Towards a theory of genre? reflections on the problems and debates on theorising ‘genre’

Abstract

The concept of a theory of genre continues to be elusive. The criterion used for the generic classification of texts (both spoken and written) as belonging to given genres seems to continue to be clouded in ambivalence. Current scholarship in its divergence implicates criterion based on either communicative purpose (Swales, 1990: Chandler, 1997) or purpose and audience/discourse community (Driscoll, 2004 & 2005). Other scholarship argues for a content based approach - often including the context as well - (Bhatia, 1981: Chandler, 1997) whereas others argue for a classification based on linguistic structure. On the other hand, recent scholarship has taken a more stylistic approach that adopts a features discrimination (Widdowson, 1998: Bhatia, 1981, Halliday 1994). This paper examines the weaknesses of these approaches working independent of each other and proposes an approach that synthesises tenets from mainstream genre analysis, discourse analysis and linguistic stylistics to create a holistic and more concrete approach to generic segmentation of texts. It argues that the creation of a theory should be based on an established/establishable ‘general bundle of tenets’ that explicate the primary concerns of the theory and that these should be concrete. It therefore adopts a discourse analysis – mainstream genre analysis – linguistic stylistics dialectic approach to suggest a possible ‘bundle’ of basic tenets for use in the generic discrimination of texts within a theory of genre. It suggests that ‘genre’ theorisation from the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) perspective offers a possible way out of the theoretical conflicts with ‘genre’ theory.