Key concepts in ELT
Genre
'Genre' is easier to exemplify than to define. The
word traditionally serves to indicate different
kinds of literary and artistic works. Language
educators and linguists have extended 'genre' to
identify classes of language use and
communication in all areas of life. Widely
discussed genres include service encounters,
business letters, academic articles, lessons,
editorials, sports commentaries, and many more.
In school settings, broad narrative, descriptive,
expository, and argumentative genres are often
identified in teaching and examinations.
Genre studies raise many questions and some
controversies (Hyon 1996). One issue is how
'genre' relates to 'register' (see Key concepts in
ELT Journal Volume 48/3). Both concepts seek to
capture aspects of variation in language use.
'Genre' is particularly linked to concerns with
communicative and social purposes among user
groups forming 'discourse communities' (Swales
1990). Attention to 'genre' arguably emerges from
Hymes's work on 'speech events' ('activities . . .
that are directly governed by rules or norms for
the use of speech' (Hymes 1972: 56). 'Register',
which has long been associated with Halliday's
apparatus for text description, is typically defined
by formal properties of grammar and lexis (e.g.
Halliday et al, 1964). While some scholars work
mainly with one or the other term, many treat the
concepts as complementary.
How genres are best defined and operationally
identified, for descriptive and teaching purposes,
remains a major area of enquiry. An influential
view is that many genres have typical linguistic
realizations that can usefully be taught, but that
genres should be defined in terms of recognized
social purposes. Letters of apology, for instance,
must convey apology, but need not contain the
expression 'We are very sorry . . .' Miller (1984)
represents genres as types of rhetorical action in
recurrent situations. Swales (1990) takes a genre as
'a class of communicative event, the members of
which share some set of communicative purposes'.
While familiarity with typical generic realisations
is important, conventions are not fixed, and genres
change over time and circumstances. Knowing
and using relevant genres is a characteristic of
professional and other communities (Berkenkotter
& Huckin 1995; Bhatia 1993).
Ignorance of genres can exclude people from
effective social participation. Some children face
difficulties because they are unfamiliar with ways
144 ELT Journal Volume 53/2 April 1999 © Oxford University Press 1999
of communicating that are favoured in school
settings (Martin 1989). Much of the debate about
whether (and if so, how) to teach spoken and
written genres explicitly to learners has turned on
the issue of whether genre knowledge is
liberating, as it gives people more choices, or
constricting, as it leads people to talk, write and
act in conventionally approved ways.
Genres are relevant in teaching at any level
because learners also have intuitions and
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experiences about how some texts and events
resemble or differ from others. In schools,
learners' experiences and uses of language often
differ across subjects. Exploring similarities and
differences between communicative events is a
concern that genre analysis shares with language
teaching and learning.
References
Berkenkotter, C. and T.N. Huckin 1995. Genre
knowledge and disciplinary communication:
Cognition/Culture/Power. Hillsdale, NJ: Law-
rence Erlbaum. Bhatia, V.K. 1993. Analysing
genre: Language use in professional settings. __
London & NY: Longman.
Halliday, M.A.K., Mclntosh, A. and P. Strevens
1964. The linguistic sciences and language
teaching. London: Longman.
Hymes, D. 1972. 'Models of the interaction of
language and social life' in J.J. Gumperz, and D.
Hymes (Eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics: The
ethnography of communication (35-71), NY:
Holt, Rinehardt & Winston.
Hyon, S. 1996. Genre in three traditions: Implica-
tions for ESL. TESOL Quarterly, 30/4: 693-722.
Martin, J.R. 1989. Factual writing: Exploring and
challenging social reality. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Miller, C.R. (1984). Genre as social action.
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70: 151-167.
Swales, J.M. 1990. Genre analysis: English in
academic and research settings. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
The author
Desmond Allison is a senior lecturer at the National
University of Singapore. He teaches courses in
research in language studies, language testing and
programme evaluation, and genre knowledge and
specialized communication. His main research areas
in English for academic and educational purposes
include comprehension studies, second language
writing, and language programme evaluation.
E-mail:<elldma@nus.edu.sg>