This document provides an overview of genre studies. It begins by defining genre as a distinctive category or type of discourse that can be spoken or written. Genre is studied across many disciplines and is influenced by social and cultural factors. There is no single agreed upon definition of genre, as genres evolve over time and vary across contexts. Genres are typically defined based on recurring communicative purposes, conventions of form and content, and the relationship between text producers and audiences. The boundaries between genres can also be fluid, as genres influence each other and hybrid genres emerge.

1. GENRE STUDIES BBI5225GENRE STUDIES BBI5225
LECTURE WEEK 1LECTURE WEEK 1
DR AFIDA MOHAMAD ALIDR AFIDA MOHAMAD ALI

2. LOCATING GENRE STUDIES
Introduction
• What is a “genre”?

3. Introduction (cont’d…)
• Work in genre studies influenced by research and scholarship in a wide range of
disciplines
• rhetoric studies
• literary theory and stylistics
• social theory
• philosophy of science
• (critical) discourse analysis
• language education (ESP)
• cultural studies, etc.
• multidisciplinary orientations—powerful implications of genre studies for
research and teaching

4. Introduction (cont’d…)
Defining Genre:
• word genre comes from French (originally Latin genus) word for 'kind' or 'class‘
• term genre is commonly used in rhetoric, literary theory, media theory, and more
recently in applied linguistics
• generally used to refer to a distinctive type of ‘text’ (or 'text type' in applied
linguistics)
• Genre study is primarily nominological (naming) and typological (classifying) in
function

5. • Genre – a distinctive category of discourse of any type, spoken or written,
with or without literary aspirations.

6. Introduction (cont’d…)
• Genre variously defined in literature: the broadest division is between
poetry, prose and drama, within which there are further divisions
• Contemporary media genres tend to relate more to specific forms than to
the universals of tragedy and comedy e.g. promotional/advertising
genres, advertorials, edutainment, etc.
• Films are routinely classified (e.g. in television listings magazines) as
'thrillers', 'westerns‘, ‘drama’, ‘action’ and so on

7. Introduction (cont’d…)
• Television genres include 'game shows' ‘soap opera’, ‘talk shows’ and
'sitcoms‘
• Names for countless genres in many media but also many genres (and
sub-genres) for which there are no names (Fowler 1989, 216; Wales
1989, 206)

8. Introduction (cont’d…)
• Carolyn Miller (1984) suggests that 'the number of genres in
any society depends on the complexity and diversity of society‘
• genre as social action
• genre as response to social need
• No neutral, fixed, or objective criteria for classifying and
organising genres into hierarchical taxonomies (except perhaps
in literature)

9. Introduction (cont’d…)
• Considerable theoretical disagreement about the definition of
specific genres
• 'A genre is ultimately an abstract conception rather than
something that exists empirically in the world,‘ Jane Feuer
(1992: 144)
• One theorist's genre may be another's sub-genre or even super-
genre
• What is technique, style, mode, formula or thematic grouping to
one scholar may be treated as a genre by another

10. Introduction (cont’d…)
Some suggestion for classifying/grouping genres (Bordwell 1989: 148):
• period or country (American films of the 1930s)
• director or star or producer or writer or studio
• technical process (CinemaScope films)
• cycle (the 'fallen women' films)
• series (the 007 movies)
• style (German Expressionism)
• structure (narrative)
• ideology (Reaganite cinema)
• venue ('drive-in movies')
• purpose (home movies)
• audience ('teenpix')
• subject or theme (family film, paranoid-politics movies)

11. Introduction (cont’d…)
• Scholars, practitioners and the general public use their own
genre labels (de facto genres)
• Defining genres therefore becomes problematic
• Conventional definitions tend to be based on the notion that
they constitute particular conventions of content (such as
themes or settings) and form (including structure and style)
which are shared by texts

12. • Theoretically attractive to attempt to define particular genres in terms of
necessary and sufficient textual properties but it poses many difficulties

13. • Genre as a staged, goal-oriented purposeful activity in which
speakers engage as members of our culture.
• Social because we participate in genres with other people; goal-
oriented because we use genres to get things done; staged
because it usually takes us a few steps toreach our goals.
(Martin 1984, Sydney School)

14. How do we assign a text to a genre category?
1. Author,
2. audience,
3. purpose,
4. situation,
5. physical form,
6. pre-sequence,
7. internal structure,
8. content,
9. Level of formality,
10. style,
11. Written language,
12. Requirements.

