2.1 Schools of Genre Research

The term"genre"can be traced back to the time of Aristotle over two thousand years ago.It means"kind"or"form"and was used by the Greek philosopher to refer to three types of literary genre-poetry, drama and novel.Though these divisions have expanded considerably since then, the notion of genre as a particular type of literature has lasted into the present era.Traditionally a literary construct as it is, genre has developed well beyond the scope of literature and become a popular framework for analyzing the form and function of nonliterary discourses, such as the research articles, grant proposals, sales letters, etc.,as well as a tool for developing educational practices in fields such as rhetoric, composition studies, professional writing, and applied linguistics.

Within the tradition of linguistics, it is generally agreed that genre research can be separated into three camps（Bhatia,1996;Hyon,1996;Hyland,2002;Johns,2002）—the New Rhetoric School（or North American School）,which derives its concept of genre from a rhetorical tradition and studies genres as typified social actions, as ways of acting based on recurrent social situations;the Sydney School, based on the Systemic Functional Linguistics of M.A.K.Halliday, which primarily puts emphasis on formal textual features and thus expresses a more linguistically oriented concept of genre;and the English for Specific Purposes（ESP）School, which can be viewed as steering between the New Rhetoric School and Sydney School.In this section, the three above-mentioned schools of genre research will be reviewed so as to gain a better understanding of previous genre studies.

2.1.1 The New Rhetoric School

The New Rhetoric School refers to"a body of North American scholarship from a variety of disciplines concerned with L1 teaching, including rhetoric, composition studies, and professional writing"（Hyon,1996:696）.This school highlights the social, cultural and dynamic nature of genre, thus adopting a more sociological approach to genre study.It became a major camp of genre research with Carolyn Miller's seminal essay"Genre as Social Action"published in 1984,in which she claims that"a theoretically sound definition of genre must be centered not on the substance or the form of discourse but on the action it is used to accomplish"（1984:151）.Succinctly, she identifies genres as"typified rhetorical actions based in recurrent situations"（1984:159）.

The most notable point about Miller's definition of genre is the typification of rhetorical actions, which includes the typification of situation, participant and rhetoric.In Miller's view, the interaction between a certain genre and the social context is the core of the study, as a result of which, linguistic features shared by the texts of the same genre are generally ignored.Working in this orientation, genre researchers in this school focus more on the contexts in which genres occur than on their forms and pay special attention to the social purposes, or actions that these genres fulfill within these situations.Many scholars have thus adopted ethnographic（such as participant observation and interviews）rather than linguistic approaches in their analyses with the aim of providing descriptions of the attitudes, values, and beliefs of the communities of text users that genres imply and construct（Bazerman,1988;Devitt,1991;Schryer,1993,1994;Smart,1992,1993）.

Following Miller's study,Yates and Orlikowski（1992）take a social approach to organizational communication and define genre as"a typified communicative action"characterized by"similar social substance and form"（ibid.:301）.Substance refers to"the social motives, themes, and topics being expressed in the communication"while form relates to"the observable physical and linguistic features of the communication"（ibid.:301）.This notion of genre proposed by Yates and Orlikowski seems to be an improvement of Miller's, incorporating linguistic features into genre research;however, they don't explicate the connection between substance and form.

Berkenkotter and Huckin（1995）argue for the importance of focusing on the ways in which writers use genre knowledge（or fail to do so）as they engage in various disciplinary activities.They outline their theory of genre from a socio-cognitive perspective, in which they take genres as"inherently dynamic rhetorical structures that can be manipulated according to the conditions of use",and genre knowledge is conceptualized as"a form of situated cognition embedded in disciplinary activities"（ibid.:3）.Their theoretical framework consists of five principles:"dynamism","situatedness","form and content","duality of structure"and"community ownership"."Dynamism"indicates that"genres are dynamic rhetorical forms that are developed from actors' responses to recurrent situations"and"genres change overtime in response to their users'sociocognitive needs"（ibid.:4）."Situatedness"means"our knowledge of genres is derived from and embedded in our participation in the communicative activities of the daily and professional life",and thus"genre knowledge is a form of situated cognition"（ibid.:4）."Form and content"suggests that"genre knowledge embraces both form and content",including a sense of what content is appropriate according to the particular purpose, situation and time（ibid.:4）."Duality of structure"means that as we apply genre rules to professional activities, we both constitute social structures and reproduce them."Community ownership"means genre conventions reveal much of"a discourse community's norms, epistemology, ideology, and social ontology"（ibid.:4）.

