Looking out

Abstract

At the 2012 ‘Rethinking Genre’ conference in Ottawa a number of issues were raised from the perspectives of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and New Rhetorical Studies about the genre theory informing the literacy programmes of the so-called ‘Sydney School’. This paper address three of those issues from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics, focusing on the difference between an informing theory and the practices it might inform, the issue of language change and finally the question of modelling context. In doing so it attempts to re-write the ‘history’ naturalized in publications arising from the 1992 ‘Rethinking Genre’ conference in Ottawa from the perspective of the functional linguists, educational linguists and educators directly involved in the ongoing development of ‘Sydney School’ pedagogy and curriculum.