CONTENTS CROSS‐REFERENCED

Topic A INTRODUCTION B DEVELOPMENT C EXPLORATION E EXTENSION Topic

1 What is discourse analysis? Three ways of looking at discourse Doing discourse analysis: first The three perspectives revisited 1
steps (Zellig Harris; Henry G.
Widdowson; James Paul Gee)
2 Texts and texture Cohesion and coherence Analyzing texture Two perspectives on texture 2
(Michael A. K. Halliday and
Ruqaiya Hasan; David
Rumelhart)
3 Texts and their social functions All the right moves Analyzing genres Genres, discourse communities 3
and power (John Swales, Vijay
K. Bhatia)
4 Discourse and ideology Constructing reality Other people’s voices Ideologies in discourse (Norman 4
Fairclough; James Paul Gee)
5 Spoken discourse The texture of talk Analyzing speech acts Two perspectives on 5
conversation (John L. Austin;
Emanuel A. Schegloff and
Harvey Sacks)
6 Strategic interaction Negotiating relationships and Analyzing conversational Frames in interaction (Deborah 6
activities strategies Tannen and Cynthia Wallat)
7 Context, culture and The SPEAKING model Analyzing contexts The ethnography of 7
communication communication (Dell Hymes;
TM
Muriel Saville-Troike)
8 Mediated discourse analysis Mediation Doing mediated discourse Discourse and action (Ron 8
analysis Scollon)
9 Multimodal discourse analysis Modes, meaning and action Doing multimodal discourse Two perspectives on 9
analysis multimodality (Gunther Kress,
and Theo van Leeuwen; Sigrid
Norris)
10 Corpus-assisted discourse Procedures for corpus-assisted Analyzing corpora Finding ‘Discourses’ with 10
analysis discourses analysis corpus-assisted analysis (Paul
Baker, and Tony McEnery)

6
A3 TEXTS AND THEIR SOCIAL FUNCTIONS
In the previous section we talked about how the internal structure of a text and
the expectations we as readers have about it contribute to a text’s texture. In this
section we will explore how the structures and expectations associated with
different kinds of texts contribute to how they function in the social world – how
they help to define social activities and the groups of people who take part in
them.

Different patterns of texture are associated with different types of texts.

Newspaper articles, for example, tend to favor particular kinds of cohesive
devices and are structured in a conventional way with a summary of the main
points in the beginning and with the details coming later (see Section C2). To
understand why such textual conventions are associated with this type of text,
however, we need to understand something about the people who produce and
consume it and what they are doing with it. The study of the social functions of
different kinds of texts is called genre analysis.

The notion of genre is probably familiar to you from your experience as a

moviegoer. Different films belong to different genres: there are westerns, love
stories, horror movies, thrillers, ‘chick flicks’ and many other film genres. Before
we go to the movies, we always have some idea about the film we are about to
see based on the genre that it belongs to. These expectations include not just
ideas about the kind of story the film will tell and the kinds of characters it will
include, but also ideas about things like cinematography, lighting, special effects
and other filming techniques. At the same time, of course, not all films fit neatly
into genres. We might go to a film called Scary Movie and find that it is actually a
comedy, or we might expect a film like Brokeback Mountain, whose poster
portrays cowboys, to be a western, only to find that it is also a love story. In fact,
one thing that makes such films so successful is that they creatively confound our
expectations by mixing different genres together.

The notion of genre in discourse analysis goes beyond examining the

conventional structures and features of different kinds of texts to asking what
these structures and features can tell us about the people who use the texts and
what they are using them to do. In his book Analyzing Genre, Vijay Bhatia,
drawing on the work of John Swales, defines genre as follows:

(A genre is) a recognizable communicative event characterized by a set of

communicative purposes identified and mutually understood by members
of the community in which it occurs. Most often it is highly structured
TMand
conventionalized with constraints on allowable contributions in terms of
their intent, positioning, form and functional value. These constraints,
however, are often exploited by expert members of the discourse
community to achieve private intentions within the framework of the
socially recognized purpose(s). (Bhatia 1993:13, emphasis mine)

9
There are three important aspects to this definition which need to be further
explained: first, that genres are not defined as types of texts but rather as types
of communicative events; second, that these events are characterized by
constraints on what can and cannot be done within them; and third, that expert
users often exploit these constraints in creative and unexpected ways.