2.1.2 The Sydney School

The Sydney School, based on the Systemic Functional Linguistics（SFL）of M.A.K.Halliday, presents a more linguistically oriented study of genre.Researchers in this school seek to"explicate the distinctive stages, or moves, of genres together with the patterns of lexical, grammatical, and cohesive choices which construct the functions of the stages of the genres"（Hyland,2002:115）.This approach to genre studies is motivated by a commitment to language and literacy education, particularly in the context of primary and secondary schools, adult migrant English education programs and workplace training programs（Hyon,1996）.

Sydney School genre analysts also pay attention to the socio-cultural context in their studies, but take a different perspective from that adopted by the New Rhetoric School.The context in the view of systemic linguists is closely related to the language of text.The researchers of this school seek to identify how the"context of culture"and"context of situation"determine the structure and lexico-grammatical patterns of texts.They adopt Hallidayan framework to examine both global text structure and linguistic features associated with field（system of activity within a particular setting）,tenor（the social relations between the participants）and mode（the channels of communication）.

Hasan is the pioneer of genre research within the framework of SFL.She puts forward two important notions in genre analysis-Contextual Configuration（CC）and Generic Structure Potential（GSP）,and suggests that CC determines GSP.CC is defined as"a specific set of values that realizes field, tenor, and mode"（Halliday Hasan,1985:55）,and the GSP of a particular genre is an abstract category"descriptive of the total range of textual structures available within a genre G"（Hasan,1996:53）.To a certain extent,GSP can be taken as the prototype of texts of the same genre, which includes obligatory and optional elements.Obligatory elements determine the generic status of a text while optional ones add variety to the structural resources within a genre.In this way, not only the criteria for distinguishing different genres have been provided, but the variations within each genre can also be adequately explained.However, this framework for genre analysis is not immune from criticism.Ventola（1987:57）notes that slight changes in CC will frequently lead to differences in the inventory of GSP and thus if the view is adopted that the obligatory elements are genre defining, it eventuates to a recognition of numerous GSPs to the texts which in their overall function are the same and which in their linguistic realizations are clearly related to each other.

In addition to Hasan,SFL approaches to genre study have been influenced most widely by the work of J.R.Martin, who defines genres as"the system of staged, goal-oriented social processes through which social subjects in a given culture live their lives"（Martin,1997:13）.Genres function as social processes"because members of a culture interact with each other to achieve them;as goal-oriented because they have evolved to get things done;and as staged because it usually takes more than one step for participants to achieve their goals"（Martin et al.,1987:59）.

Martin developed Halliday's work on register by locating genre in relation to register so that genre and register relate to and realize one another in important ways.According to Martin, while register functions on the level of context of situation, genre functions on the level of context of culture.The relationship can be diagrammed as follows:

In such a model, genre connects context of culture to context of situation, and register connects situation to language.In other words,"register（encompassing field, tenor and mode）contextualizes language and is in turn contextualized by genre"（Martin,1997:7）.

Martin's formulation enriches our understanding of genre and has become the most common framework in SFL genre analysis:moving from the identification of social purpose as represented in generic structural elements to the analysis of a text's register as represented in field, tenor, and mode, to language metafunctions and to more micro analyses of semantic, lexicogrammatic, and phonological/graphological features.

2.1.3 The ESP School

ESP approach is widely adopted as a tool for teaching English for non-native speakers in academic and professional settings.This approach to genre can be viewed as steering between the New Rhetoric School and Sydney School, as it employs Bakhtinian notions of intertextuality and dialogism like the New Rhetoricians, while also draws on Systemic Functional linguists'understanding of text structure（Hyland,2002）.