15. • Genre identification is complex
• There are no defining features, with constraints on allowable contibutions in content, form , positioning.
• Many shared communicative purposes
• Textual features
• Can be seen as prototype,
• Simple, typical properties
• Resources for meaning (swales 2002)
• Sufficient similarity with other genres (swales 1990)
• Genre repertoire
• Insight into the genre’s discourse community.

16. • Martin (1985) – “Genres are how things are done, when language is used
to accomplish them”.
• Importance is place on the communicative purposes.

17. Concept of genre (ESP)
• “… a class of communicative events, the members of which share some set
of communicative purposes. These purposes are recognised by the expert
members of the parent discourse community, and thereby constitute the
rationale of the genre. This rationale shapes the schematic structure of
the discourse and influences and constrains choice of content and style”
(Swales, 1990:58).
• The purpose-related rationale gives rise to the conventions of a genre.
Conventions have a formative influence but ‘‘are constantly evolving and
indeed can be directly challenged’’ (Swales, 1990:53).

18. Example of a genre
and its moves
Research Article Abstract (adapted from Bhatia, 1993)
• 1. WRITER INTRODUCES PURPOSE OF STUDY: The purpose of the study was
to examine …
• 2. WRITER DESCRIBES METHODOLOGY: 50 high school students in Kelantan
participated in the study. They were selected from …
• 3. WRITER SUMMARISES RESULTS OF STUDY: It was discovered that …
• 4. WRITER PRESENTS CONCLUSIONS: High school students in Kelantan, and
probably in other similar settings …

19. Genre Analysis
GA - study of situated linguistic behaviour in institutionalized academic or professional
settings.
Major theoretical orientations include:
• Typification of rhetorical action (Miller, 1984; Bazerman, 1994; Berkenkotter and Huckin
(1995)
• Regularities of staged, goal-oriented social processes (Martin, Christie and Rothery (1987;
Martin, 1993)
• Consistency of communicative purposes (Swales, 1990; Bhatia, 1993)

20. Critical view of genre
Genres are variable both across disciplinary practices as well as within a given discipline:
• “…genres are inherently dynamic rhetorical structures that can be manipulated according to
conditions of use, and that genre knowledge is therefore best conceptualized as a form of
situated cognition embedded in disciplinary cultures.” (Berkenhotter and Huckin, 1995, p. 6)
• “sites of contention between stability and change” (Berkenkotter and Huckin, 1995, p. 6)
• "constantly evolving and ... directly challenged" (Swales, 1990:53) thereby making the world
of academic discourse dynamic and complex
• A marriage of form and content – content is appropriate to a particular purpose in a particular
situation at a particular point of time. (Berkenkotter and Huckin, 1995, p. 6)

21. Tactical freedom in genre construction
• Expert members have the “‘tactical freedom’ to exploit generic
resources to negotiate individual responses to recurring and
novel rhetorical situations…[but] within rather than outside
the generic boundaries… in terms of recurrence of rhetorical
situations (Miller, 1984), consistency of communicative
purposes (Swales, 1990) and existence and arrangement of
obligatory structural elements (Hasan, 1985)” (Bhatia, 2004, p.
24)

22. • The 'empiricist dilemma' that involves the problem of circularity (the egg
or chicken first poser):
• E.g. To take a genre such as the 'western', analyse it, and list its principal
characteristics:
• we must first isolate the body of films which are 'westerns‘
• they can only be isolated on the basis of the 'principal characteristics'
which can only be discovered from the films themselves after they have
been isolated. (A.Tudor, cited in Gledhill 1985: 59)

23. • Problems with exceptions to any given definition of a particular genre as
there appear to be no 'rigid rules of inclusion and exclusion' (Gledhill
1985: 60):
'Genres... are not discrete systems, consisting of a fixed number of listable
items' (ibid.: 64).

