Genre in rhetoric and linguistics

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Chapter 2: Theoretical underpinnings of genre approaches

Introduction

Designing language curricula is doing applied linguistic work. However, applied linguistics is not merely the practical application of linguistic theory. Quoting Corder (1972:5), Weideman (2007c) contends that to be a good applied linguist one must, in addition to theoretical knowledge, possess « both imagination and a sharp critical faculty ». Furthermore, theoretical input should not be of a prescriptive nature. Now, more than 30 years after Corder’s groundbreaking statement, applied linguists agree that the discipline has progressed from « prescription » to « understanding » (Allwright 2006:11).
According to Weideman (2008) the relationship between theory and application in applied linguistics is accounted for by a four-step process, of which the steps may be recursive. According to him, the process of designing an applied linguistic artifact involves: (1) an identification of the language problem; (2) bringing together the designer’s technical imagination and theoretical knowledge that potentially has a bearing on the problem; (3) an initial formulation of an imaginative solution to the problem; and (4) a theoretical justification for the solution designed.
The language problem at hand (step 1), is that additional language undergraduate university students experience difficulty in acquiring the essayist literacy of the academy that should afford them access to the discourse communities of which they aspire to become members. For completing step 2, integrated theoretical knowledge is necessary about what language is and how students learn to write academically. Explicating relevant theoretical knowledge will also assist the researcher to justify the designed solution at a later stage. Implicit in the design phase, is the evaluation thereof, e.g. through piloting. Figure 2.1 is an interpretation of Weideman’s model of the design process:
This chapter outlines relevant theories and theoretical constructs from linguistics, applied linguistics, language teaching, writing pedagogy and learning theory that underpin and justify genre-based approaches.

Genre in rhetoric and linguistics

The concept of genre has featured in a number of scholarly fields, such as folklore, literary studies, rhetoric and linguistics. Initially, the main emphasis in genre studies − among folklorists, early rhetoricians and early literary theorists − was classification of texts. More recently literary theorists have started seeing genre more as a codification of discursive properties, and as having a clarificatory rather than classificatory function (Swales 1990:34-35). Since the 1980s, probably under influence of postmodernism, rhetoricians started becoming overtly anti-taxonomist. Their emphasis shifted to genres as vehicles for accomplishing social action. Interestingly, linguists as such have not devoted much attention to the notion of genre. Reasons might have been the literary connotation of the term, the traditional focus of linguistics on aspects of language below the level of the text, and thus a focus on register instead of genre (compare Swales 1990:38-42). However, for the purpose of this thesis it is necessary to explore the rhetorical as well as the linguistic theories that might explain and justify the notion of genre.

Rhetoric

Early modern rhetoricians, such as Kinneavy (1971), constructed a closed system of categories based on function, such as expressive, persuasive, literary, and referential. Later rhetorical scholars, such as Jamieson (1975), followed a diachronic approach, studying the development of discourse over a period of time, and suggested, by way of comparing rhetorical similarities and differences, a potential method of establishing the genre-membership of a particular text (Swales 1990:43). Since the 1980s, probably under influence of postmodernism, rhetoricians have become overtly anti-taxonomist. Miller, one of the main proponents, unequivocally states that « the number of genres in any society is indeterminate and depends upon the complexity and diversity of such a society » (1984:163). She further argues that « a rhetorically sound definition of genre must be centred not on the substance or form of discourse, but on the action it is used to accomplish » (1984:151). In the third place she emphasizes the intricate relationship between genres and the wider social context when observing:
What we learn when we learn a genre is not just a pattern of forms or even a method of achieving our own ends. We learn, more importantly, what ends we may have […] (Miller 1984:165)
Out of the Rhetoric school, the New Rhetoric genre movement was born, with an overt focus on genre as a dynamic force.
In contrastive rhetoric, which originated with Kaplan’s (1966) article on cultural thought patterns in intercultural education, genre assumes a prominent position. Grabe and Kaplan (1996) provide extensive evidence that contrastive rhetoric has originated from the study of literacy as language socialization, as well as the social construction theory and disciplinary studies of textual genre (compare Hinkel 2002:6-7). Work that has been done on contrastive rhetoric in academic genres includes Scarcella’s (1984) review of discourse moves in introductions to essays, and Grabe and Kaplan (1987), Kaplan (1988) and Reid’s (1993) investigation of textual divergences in various types of rhetorical modes in writing. These investigations have shed light on how findings in contrastive rhetoric can inform the teaching of L2 writing. Kaplan (1988), for example, indicated that L2 students enrolled in US universities are expected to produce academic texts that are congruent with Anglo-American theoretical paradigms, while they bring to the academy the discourse paradigms that reflect their L1 conventions of writing in English. The importance of contrastive rhetoric in the development of genre theory is emphasised in Grabe and Kaplan’s (1996) comprehensive volume on the theory of writing. Unfortunately no unified theoretical model of contrastive rhetoric has to date been developed, and thus divergent research methodologies in empirical studies of text and discourse in various rhetorical traditions have yielded results that are not always easy to compare.

