Genre studies is an academic subject which studies genre theory as a branch of general critical theory in several different fields, including art, literature, linguistics, rhetoric and composition studies.
Literary genre studies is a structuralist approach to the study of genre and genre theory in literary theory, film theory, and other cultural theories. The study of a genre in this way examines the structural elements that combine in the telling of a story and finds patterns in collections of stories. When these elements (or semiotic codes) begin to carry inherent information, a genre emerges.
Linguistic genre studies can be roughly divided into two schools, Systemic Functional Linguistics or "SFL", and English for Specific Purposes or "ESP." SFL scholars believe that language structure is an integral part of a text's social context and function.Bawarshi, Anis and Mary Jo Reiff. Genre: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy. Colorado: Parlor Press and WAC Clearinghouse, 2010. p. 29 SFL scholars often conduct research that focuses on genres' usefulness in pedagogy. ESP also examines the pedagogical implications of genre, focusing in particular on genre analysis as a means to help non-native English speakers to use the language and its conventions. ESP genre analysis involves identifying discourse elements such as register, formation of conceptual and genre structures, modes of thought and action that exist in a specific discourse community.Bawarshi and Reiff. Genre: An Introduction. p.41
A third approach developed from scholarship in New Rhetorics, principally Carolyn R. Miller's article "Genre as Social Action"Bawarshi and Reiff. Genre: An Introduction. p.78 and is called rhetorical genre studies (RGS). RGS has found wide application in composition studies, whose scholars insist that the textual forms that are usually called "genres" are only traces of recurring social action.Hart-Davidson, Bill. "Genres Are Enacted by Writers and Readers." Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies. Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle, eds. Logan: Utah State UP, 2015, 39-40. The social action itself, in other words, is the genre, not the document or text that it leaves behind.
Literary and linguistic branches
Systemic functional linguistics
Systemic functional linguistics scholars believe that language is organized within cultures based on cultural ideologies. The "systemic" of SFL refers to the system as a whole, in which linguistic choices are made. SFL is based largely on the work of Michael Halliday, who believed that individuals make linguistic choices based on the ideologies of the systems that those individuals inhabit. For Halliday, there is a "network of meanings" within a culture, that constitutes the "social semiotic" of that culture. This "social semiotic" is encoded and maintained by the discourse system of the culture.Halliday, Michael. Language as Social Semiotic. London: Edward Arnold, 1978. p.100, 13 For Halliday, contexts in which texts are produced recur, in what he calls "situation types." People raised within a specific culture become accustomed to the "situation types" that occur within that culture, and are more easily able to maneuver through the "situation types" within that culture than people who were not brought up within it.Bawarshi and Reif. Genre: An Introduction. p.29-32
Halliday's approach to cultural context in the formation of recurrent "situation types" influenced other scholars, such as J.R. Martin, to develop a linguistic pedagogy called the 'Sydney School'. Martin led the SFL pedagogical approach, which emphasized the role of context in text formation. Martin and his associates believed that process-based approaches to education ignored the cultural boundaries of texts, and privileged middle- and upper- class students at the expense of students from lower-class backgrounds.Bawarshi and Reif. Genre: An Introduction. p.32 According to Martin and other SFL scholars, an explicit focus on genre in literature would help literacy teaching. Focusing on genre reveals the contexts that influences texts, and teaches those contexts to students, so that they can create texts that are culturally informed.Bawarshi and Reif. Genre: An Introduction. p. 32
Through their genre work in schools, Martin and his associates developed a definition of genre as a "staged, goal-oriented, social process." In the Martinian genre model, genres are staged because they accomplish tasks that require multiple steps; they are goal-oriented because their users are motivated to see the completion of the stages to the end; and they are social because users address their texts to specific audiences.