24. • It is difficult to make clear-cut distinctions between one genre and
another:
• genres overlap
• there are 'mixed genres' (e.g. comedy-thrillers)

25. Specific genres tend to be easy to recognise intuitively (i.e. 'by feel') but difficult
(if not impossible) to define:
• Particular features which are characteristic of a genre are not normally unique to
it
• Relative prominence of certain features, and their combinations and functions
which are distinctive (Neale 1980: 22-3).
• Easy to underplay the differences within a genre.
• 'genres are instances of repetition and difference' (Neale 1980: 48) …
'difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre' (ibid., 50)
• issue of difference demonstrate that some genres are 'looser' - more open-ended
in their conventions or more permeable in their boundaries than others

26. Texts often exhibit the conventions of more than one genre:
• “the same text can belong to different genres in different countries or
times” (Hartley, in O'Sullivan et al. 1994: 129)
• Hybrid genres are also common (at least outside theoretical frameworks)
E.g. T. Van Leeuwen suggests that the multiple purposes of journalism
often lead to generically heterogeneous texts (cited in N. Fairclough 1995:
88)
• Fairclough (1995: 89) suggests that mixed-genre texts are common in the
mass media.

27. • Contemporary theorists tend to describe genres in terms of
family resemblances among texts (a notion derived from the
philosopher Wittgenstein) rather than in definitional terms
(Swales 1990: 49).
• An individual text within a genre rarely if ever has all of the
characteristic features of the genre (Fowler 1989, 215). The
family resemblance approach involves the theorist illustrating
similarities between some of the texts within a genre.

28. The family resemblance approach has been criticized on the basis that 'no choice
of a text for illustrative purposes is innocent' (D. Lodge, cited in Swales 1990:
50), and that such theories can make any text seem to resemble any other one
(Swales 1990: 51).

29. In addition to the definitional and family resemblance approach, there is another
approach to describing genres, which is based on the psycholinguistic concept of
prototypicality:
• Some texts are regarded as being more typical members of a genre than others.
• Certain features would 'identify the extent to which an exemplar is prototypical
of a particular genre' (Swales 1990: 52).
• Genres can therefore be seen as 'fuzzy' categories which cannot be defined by
necessary and sufficient conditions.

30. How we define a genre depends on (Chandler 2000):
• the researcher's purposes
• the adequacy of the definition in terms of social science must be related to
the light that the exploration sheds on the phenomenon

31. Hodge & Kress (1988: 7): 'genres only exist in so far as a social
group declares and enforces the rules that constitute them‘:
• debatable to what extent most of us would be able to formulate
explicit 'rules' for the textual genres we use routinely
• much of our genre knowledge is likely to be tacit.

32. Swales also alludes to people having 'repertoires of genres'
(Swales 1990: 58)
• but there is little empirical research to support this view
(Buckingham 1993, 137).
• Buckingham argues that 'genre is not... simply "given" by the
culture: rather, it is in a constant process of negotiation and
change' (Buckingham 1993, 137).
• Neale stresses that 'genres are not systems: they are processes
of systematisation' (Neale 1980: 51; 1995: 463; Chandler's
emphasis)

33. • Contemporary theory emphasizes that both genre forms and functions
are dynamic.
• Genre is not simply given, but in a constant process of negotiation and
change.

34. Abercrombie suggests that 'the boundaries between genres are shifting
and becoming more permeable' (1996: 45):
• modern television seems to be engaged in 'a steady dismantling of genre'
(ibid.)
• attributed in part to economic pressures to pursue new audiences.

35. One may acknowledge the dynamic fluidity of genres
• As the generic corpus ceaselessly expands, genres (and the
relationships between them) change over time
• The conventions of each genre shift, new genres and sub-
genres emerge and others are 'discontinued' (though note that
certain genres seem particularly long-lasting).

36. Todorov argued that 'a new genre is always the transformation
of one or several old genres' (cited in Swales 1990, 36):
• Each new work within a genre has the potential to influence
changes within the genre or perhaps the emergence of new
sub-genres (which may later blossom into fully-fledged
genres).

37. Todorov’s perspective tends to highlight:
• role of authorial experimentation in changing genres and their
conventions
• social nature of text production
• role of economic and technological factors as well as changing audience
preferences

38. The interaction between genres and media:
• contributes to changing genres
• some genres are more powerful than others - differ in status
attributed to them by text-producers and their audiences
• connections between textuality and power

39. • Idealist theoretical approaches to genre seek to categorise
textual characteristics are ahistorical as genres are “historically
relative, and therefore historically specific” (Neale 1995, 464)
• genres go through cycles of popularity
• Genres are context-specific and changeable.