Ethnography and sociolinguistics

The notion of genre has featured prominently in the work of ethnographers. The ethnographer Saville-Troike (1982:34) took genre to refer to a « type of communicative event, » and mentions jokes, stories, lectures, greetings and conversations as examples. To her, it would seem, a category only qualifies to be a genre if a particular language has an appropriate metalinguistic label or lexical item to label such a category. In ethnography the units used for segmenting, ordering and describing data should be those of the group, and not a priori categories of the investigator. A question that arises is what to do if no label exists for a particular communicative event.
In sociolinguistics, register became a pivotal concept in the analysis of language varieties; understandably so because of the emphasis on the users of language, rather than the ways members of a community perceive, categorize and use texts (in other words the uses of language). The corpus linguistic work of the sociolinguist Douglas Biber (1988; 1989) seemed promising, in that he set out to develop a linguistic typology of text types of English, based on sets of syntactic and lexical features that co-occur frequently in texts. Whereas most analyses begin with a situational or functional distinction and identify linguistic features associated with that distinction as a second step, Biber claims to have followed the opposite approach: « [Q]uantitative techniques are used to identify the groups of features that actually co-occur in texts, and afterwards these groupings are interpreted in functional terms » (Biber 1988:13). However, the categories that were separated do not satisfy Swales’ criterion, in that « the community’s category-labels » were not considered, and the resulting « clusters » do not coincide with genre categories recognized by the discourse communities in question.

Systemic Functional Linguistics

Overview

Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is undoubtedly the branch of linguistics that had the most pervasive influence on genre theory and genre pedagogy. It goes back to scholars like Firth and Malinowski, but it is Michael Halliday (1978; 1985) who is generally regarded to be the father of SFL. Systemic Functional Linguistics is functional in that it holds the view that language cannot be understood separate from the social contexts in which it is used, and that language is inherently a social phenomenon. It is systemic in its emphasis on language as a system of choice. Language is viewed as a variety of lexical and syntactic choices that can be exercised in order to realize a particular meaning.
The epistemological basis of SFL is based on an experiential model: Young children become aware that the language surrounding them changes according to different situations. Later on, they realize that spoken language is subtly different from written language, and even that there are subsets within the larger spoken and written varieties (Butt, Fahey, Feez, Spinks & Yallop 2000:2). Adults develop a fine-tuned ability to use appropriate language at different times and for different purposes. This subconscious realization and concomitant ability represent a functional view of language and language use. Linguists merely go a step further, and systematically describe the changes that occur in different situations, as well as the reasons for these changes.
The maximal unit of analysis used by Systemic Functional Linguists is the text. A text is a piece of language in use, and always occurs in two contexts, one within the other. Context of culture includes the purposes, attitudes, values and shared experiences of people living in a particular culture. It also includes culture-specific expectations, which are « ways of getting things done » (Paltridge 2002b:45). In academia an example is the different formats used by academics or professionals in different disciplines to report on progress, argue a case and propose changes to existing structures or methods. Context of culture determines the « genre » to which a text belongs. The main difference between Systemic Functional and Ethnographic approaches seems to be that the former derive all culturally relevant information mostly from the text itself, whereas the latter expresses the need to go beyond the text into ethnographic examinations of the social and cultural context in which the genre occurs to explore « insiders’ views » on the genre (Paltridge 2001:46). Today, prominent genre scholars combine the two approaches, usually during the contextual analysis phase of genre research (compare Bhatia 1993; 2002). Context of situation, on the other hand, represents situation-specific variables that combine to produce the particular « register » of a text (Paltridge 2001:46; Butt et al. 2000:3). This term covers the extralinguistic variables that determine the linguistic structure of a text, such as the words and grammatical patterns that speakers and writers use to construct texts of different varieties.
Paltridge (2001:46) summarizes the relationship between context of culture, context of situation, genre and register as follows:
The overall generic structure of the text is, in most systemic genre analysts’ view, a product of the genre and, in turn the context of culture – that is, part of a culturally evolved way of doing things – whereas language features are a result of the particular context of situation, or register.
The situational differences between texts are accounted for by three parameters of the context of situation, viz. the field, tenor and mode of discourse. Field has to do with the topic, or content of the text, tenor refers to the relationship between the speaker and hearer (or reader and writer), and mode indicates the channel of communication as well as the ways in which the text hangs together. Differences in only one of these parameters are able to create substantially different texts. Compare, for instance, a summary of a report made to be read by the technical division-head of a company, prospective financiers, and non-technical officials of a local town council. In this case, there is only a difference in tenor.