Genres are communicative events

While it might not seem unusual to refer to spoken genres like conversations and
debates and political speeches as ‘events’, thinking of written texts like
newspaper articles, recipes and job application letters as ‘events’ might at first
seem rather strange. We are in many ways accustomed to thinking of texts as
‘objects’. Seeing them as ‘events’, however, highlights the fact that all texts are
basically instances of people doing things with or to other people: a newspaper
article is an instance of someone informing someone else about some recent
event; a recipe is an instance of someone instructing another person how to
prepare a particular kind of food; and a job application letter is an instance of
someone requesting that another person give him or her a job. As Martin (1985:
250) points out, ‘genres are how things get done, when language is used to
accomplish them.’ Thus, the ways different kinds of texts are put together is
inseparable from the things the text is trying to ‘get done’ in a particular
historical, cultural and social context.

Of course, most texts are not just trying to get only one thing done. The
communicative purposes of texts are often multiple and complex. A recipe, for
example, may be persuading you to make a certain dish (or to buy a certain
product with which to make it) as much as it is instructing you how to do it, and a
newspaper article might be attempting not just to inform you about a particular
event, but also to somehow affect your opinion about it. The different people
using the text might also have different purposes in mind: while a job applicant
sees his or her application letter as a way to convince a prospective employer to
hire him or her, the employer might see the very same application letter as a
means of ‘weeding out’ unsuitable candidates.

Conventions and Constraints

Because genres are about ‘getting things done’, the way they are structured and
the kinds of features they contain are largely determined by what people want to
do with them. The kinds of information I might include in a job application, for
example, would be designed to convince a prospective employer that I am the
right person for the job. This information would probably not include my recipe
TM
for chocolate brownies or my opinion about some event I read about in a
newspaper. Genres, therefore, come with ‘built‐in’ constraints as to what kinds of
things they can include and what kinds of things they cannot, based on the
activity they are trying to accomplish.

These constraints govern not just what can be included, but also how it should be
included. In my job application letter, for example, I would probably want to

10
present the information in a certain order, beginning by indicating the post I am
applying for, and then going on to describe my qualifications and experience, and
ending by requesting an appointment for an interview. Putting this information
in a different order, for example, waiting until the end of the letter to indicate the
post for which I am applying, would be considered odd.

The order in which I do things in a genre, what in genre analysis is called the
‘move structure’ of a particular genre, often determines how successfully I am
able to fulfill the communicative purpose of the genre. Stating which post I am
applying for at the beginning of my job application letter is a more efficient way
of introducing the letter because it helps to create a framework for the
information that comes later.

But what is important about these conventions and constraints is not just that
they make communicative events more efficient, but also that they demonstrate
that the person who produced the text knows ‘how we do things’. Prospective
employers read application letters not just to find out what post an applicant is
applying for and what qualifications or experience that person has, but also to
find out if that person knows how to write a job application letter. In other
words, the ability to successfully produce this type of genre following particular
conventions is taken as an indication that the writer is a ‘certain kind of person’
with a certain level of education who ‘knows how to communicate like us’. In
fact, for some employers, the qualifications that applicants demonstrate through
successfully producing this genre are far more important than those they
describe in the letter itself.

Creativity

That is not to say that all job application letters, or other genres like newspaper
articles and recipes, are always exactly the same. As the directors of the ‘hybrid’
films described above can tell us, often the most successful texts are those which
break the rules, defy conventions and push the boundaries of constraints. Expert
producers of texts, for example, sometimes mix different kinds of texts together,
or embed one genre into another, or alter in some way the moves that are
included or the order in which they are presented. Of course, there are
limitations to how much a genre can be altered and still be successful at
accomplishing what its producers want to accomplish. There are always risks
associated with being creative.

There are several important points to be made here. The first is that such
creativity would not be possible without the existence of conventions and
constraints, and the reason innovations can be effective is that they ‘play off’
TMor
exploit previously formed expectations. The second is that such creativity must
itself have some relationship to the communicative purpose of the genre and the
context in which it is used. Writing a job application letter in the form of a
sonnet, for example, may be more effective if I want to get a job as an editor at a
literary magazine than if I want to get a job as a software engineer. Finally, being
able to successfully ‘bend’ and ‘blend’ genres is very much a matter of and a

11
marker of expertise: in order to break the rules effectively, you must also be able
to show that you have mastered the rules.