40. Some Marxist commentators see genre as an instrument of
social control which reproduces the dominant ideology:
• genre 'positions' the audience in order to naturalize the
ideologies which are embedded in the text (Feuer 1992, 145)
• “generically defined structures may operate to construct
particular ideologies and values, and to encourage reassuring
and conservative interpretations of a given text” (Casey 193,
312)
• But people are capable of “reading against the grain”

41. Generic purposes as a powerful ideological dimension of genres:
• Carolyn Miller (1984): “a rhetorically sound definition of genre must be
centered not on the substance or form of discourse but on the action it is
used to accomplish” (Miller 1984)
• John Swales (1990, 46): “the principal criterial feature that turns a
collection of communicative events into a genre is some shared set of
communicative purposes”
• both in writing and reading within genres we learn purposes appropriate
to the genre
• particular genres develop, frame and legitimate particular concerns,
questions and gratifications

42. Other redefinitions of genre focus more broadly on the relationship
between the makers and audiences of texts (a rhetorical dimension):
• the formal features of genres establish the relationship between
producers and interpreters
• mass media texts - Andrew Tolson (1996, 92) redefines genre as “a
category which mediates between industry and audience”
• but such approaches undermine the definition of genres as purely textual
types, which excludes any reference even to intended audiences

43. • A basic model underlying contemporary media theory is a
triangular relationship between the text, its producers and its
interpreters
• In semiotic terms, a genre can be seen as a shared code
between the producers and interpreters of texts included
within it

44. • Within genre, texts embody authorial attempts to position
readers using particular modes of address.

45. Every genre positions those who participate in a text of that kind (Kress
1988, 107):
• as interviewer or interviewee, as listener or storyteller, as a reader or a
writer, as a person interested in political matters, as someone to be
instructed or as someone who instructs
• ‘positionings’ imply different possibilities for response and for action

46. • written text provides a 'reading position' for readers, a position
constructed by the writer for the 'ideal reader' of the text
• embedded within texts are assumptions about the 'ideal reader', including
their attitudes towards the subject matter and often their class, age,
gender and ethnicity

47. • Gunther Kress (1988, 183) defines a genre as “a kind of text
that derives its form from the structure of a (frequently
repeated) social occasion, with its characteristic participants
and their purposes”

48. Contemporary theorists tend to emphasize the importance of the semiotic
notion of intertextuality:
• of seeing individual texts in relation to others
• “genre is... an intertextual concept” (Wales 1989, 259)
• “we need to understand genre as a property of the relations between
texts” (O'Sullivan et al. 1994, 128)
• Roland Barthes (1975) argued that it is in relation to other texts within a
genre rather than in relation to lived experience that we make sense of
certain events within a text.

49. • analogies with schema theory in psychology - we have mental 'scripts'
which help us to interpret familiar events in everyday life
• “a text cannot belong to no genre, it cannot be without... a genre. Every
text participates in one or several genres, there is no genreless text”
(Jacques Derrida 1981, 61).

50. Discourse Community
Generally accepted defining characteristics of a discourse community:
• Common goals
• Participatory mechanisms for Information exchange
• A highly specialised terminology
• A high general level of expertise
• Community specific genres (Swales, 1990:29)

51. Issues of community
• Discourse communities (Swales, 1990) vs. communities of
practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) – question of focus
• ‘Discourse community’ – focus on genres, texts and lexico-
grammatical features that enable members “to maintain their
goals, regulate their membership and communicate efficiently
with one another” (Bhatia, 2004: 149)
• ‘

52. Community Issues (cont’d…)
• Communities of practice’ – emphasis on “practice and values
that hold the communities together, or separate them from one
another” (Bhatia, 2004: 149); “legitimate peripheral
participation” as an “integral constituent” of learning through
peripheral forms of participation in broader communities”
(Wenger, 2004)
• Combined perspective – situated activity, relational nature of
knowledge and learning, negotiated nature of meaning, and
engaged nature of activity