Acknowledgements 
Abstract 
Chapter 1: Introduction 
1.1 Background and purpose
1.2 The concept of genre
1.3 Rationale for the study
1.4 Criticisms and benefits of genre approaches
1.4.1 Criticisms
1.4.2 Benefits
1.5 Research questions, goals and objectives
1.5.1 Research questions
1.5.2 Objectives of the study
1.6 Methodology
1.6.1 Research design
1.6.2 Programme evaluation model
1.6.3 Ethical considerations
1.7 Concluding remarks
1.8 Chapter preview
Chapter 2: Theoretical underpinnings of genre approaches
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Genre in rhetoric and linguistics
2.2.1 Rhetoric
2.2.2 Ethnography and Sociolinguistics
2.2.3 Systemic Functional Linguistics
2.2.4 Cognitive Linguistics
2.2.5 Critical Discourse Analysis
2.2.6 Multimodal Discourse
2.2.7 Summarizing thoughts
2.3 Genre and theories of learning: the Zone of Proximal Development
2.3.1 What is the Zone of Proximal Development?
2.3.2 Interpretations of the ZPD
2.3.2.1 The scaffolding interpretation50
2.3.2.2 Cultural interpretations
2.3.3 Implications for genre-based teaching
2.4 Genre in applied linguistics and writing pedagogy
2.4.1 Applied linguistics
2.4.2 Language teaching
2.4.3 Writing pedagogy and writing research
2.4.4 Paradigms in academic writing
2.4.5 Genre-based approaches as hybrid approaches
2.5 Summary
Chapter 3: Traditions in genre pedagogy 
3.1 Introduction
3.2 English for Specific Purposes (ESP)
3.3 The Australian genre movement (Sydney school)
3.4 The New Rhetoric movement
3.4.4 Genre terminology and genre analysis
3.5 The three genre traditions: similarities and differences
Chapter 4: A survey of humanities genres 
4.1 Introduction
4.2 A survey of the institutional context: university genres, text types and their characteristics
4.3 Survey of writing requirements in the humanities
4.4 Conclusion
Chapter 5: Instructional model 
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Method versus postmethod
5.3 A possible explanation for shared pedagogical foundations
5.4 A method-neutral model for teaching genre-based disciplinary writing
5.5 The academic essay
5.6 A critical genre-based presyllabus for essay-writing interventions
5.7 Conclusion
Chapter 6: Essay-writing course for students of history − contextual analysis
6.1 Introduction and rationale
6.2 Procedure
6.3 The (pre-)syllabus
6.4 Conclusion
Chapter 7: Evaluation of the subject-specific intervention
7.1 Introduction and rationale
7.2 Quantitative evaluation of the effect
7.3 Textual analysis of the essays
7.4 Opinion survey
7.5 Conclusion
Chapter 8: Implementation and evaluation of the cross-disciplinary intervention
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Rationale and approach
8.3 Design and implementation of the intervention
8.4 Quantitative evaluation
8.5 Textual analysis of the essays
8.6 Opinion survey
8.7 Author’s reflection on the cross-disciplinary intervention
8.8 Conclusion
Chapter 9: Comparison of the subjectspecific and cross-disciplinary interventions
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Comparison of the essay ratings
9.3 Text analysis of pre- and posttests
9.4 Opinion survey
9.5 Conclusion
Chapter 10: Conclusion 
10.1 Introduction
10.2 Theoretical justification
10.3 The effectiveness of genre-based approaches
10.4 The effectiveness of narrow-angled versus wideangled interventions
10.5 Limitations of the study
10.6 Summative remarks and the way forward
Reference list
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