadessy(1993:149-164) fomulated the GSP of Business Letter. Paltridge(1993:175-192) investigated the rhetorical structure of the introduction sections of research articles.

• Henry and Roseberry (1997:153-167) analyzed 40 essays taken from different newspapers, magazines and encyclopedia entries. They formulated the GSP of the introductions of essays to be (IT)^(NF)^CI.

• Hasan Ansary & Esmat Babaii (2005:30-35) capitalized on a corpus of 30 English newspaper editorials and applied the Generic Structure Potential (GSP) to analyze the genre of English newspaper editorials.

• 在美国有• 以米勒（ Miller ）为代表的 “北美修辞学

派”，• 斯威尔思—巴迪亚（ Swales-Bhatia ）为代

表的斯威尔思（ Swalesian ）学派• 以伯肯考特和哈肯（ Berkenkotter &

Huckin ）为代表的“社会认知模式”。

• 在澳大利亚有• 以马丁（ Martin ）为代表的“悉尼学派”，

哈桑、婉托拉（ Ventola ）等系统功能语言学派成员的研究，

• 柯莱斯 (Kress) 为代表的“社会符号模式”，• 以及弗里德曼（ Freadman ）的“模块理

论”。• 在中国有以张德禄教授为代表的“体裁研

究理论框架” 模式。