John Swales, internationally recognized for his Genre Analysis:English in Academic and Research Settings（1990）,is known to have led the advent of the ESP School genre research.According to Swales（1990:58）,"a genre comprises a class of communicative events, the members of which share some set of communicative purposes".These purposes constitute the rationale for a genre that"shapes the schematic structure of the discourse and influences and constrains choice of content and style"（ibid.）.Bhatia（1993）gives a similar definition of genre:"a recognizable communicative event characterized by a set of communicative purpose（s）identified and mutually understood by the members of the professional or academic community in which it regularly occurs.Most often it is highly structured and conventionalized with constraints on allowable contributions in terms of their intent, positioning, form and functional value"（ibid.:13）.From the above two definitions, it can be seen that both Swales and Bhatia take the communicative purposes as the defining features of a genre.And both of them agree that the communicative purposes of a specific genre shape the structural forms of discourses within the genre and constrain their content and style.Though earlier studies by Swales mainly focus on genres in academic settings, especially the research article genre,Bhatia has extended the scope of ESP genre study to professional settings.Following the work of the two leading figures,ESP practitioners show special interest in identifying the prototypical organization of a particular genre and its textual and linguistic features.Great attention has thus been paid to structural move analysis to describe the global organizational patterns of different genres（Hopkins Dudley-Evans,1988;Salager-Meyer,1990;Thompson,1994;Zhu,2000;Flowerdew Dudley-Evans,2002;Samraj,2002;Swales,2004）,as well as to sentence-level linguistic features, such as verb tense, passive voice, hedges, reporting verbs and so on（Gunawardena 1989;Salager-Meyer,1994;Thomas Hawes,1994;Hyland,1996ab）.

A typical ESP genre analysis tends to move from context to textual analysis.It usually begins by identifying a genre within a discourse community and defining the communicative purposes the genre is designed to achieve.Then the analysis turns to examine the genre's organization, which is often characterized by the rhetorical"moves"proposed by Swales（1990）,and to investigate the textual and linguistic features（style, tone, voice, grammar, and syntax）that realize the rhetorical moves.Bhatia（1993）outlines seven steps to analyze unfamiliar genres, which reflect the process described above.The seven-step process is listed as follows（ibid.:22-34）:

（1）Placing the given genre-text in a situational context;

（2）Surveying existing literature;

（3）Refining the situational/contextual analysis;

（4）Selecting corpus;

（5）Studying the institutional context;

（6）Levels of linguistic analysis;and

（7）Specialist information in genre analysis.

Step（1）"placing the given genre-text in a situational context"comprises placing"the genre-text（i.e.,a typical representative example of the genre）intuitively in a situational context..."（ibid.:22）,relying on internal clues in the text, prior experience with similar texts and with the professional community, and encyclopedic knowledge of the world that one has acquired.

Step（2）"surveying existing literature"is particularly important for those who do not belong to the relevant speech community.It could thus be non-obligatory to those who are members of the discourse community in question.The literature that should be surveyed includes linguistic analyses of the genre in question, or similar genres, tools, methods, theories of linguistic/discourse/genre analysis, practitioner advice, guide books, manuals etc.relevant to the speech community, and literature on the social structure, interactions, history, beliefs, goals etc.of the professional or academic communities which use the genre in question.

Step（3）"refining the situational/contextual analysis"aims at defining the speaker/writer, audience, their relationship and goals, and the historical, socio-cultural, philosophic and/or occupational placement of the relevant community.It also involves the identification of the network of surrounding texts and linguistic traditions that form the background to this particular genre-text and the extra-textual reality which the text is trying to represent, change or use.Thus one can define, describe and confirm or disprove the first intuitive findings from step 1.

In step（4）"selecting corpus",one should define and characterize the genre in question well enough to distinguish it from other similar genres.Bhatia admits that a definition of genre do not necessarily always exclusively be based on the communicative purpose alone, but also can be based on the situational context（s）,some distinctive textual characteristics or some combination of these.In addition, the criteria must be made clear for selecting a text/texts that constitute（s）the corpus:"a long single typical text for detailed analysis, a few randomly chosen texts for exploratory investigation, a large statistical sample to investigate a few specified features through easily identified indicators"（ibid.:24）.

