The word “genre” is one that I have heard many times before undertaking the international communication stream at university; its use is rather common in the French language. Equivalents in English could be the words “type” or “kind”, so in sentences or replicas such as “What kind of car do you want to buy?” or “it’s not his type” we would say “Quel genre de voiture veux-tu acheter?” or “ce n’est pas son genre”. Thus I would define the word “genre” as a group of beings or things that share common characteristics. In linguistics, the word “genre” can be referred to as: “A type of discourse that occurs in a particular setting that has distinctive and recognizable patterns and norms of organisation and structure and that has particular and distinctive communicative functions” (Richards and Schmidt, 2002:224)
Swales (1990:45) proposes five points which could define “genre”:
1. A genre is a class of communicative events
2. The principal criteria features that turns a collection of communicative events into a genre is some shared set of communicative purposes.
3. Exemplars or instances of genres vary in their prototypicality.
4. The rationale behind a genre establishes constraints on allowable contributions in terms of their content, position and form.
5. A discourse community’s nomenclature for genres is an important source of insight.
Note: For further information on Swales’s five points please refer to his book: Genre Analysis: English in academic and research settings.
Examples of genres are news reports, business reports, formal letters, parliamentary speeches or medical reports. Although I find the notion of genre relatively clear, determining which text belongs to what genre can be somehow more difficult. Indeed, genre distinctions are culturally relative (Johnstone, 2008:182) and are intimately linked to the discipline’s methodology, packaging information in ways that conform to a discipline’s norms, values and ideology (Trosborg: 2000: vi). This is where I have asked myself what main attributes distinguishes a genre from another? A recurring answer seems to be that a genre is defined by its purpose and the context in which it is written, therefore determining its characteristics. Please feel free to comment and add other ways to distinguish a genre from another, as mentioned this is relative to one’s culture, profession, etc...
The importance of understanding the genres of written communication
From one perspective genre analysis could be seen as the tedious task of classifying forms of texts to then be able to recognise one from the other. However this is, I believe, the first step to take in order to be successful in one’s profession or discipline. As Johnstone (2008:182) puts it when talking about the idea of genre: “a person has to learn to recognize, reproduce, and manipulate in order to become a competent member of a particular community”. For instance, in his book, Analysing Genres: Language Use in Professional Settings, Bhatia describes sales promotion letters as “an unsolicited letter addressed to a selected group of prospective customers in order to persuade them to buy a product or a service” (1993:45) and gives the following structure:
• Establishing credentials
• Introducing the offer (Offering the product or service, Essential detailing of the offer, Indicating value of the offer)
• Offering incentives
• Enclosing documents
• Soliciting response
• Using pressure tactics
• Ending politely
This analysis of the sales promotion letter genre provides a framework for creating future letters. Of course this is not a set model and there is room for flexibility but it does offer a good understanding of how a sales promotion letter would look like.
Bhatia’s example is specific to a particular genre and I would recommend using his structure when writing a sales promotion letter. However, on a more general level when doing a genre analysis or when writing a document I would advise to use Paltridge’s model of analysis in which the following fields should be completed: Author, Audience, Purpose, Situation, Physical form, Pre-Sequence, Internal structure, Content, Level of formality, Style, Written language and Requirements as showed in the table below.
Classifying things or beings is something that we are taught from a very young age, which enables us to call a cat “a cat”. Although the idea of “genre” was not unknown to me and seemed rather natural, I had never quite grasped the importance of genre analysis and how it influences our everyday life.
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References
Bhatia, V.K. (1993) Analysing Genres: Language Use in Professional Settings. London: Longman.
Johnstone, B. (2008) Discourse Analysis. 2ndedn. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing
Paltridge, B. (2006). Discourse analysis: An introduction. London: Continuum.
Richards, J. C. And Schmidt, R. (2002), Longman Dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics (3rd edn). Harlow, UK: Longman.
Swales, J.M. (1990) Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: CUP
Trosborg, A. (2000) Analysing Professional Genres. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co.
Enjoyed reading this, especially since you have added the French perspective!
ReplyDeleteThe Move Analysis although perceived mainly for sales promotional letters, I know Bhatia (1993) does also suggest we could use it to determine a structure for a job application (Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings page page 63). Thus I believe you can use it for several written types of texts but perhaps where the difficulty lies is using this structure for a visual media promotion such as a TV advert and perhaps Paltridges model would be more appropriate.
From your analysis do you believe we should perhaps have a model per genre- however what about those that are interlinked and fall under two categories, how would we separate those to use one particular model?
You are right, Bhatia does suggest that the sales promotion letter’s model can be used to determine a structure for a job application; which in my opinion makes sense as I believe that a job application or cover letter’s purpose is to “promote” oneself, thus it’s structure can be similar to the one of a sales promotion letter.
ReplyDeleteI do not believe that there should be a set model for each genre however there could be a general theme or framework associated with the different genres. These frameworks would obviously leave room for flexibility as one can have his own culture, style, or personal touch. For instance we could compare the “Academic essay” genre to the felid family. The later can be divided in two groups the Pantherinae which includes Tigers, Lions, etc..., and Felinae which includes Lynxes, Cats and so forth. Each of the families can again be divided in different species for instance you find under the cat family: Asian, Balinese, Bengal, Birman, Bombay, British Shorthair, etc...
Anyway my point being that one genre can have multiple variations that could potentially fit under one general (flexible) framework. For instance in the case of the academic essay, one possible general structure could be: introduction, body of text, conclusion.
The difference between human “scientific” classifications of living beings with discourse is that in one you cannot mix genres (cats and dogs) whereas in the other you can; point you have raised in your blog and your question. I would not personally try to separate the texts or discourse to use one particular model but perhaps, as mentioned use a more general model such as Paltridge’s. On the other hand if I was to create a document which falls under two categories of genres I would potentially combine the models available for those genres, and try to generate a new one; as you have done on your blog by adapting the Move Analysis to fit in with the subgenre of adverts on social networking sites.
Thank you for raising that question. I hope that I have provided a comprehensive answer to your query, however I believe there is still room for discussion.
I am glad you have analysed Bhatia's Move analysis. I think it is a solid grounding for any promotional messaging. However,I believe, the idea of nine moves postulated by Bhatia, is there to give authors flexibility in applying them, which means different genre would perhaps require different moves; as you well spotted, could also be inter-mixed with Paltridges' model of analysis. I personally think there is no need to create a set model to every genre, as different models would serve you different tactics (as mentioned: room for flexibility)
ReplyDeleteI have very much enjoyed reading all your entries since they leave a lot to think about. Very well done for applying your knowledge in French to the topic!!