Abstract
The elusive concepts underlying the word genre offer different alternative conceptions. This may produce confusions but identifying the theoretical frameworks help in understanding the possible preliminary doubts of the novice. Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), New Rhetoric (NR), Semiolinguistics (SL), Communicative Procedural Text Linguistics (CPL), Interdisciplinary Text Linguistics (ITL), and Genre Analysis (GA), among others, are all theoretical propositions that represent options to be explored. In this paper, a discussion of the contemporary conceptions of discourse genre will be presented. My own perspective will also be a particular focus, but with special emphasis on findings from empirical data. The research is based upon the largest available on-line corpus (58 million words) of written specialized Spanish on four disciplines: Psychology, Social Work, Industrial Chemistry, and Construction Engineering. The corpus was collected in one Chilean university and the corresponding professional settings. The corpus description shows that access to disciplinary knowledge is constructed through a varying repertoire of written genres depending on disciplinary domain and on academic or professional field. Psycholinguistic and educational implications are advanced in relation to knowledge acquisition, discourse genres and reading comprehension.
Highlights
What exactly are discourse genres? Are they units of analysis created by some radical empirical scientist? Are they closed units, defined and operationalized? Are they found ‘out there’ as some scientists suggest or are they purely ‘mental’ artefacts as other scientists propose? Most of these questions circulate erratically in genre analysis and in genre theory
A clear distinction emerges from these data between Sciences and Humanities (SS&H) and Basic Sciences and Engineering (BS&E): there are a greater number of texts to be read by students of SS&H
Two genres are used in Industrial Chemistry (IC) and five in Construction Engineering (CE). These findings provide some indication of fundamental discourse distinctions between SS&H and BS&E, which implies the existence of differences in linguistic, cognitive, social, and communicative dimensions associated with genres
Summary
What exactly are discourse genres? Are they units of analysis created by some radical empirical scientist? Are they closed units, defined and operationalized? Are they found ‘out there’ as some scientists suggest or are they purely ‘mental’ artefacts as other scientists propose? Most of these questions circulate erratically in genre analysis and in genre theory. Are they units of analysis created by some radical empirical scientist? They demonstrate diverse interests, aims, origins and various characteristics. The elusive and divergent theoretical conceptions underlying the term genre offer a wide diversity of alternative options. This may undoubtedly confuse and mislead the novice, but the expert. Approaches from New Rhetoric, Language for Specific Purposes, Systemic Functional Linguistics, Semiolinguistics, Discourse Analysis, among others, are all options to be explored and discussed. The focus of attention and the means of approaching genre analysis vary greatly, as do the type of categorizations or taxonomies and the method of executing empirical investigations. Compatible focuses are rendered impossible but conflicting principles may be inferred
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