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Discourse and Genre

1. The document discusses genres and genre analysis. It defines genres as types of activities that use language in typical ways for common purposes. Examples of spoken genres include conversations and lectures, while written genres include essays and news reports. 2. Genre analysis involves collecting samples, considering what is known about the genre, and examining the social and cultural contexts, discourse structures, and relationships between genres. 3. Applications of genre analysis include helping students understand different genres so they can better participate in academic and professional interactions in their second language.

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Anisah Nur Wahidah
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63 views2 pages

Discourse and Genre

1. The document discusses genres and genre analysis. It defines genres as types of activities that use language in typical ways for common purposes. Examples of spoken genres include conversations and lectures, while written genres include essays and news reports. 2. Genre analysis involves collecting samples, considering what is known about the genre, and examining the social and cultural contexts, discourse structures, and relationships between genres. 3. Applications of genre analysis include helping students understand different genres so they can better participate in academic and professional interactions in their second language.

Uploaded by

Anisah Nur Wahidah
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Name : Anisah Nur Wahidah

NIM : 40300118059

Class : AG 3

Discourse and Genre

-What is Genre?

Genres are activities that people engage in through the use of language. Academic lectures and casual
conversations are examples of spoken genres. Newspaper reports and academic essays are examples of
written genres. Instances of a genre often share a number of features. They may be spoken or written in
typical, and sometimes conventional, ways. They also often have a common function and purpose (or set
of functions and purposes).

1. Relationships between genres


How these genres interact with each other, which genres a person might choose to perform a particular
task and what the typical sequence and hierarchy of these genres might be; that is, which genres might
have the most value in the particular setting.

2. Writing genres across cuultures


The area of research known as contrastive rhetoric (Connor 1996 ) or more recently intercultural
rhetoric (Connor 2004 ) which looks at the use of genres across cultures also has implications for
discussions of genre. Many studies in the area of contrastive and intercultural rhetoric have focused on
the discourse structure of academic writing in different languages and cultures.

3. Spoken genres across cultures


Examination of ‘going on a first date’. In the US data the women saw their role as following their
dating partner’s lead in the conversation, and helping to keeping the conversation going, whereas the
Japanese women much more often initiated the conversation and the choice of topics in the
conversation.
There was also an important role for non-verbal behaviour during the date in the Japanese data that
was quite different from the US data. The American women commented more on what the men
physically did, or did not do on the date, saying things such as ‘He lost points for not opening my car
door’ and ‘He never touched me the whole night . . . I began to wonder about him’ (my Japanese
female students tell me they would be horrified if a boy touched them on the first date). The role of
conversation and non-verbal behaviour in the two settings, thus, was quite different. It is important to
remember, then, that while there may be ways of performing the same genre across cultures that are
quite similar, there may also be parts of the genre that are significantly (and importantly) quite
different.

4. Genre and academic writing


The notion of genre is especially important for the teaching of academic writing This has been taken
up, however, in different ways in different parts of the world. In Britain and the United States, for
example, English for specific purposes genre work has focused mostly on second language graduate
student writing (see Paltridge 2001 , forthcoming, Hyland 2004a , Bawarshi and Reiff 2010 for
reviews of this work). Work in rhetorical genre studies has focused on first language academic and
professional writing in North American colleges and universities (although, increasingly, beyond).
5. Steps in genre analysis
The first step, however, is to collect samples of the genre you are interested in¸ The next step is to
consider what is already known about the particular genre, We next need to refine the analysis by
defining the speaker or writer of the text, the audience of the text and their relationship with each
other. We also need to consider the goal, or purpose, of the texts. We also need to consider the goal, or
purpose, of the texts.

6. The social and cultural context of genres


An important stage in genre analysis, then, is an examination of the social and cultural context in
which the genre is used. Socio-cultural context refers to the idea that language, rather thsn existing in
isolation, is closely linked to the culture and society in which it is used.

7. The discourse structure of genres


There are a number of ways in which the discourse structure of genres can be analysed. One of these
is by identifying its generic structure based on its genre category membership such as letter to the
editor, doctoral dissertation, etc. Another is to examine its rhetorical structure by looking at rhetorical
types such as argument, description and problem–solution that occur within the text.

8. Applications of genre analysis


Writers such as Hammond and Macken-Horarick ( 1999 ) argue that genre-based teaching can help
students gain access to texts and discourses which will, hopefully, help them participate more
successfully in second language spoken and written interactions.

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