The genre of research grant proposals: Towards a cognitive–pragmatic analysis

Abstract

This study approaches the genre of grant proposals from a cognitive–pragmatic perspective. It will discuss the reception of the grant genre from the perspective of reviewers and based on some documents provided by the National Science Council, Taiwan, a government agency set up to promote the development of and research on all disciplines. This consideration is intended to complement existing studies on grant proposals, which tend to focus on text production and linguistic features employed by proposal writers. Then this study will consider Swales's (2004: 61) suggestion that attempts to understand and characterize genre are “essentially a metaphorical endeavour”. He proposes a set of six metaphors to explain the nature of genre. Building on his discussion, this study will explore the following issues. Firstly, it will consider how the six genre metaphors may interact. Secondly, it will investigate how the interactions may help contribute to formulating a cognitive–pragmatic view of genre. Thirdly, it will propose the addition of the metaphor GENRE AS STRUGGLE since the grant proposal genre can be seen as being situated in various dialogic interactions and tensions between the applicant and her “co-participants” – her funding organization, proposal reviewer, and fellow researchers. Finally, it will highlight the performative nature of genre by proposing that genres as speech acts be replaced by GENRE AS PERFORMANCE. Overall, this paper will argue for a view of genre that is both performance-centred and situated in “dialogic” struggle.