A challenge to the current concept of genre: writing up research

Abstract

The study described in this thesis represents an attempt to develop a framework for genre analysis which reflects what it is that leads users of language to recognise communicative events as instances of particular genres. It does this by both testing and extending a definition of genre provided by John Swales which, to date, is unbacked by research evidence or investigation. This definition holds that genres are instanced by communicative events with shared sets of communicative purposes which, even though they may vary in their prototypicality, are constrained by various conventions as to what is allowable in terms of content, positioning and form. The texts which form the basis for the study are drawn from the area of written ‘research reporting English’; that is, the writing up and publication of the results of experimental research in English. Both social-semiotic and socio-psychological frameworks provide an initial basis for the examination of a collection of ‘typical’ instances of the specific genre (research reporting). The results of this examination then provide a basis for the presentation of a proposed genre analysis framework which synthesises a range of approaches and methods. The principal initial theoretical frameworks chosen for the study are systemic functional linguistics, a social-semiotic view of language originally formulated by M.A.K. Halliday, based largely on the work of Bronislaw Malinowski and J. R. Firth and frame semantics, a sociopsychological view of language proposed by Charles Fillmore and based on the work of Del Hymes, Eleanor Rosch and others working in the fields of cognitive science and artificial intelligence. Although the first of these frameworks is shown to have certain strengths, it is also revealed to have certain limitations. The second of these frameworks is then proposed as the most comprehensive and adequate for explaining the assignment of communicative events as instances of particular genres. A framework for genre analysis is then presented which draws on work in the areas of discourse analysis, pragmatics, language and cognition, natural language processing, artificial intelligence and critical theory and practice. The framework aims to reflect research on the interaction between meaning-creation and perception and arrangement, storage and retrieval in the context of the perception and production of specific communicative events as instances of particular genres. It also aims to establish a framework which allows us to account for the fact that certain instances of genres are further from what may be described as the genre prototype than others and for the fact that relationships are perceived between instances which may be structurally very different. Within the context of the texts examined, the study, in general terms, validates Swales’ definition of genre. In contrast to the position held by Swales, however, the study concludes that while it is possible to make statements concerning meaning-creation and goal-direction within the context of genre, it is a matter of much greater complexity to draw conclusions regarding the relationship between genre and the actual language of texts. The final chapter attempts to re-define the term ‘genre’ in the context of the research findings.