Discourse Communities

It should be clear by now that at the center of the concept of genre is the idea of
belonging. We produce and use genres not just in order to get things done, but
also to show ourselves to be members of particular groups and to demonstrate
that we are qualified to participate in particular activities. Genres are always
associated with certain groups of people that have certain common goals and
common ways of reaching these goals. Doctors use medical charts and
prescriptions to do the work of curing people. Solicitors use contracts and legal
briefs to defend people’s rights. As a student, you and your teachers use things
like textbooks, handouts, PowerPoint presentations and examinations to
accomplish the tasks of teaching and learning. These different genres not only
help the people in these groups get certain things done; they also help to define
these groups, to keep out people who do not belong in them, and to regulate the
relationships between the people who do belong.

John Swales calls these groups discourse communities. In the excerpt from his
book Genre Analysis (1990) which is included in Section D3, he describes a
number of features that define discourse communities, among which are that
they consist of ‘expert’ members whose job it is to socialize new members into
‘how things are done’, that members have ways of regularly communicating with
and providing feedback to one another, and that members tend to share a certain
vocabulary or ‘jargon’. The two most important characteristics of discourse
communities are that members have common goals and common means of
reaching those goals (genres). These goals and the means of reaching them work
to reinforce each other. Every time a member makes use of a particular genre, he
or she not only moves the group closer to the shared goals, but also validates
these goals as worthy and legitimate and shows him or herself to be a worthy
and legitimate member of the group.

Thus, genres not only link people together, they also link people with certain
activities, identities, roles and responsibilities. In a very real way, then, genres
help to regulate and control what people can do and who people can’ be’ in
various contexts (see Section A8).

This regulation and control is exercised in a number of ways. First of all, since
the goals of the community and the ways those goals are to be accomplished are
‘built‐in’ to the texts that members of a discourse community use on a daily basis,
it becomes much more difficult to question those goals. Since mastery of the
genre is a requirement for membership, members must also ‘buy in’ to the goals
of the community. Finally, since texts always create certain kinds of relationships
between those who have produced them and those who are using them, when
the conventions and constraints associated with texts become fixed and difficult
to change, these roles and relationships also become fixed and difficult to change.
When looked at in this way, genres are not just ‘text types’ that are structured in

12
certain ways and contain certain linguistic features; they are important tools
through which people, groups and institutions define, organize and structure
social reality.

 Look deeper into this topic online

13
B3 ALL THE RIGHT MOVES
Texts that are structured according to particular generic frameworks are called
genres. But, as we noted in Section A3, genres are more than just texts; they are
means by which people get things done, and the way they are structured depends
crucially on what the particular people using a genre want or need to do. In other
words, what determines the way a particular genre is put together is its
communicative purpose, and so this must be our central focus in analyzing
genres.

Usually, the overall communicative purpose of a genre can be broken down into
a number of steps that users need to follow in order to achieve the desired
purpose — rather like the steps in a recipe — and typically the most important
constraints and conventions regarding how a genre is structured involve 1)
which steps must be included, and 2) the order in which they should appear. In
the field of genre analysis these steps are known as moves.

John Swales, the father of genre analysis, illustrated the idea of moves in his
analysis of introductions to academic articles. Instead of asking the traditional
question: ‘how is this text structured?’, Swales asked ‘What do writers of such
texts need to do in order to achieve their desired purpose? (which, in the case of
an introduction to an academic article, is mainly getting people to believe that
the article is worth reading). In answering this question, Swales identified four
moves characteristic of such texts. An introduction to an academic article, he said,
typically:

1. Establishes the field in which the writer of the study is working;

2. Summarizes the related research or interpretations on one aspect of
the field;
3. Creates a research space or interpretive space (a ‘niche’) for the
present study by indicating a gap in current knowledge or by raising
questions; and
4. Introduces the study by indicating what the investigation being
reported will accomplish for the field. (adapted from Swales 1990)

Of course, not all introductions to academic articles contain all four of these
moves in exactly the order presented by Swales. Some article introductions may
contain only some of these moves, and some might contain different moves.
Furthermore, the ways these moves are realized might be very different for
articles about engineering and articles about English literature. The point that
Swales was trying to make, however, was not that these moves are universal or
in some way obligatory, but that these are the prototypical moves one would
expect to occur in this genre, and understanding these default expectations is the
first step to understanding how ‘expert users’ might creatively flout these
conventions.

