New and Further Approaches to ESP Discourse: Genre Study in Focus

Abstract

Amongst all the tools offered by current Linguistics, genre analysis has been virtually adopted by the whole of the collectivity of professionals in English for Specific Purposes studies as the methodological framework of their research activity. Hence, genre theory is solidly established today as a tool for the research into all aspects of professional communication and language variations in different workplace contexts. The concept of genre springs from the theoretical contributions chiefly made by Linguistics above sentence level along with Pragmatics, and derives from the role of English as a lingua franca at the professional and academic world, together with a new interdisciplinary and communicative vision of language (Alcaraz, 2000). Both −the acknowledgement of the essential role of language in the updating processes of the different areas of knowledge, together with that new linguistic perspective− have generated the special attention given to the theoretical and applied aspects of the academic and professional varieties of English. As Bhatia and Gotti point out (2006), at their onset, genre studies were basically exploited for the design of language learning and teaching programmes (Bhatia, 1982, 1993; Swales, 1981, 1990; Trimble, 1985), and were restricted to a limited array of specialised genres in the domain of scientific, technological, business, legal and research contexts. However, in more recent years genre studies have started to emphasize not only ESP training in the context of specialised communities, but also the communicative role of texts within textual and social contexts, underlining the social nature of their production and reading. Consequently, since genres are social constructions, communicative devices that operate within a specialized community, genre theory is today being deployed comprehensively, not only to disentangle the complexities beneath communication in different contextual typologies, but also with a view to gain meaning into the intercultural aspects of specialised