English for Specific Purposes
English for Specific Purposes scholarship has been around since the 1960s, but ESP scholars did not begin using genre as a pedagogical approach until the 1980s, when John Swales published Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings, in which Swales laid out the methodological approach that brought together ESP and genre analysis. Swales identified two characteristics of ESP genre analysis: its focus on academic research in English and its use of genre analysis for applied ends.Bawarshi and Reif. Genre: An Introduction. p.41-42 ESP focuses on specific genres within spheres of activity, such as the medical profession, but it also focuses on the broader concept of communicative purposes within fields of study.Bawarshi and Reif. Genre: An Introduction. p.42
English for Specific Purposes shares some characteristics with SFL studies. Both believe that linguistic features are connected to social context and function, and both aim to help disadvantaged students grasp the system in which texts are created so that they can create similar texts, by teaching them the relationship between language and social function. Both try to accomplish their goals by teaching specific genres to underprivileged users.Bawarshi and Reif. Genre: An Introduction. p.42-43
However, there are also some important differences between ESP and SFL. Whereas SFL scholars focus on teaching basic genre structures to primary and secondary school students, ESP scholars are focused on teaching Professional and Academic disciplinary genres to University- and graduate-level students. ESP students tend to be more bound to discursive genre subjects, within very particular contexts. ESP focuses on micro-level genres and contexts, whereas SFL focuses on macro-level contexts.Bawarshi and Reif. Genre: An Introduction. p.43-44
Rhetorical genre studies
Rhetorical genre studies or RGS (a term coined by Aviva FreedmanFreedman, Aviva. 1999. Beyond the Text: Towards Understanding the Teaching and Learning of Genres. TESOL Quarterly 33 (4): 764–767. doi: 10.2307/3587890.) scholars examine genre as typified social action, as ways of acting based in recurrent social situations. This founding principle for RGS was developed in Carolyn R. Miller's essay "Genre as Social Action," which was published in 1984.Miller, Carolyn R. "Genre as Social Action." Quarterly Journal of Speech 70 (1984):151-167 In her article, Miller draws on Lloyd Bitzer's notion of exigence as "an imperfection marked by an urgency",Bitzer, Lloyd F. 1968. "The Rhetorical Situation." Philosophy and Rhetoric 1, p. 6. that is a condition in the world that serves as an "external cause of discourse."Miller, Carolyn R. (1984). Genre as Social Action. Quarterly Journal of Speech 70, p. 155. Miller modifies this objective view with Kenneth Burke's notion of "motive" as internal source of human action.Burke, Kenneth. 1965. Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose. Reprint ed. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. Original edition, 1935, p 32. Drawing on Alfred Schutz's phenomenological concept of typification,Schutz, A., & Luckmann, T. (1973). The structures of the life-world. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. she views situations and exigences as social constructions. Genres are typified ways of responding to recurring social situations.Miller. "Genre as Social Action." As a consequence genres are not fixed in number and cannot be organized into a taxonomy; rather they are evolving historical constructions that "change, evolve, and decay."Miller, Carolyn R. (1984). Genre as Social Action. Quarterly Journal of Speech 70, p. 163. A rhetorical approach focuses on genres not as forms but as communicative actions.
RGS scholarship has developed beyond Miller's founding definition of genre. Charles Bazerman examined the historical evolution of the experimental article in the sciences and social sciences demonstrating how the major features and variations emerged.C. Bazerman (1984). Modern evolution of the experimental report: Spectroscopic articles in Physical Review, 1893-1980. Social Studies of Science, 14, 163-96.C. Bazerman (1988). Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. He analyzed how the changing forms of the genre and the proliferation of its varieties carried out the activities of those sciences, formed the knowledge of various disciplines, and established criteria about how knowledge should be formulated and evaluated. He also found evidence about how genre expectations influenced the social structure and values of sciences.C. Bazerman (1987). Literate acts and the emergent social structure of science. Social Epistemology, 1(4), 295-310. He then examined how practices of intertextuality and citation developed with modern scientific genres to create more collaborative relations within sciences.C. Bazerman (1991). How natural philosophers can cooperate: The rhetorical technology of coordinated research in Joseph Priestley's History and Present State of Electricity. In C. Bazerman & J. Paradis (Eds.), textual dynamics of the professions (pp. 13-44). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Carol Berkenkotter and Thomas Huckin begin with the notion that genre is knowledge foundation, and argue that genres embody communities' knowledge and ways of acting. For Berkenkotter and Huckin, genre becomes a way of navigating social activity. As such, it is dynamic, because the conditions of social activity are always in flux. Recurrence, they claim, involves variation.Bawarshi and Reif. Genre: An Introduction. p.79 Berkenkotter and Huckin redefine genre as social cognition.
The notion of "uptake" is also integral to RGS scholars' understanding of genre. Anne Freadman uses uptake to describe the ways in which genres interact with each other in her articles "Uptake" and "Anyone for Tennis?".Bawarshi and Reif. Genre:An Introduction. p.83-84 She uses the game of tennis to explain the ways genres, as typified actions, are "taken up" by writers (tennis players). Tennis players, she says, do not exchange tennis balls, they exchange shots. Each shot only has meaning within the game, its rules, and the context of the game being played.Freadman, Anne. "Anyone for Tennis." Genre and the New Rhetoric. Ed. Aviva Freedman and Peter Medway. Bristol: Taylor and Francis, 1994. p.43-44. Shots are meaningful because they take place in a game. The game is meaningful because it takes place within "ceremonials." Thus, the final at Wimbledon provides a different context than a game between friends. Genres are the games that take place within ceremonials, and shots are utterances, or verbal exchanges. We cannot really understand a text without understanding the ceremonial in which it occurs.Bawarshi and Reif. Genre: An Introduction. p. 84 "Uptake" is the illocutionary response elicited by particular situations.Bawarshi and Reif. Genre: An Introduction. p. 85