Step（5）"studying the institutional context"suggests that genre analysts study the institutional context, including"the system and/or methodology, in which the genre is used, and the rules and conventions（linguistic, social, cultural, academic, professional）that govern the use of language"（ibid.:24）in the context.As quite a bit of information on these aspects of institutional contexts is available in the existing literature, this step becomes quite necessary in understanding the construction of a genre.

Step（6）"levels of linguistic analysis"is divided into three sub-levels.The genre analysts may concentrate on one or more of the three sub-levels of linguistic analysis based on their own judgement as to at which level（s）the most distinctive features of language occur.In the first level"analysis of lexico-grammatical features",genre-texts can be analyzed quantitatively by studying the predominant features of language（for example, quantitative study of tenses, clauses, and other syntactic properties or stylistic features）.It is generally done by carrying out a large-scale corpus-based statistical analysis.The quantitative findings may offer empirical evidence to confirm or disprove some of the intuitive statements about certain lexico-grammatical features of different genres.The second level"analysis of text-patterning or textualization"deals with the tactical aspect of conventional language use（for instance, the patterns in which language is used in a particular genre, such as how and why noun phrases and nominalizations are used in different genres）.It focuses on the way members of a particular speech community assign restricted values to various aspects of language use in a particular genre.The third level"structural interpretation of the text-genre"deals with the cognitive aspects of language organization, aiming at identifying the typical move-structure of a genre.This analysis may reveal the preferred ways of communicating intention in specific areas of inquiry.

Step（7）"specialist information in genre analysis"recommends that genre analysts consult a specialist informant, typically a practicing member of the discourse community, who may bring validity to the findings gained, provide supplementary information and add psychological reality to the analysis.However, finding a suitable specialist informant may be difficult, as it usually takes quite an effort and time to develop a common understanding of the purpose of enquiry.

Although the seven steps are mentioned one after another, it does not imply that every analysis should be carried out in exactly that order, nor that every step should necessarily be implemented in an analysis.In general,Bhatia's methodology for genre analysis provides insight into the way that most ESP genre analysts have followed, moving from context to textual analysis and applying various levels of linguistic analyses at the textual level.

The well-known and influential analysis of the research article（RA）genre by Swales（1990）generally exemplifies these levels of linguistic, textual, and structural analyses.He proposes the CARS（"Create a Research Space"）model for RA introductions, which identifies a regular pattern of"moves"and"steps"that appear in a certain order in the majority of RA introductions investigated.A"move"is a text unit that relates both to the author's intention and to the content s/he wishes to communicate;a"step"is a text unit at a lower level than a"move",providing a detailed perspective on the options open to the author in setting out the moves in the introductions.Swales（ibid.）outlines the generic structure for RA introductions as is shown in Figure 2.2.

After identifying the generic structure,Swales examines steps more specifically by analyzing text-patterning and lexico-grammatical features within different steps.In analyzing step 3（reviewing items of previous research）within move 1（establishing a territory）,for instance,Swales looks at patterns of citation（ibid.:148-149）,noting patterns in which RA authors either name the researcher being cited in their citing sentence（"integral citation"）or reference the researcher in parenthesis at the end of the sentence or in end notes（"non-integral citation"）.Moving from text-patterning to lexico-grammatical features,Swales then identifies the frequency of"reporting verbs"（such as"show","establish","claim,"etc.）that RA authors use"to introduce previous researchers and their findings"（ibid.:150）.

From the above review of the genre theories proposed by major linguistic schools, it can be seen that they cover some common ground despite their different orientations:① Genres are recognizable communicative actions.② Genres are highly structured and conventionalized constructs.③ Established members of a particular academic or professional community have greater knowledge of the use of genres than newcomers or outsiders.④ Genres are dynamic rather than static rhetorical structures which may be exploited according to the context of use.As a matter of fact, all approaches to genre research have shifted the focus or expanded their scope from the traditional concern of textual regularities to"be able to connect a recognition of regularities in discourse types with a broader social and cultural understanding of language in use"（Freedman Medway,1994:1）.