Genre, discipline and identity

Ken Hyland
2015 Journal of English for Academic Purposes  
Genres: constraints and schema Few concepts have had a greater impact on how we understand and teach language than genre. The idea that prior texts have a key role in shaping communicative practices has been so influential for so long that it is hard to imagine how discourse analysts, or EAP practitioners, ever got along without it. Strictly, of course, the term refers to abstract, socially recognised ways of using language, but like any well-worn concept, genre is understood in a variety of
more » ... s: from an emphasis on context and Bakhtinian notions of intertextuality and dialogism (e.g. Coe, 2001) to descriptions of configurations of systematic language choices (e.g. Martin, 2012). John Swales's contribution, which we celebrate in this volume, has been to steer a path which acknowledges both these traditions and carves out a distinctive space for the 'ESP' concept by focusing on the texts and practices which are recognised and valued by specific communities. In Genre Analysis (Swales, 1990) and beyond, Swales has encouraged us to see genres in terms of the communities in which they are used and to understand texts as a function of the choices and constraints acting on text producers. He has also shown us that genres are not merely collections of similar texts but the schema we develop through our shared experiences to see how these texts help construct particular contexts. They are Bazerman's (1997: 17) "frames for social action" and provide the sightlines by which we orient to our environment and create meanings. Swales's work has helped us to see how the inhabitants of academic communities use the regularities of genres to develop relationships, reinforce and challenge their communities, float and dispute ideas, and generally get things done. As a result, we now know a lot more about the conventions that characterize certain genres and discourse communities (Hyland, 2004; Swales, 2004) , how such conventions come into being, how they change
doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2015.02.005 fatcat:jdqf5qdgpra7xl3ukzkdpij7ey