56
At the same time, it is important to remember that not all genres are equally
‘conventionalized’; while some genres have very strict rules about which moves
should be included and what order they should be in, other genres exhibit much
more variety (see for example the weblog entries discussed Section C3).

One genre which has a particularly consistent set of communicative moves is the
genre of the ‘personal advertisement’ (sometimes called the ‘dating
advertisement’) which sometimes appears in the classified sections of
newspapers and, increasingly, on online social media and dating sites. The
following is an example given by Justine Coupland in her 1996 study of dating
advertisement in British newspapers:

Sensual, imaginative brunette, 25, artistic, intelligent, with a sense of

humour. Enjoys home life, cooking, sports, country life. No ties, own
home. Seeking a tall, strong, intelligent fun companion with inner depth
for passionate, loving romance, 25‐35. Photo guarantees reply. Must feel
able to love Ben my dog too. London/anywhere. (Coupland, 1996: 187)

Advertisements like this tend to consist of five moves:

1) The advertiser describes himself or herself (Sensual, imaginative

brunette…);
2) The advertiser describes the kind of person he or she is looking for
(Seeking tall, strong, intelligent…);
3) The advertiser describes the kind of relationship or activities he or
she wishes to engage in with the target (for passionate, loving romance);
4) The advertiser gives additional information, makes a humorous remark
or issues a challenge (Photo guarantees reply. Must feel able to love Ben my
dog too); and
5) The advertiser indicates how he or she can be contacted (by, for
example, giving a telephone number, an email address, or a post office box
– this move is not present in the excerpt Coupland gives, but was
presumably present in some form in the original ad).

Of course, as we will see below, dating ads in other contexts might have slightly
different move structures, but all of these moves will likely be present in one
form or another. The reason for this is that these moves (especially 1, 2, 3, and 5)
are essential if the overall communicative purpose of finding a partner is to be
achieved.

Such ads also tend to have certain regularities in style and the kinds of language
that is used to realize these five moves. If they appear in newspapers, for
example, they are often written in a kind of telegraphic style, which omits non‐
essential function words (since advertisers usually have a word limit or are
charged by the word). In most cases, self‐descriptions and other‐descriptions
contain information about things like age, appearance, and personality expressed
in lists of positive adjectives (like young, fit, fun­loving), and the goal is almost
always a romantic or sexual relationship or activities (like opera, candlelight

57
dinners, quiet evenings at home) which are normally associated with or act as
euphemisms for sex or romance.

In a sense, such advertisements not only serve the communicative purpose of

individual members of a discourse community to find suitable partners, but they
also serve to define and reinforce the values of the discourse community as a
whole regarding what kinds of partners and activities are considered desirable.
Therefore, being able to compose such ads successfully is not just about
portraying oneself as desirable, but also about portraying oneself as a competent
member of a particular community of users.

Of course, many different kinds of discourse communities use this genre for
different purposes, and so one might identify ‘sub‐genres’ of the personal
advertisement for communities of heterosexual singles, gay men, seniors, and
any number of other groups, each with different conventions and constraints on
what kind of information should be included and how it should be structured.
One such ‘sub‐genre’ is the matrimonial advertisement found in communities of
South Asians, an example of which is given below:

A well-settled uncle invites matrimonial correspondence from slim, fair,

educated South Indian girl, for his nephew, 25 years, smart, M.B.A., green
card holder, 5’6". Full particulars with returnable photo appreciated. (Nanda,
2000: 196-204)

The most obvious difference in this ad from the first example given is that the
advertiser is not the person who will be engaging in the sought after
relationship, but rather a family member acting as an intermediary. Another
important difference has to do with the kinds of information included in the
descriptions. Ads of this sub‐genre often include information such as
immigration status, educational attainment, income, caste, and religion,
information that is not a common feature of dating ads in other communities.
Another rather unique sub‐genre of personal ads are ads placed by lesbians in
search of reproductive partners, such as those examined by Susan Hogben and
Justine Coupland in their 2000 study. Here is an example of such an ad:

Loving, stable lesbian couple require donor. Involvement encouraged but

not essential. HIV test required. London. BoxPS34Q. (Hogben and
Coupland 2000: 464)

What is interesting about this ad and many of those like it is that there is no
elaborate description of the kind of person sought or what he or she is sought for
beyond the use of the term ‘donor’, a term which, in this community, presumably
communicates all of the necessary information. Another interesting aspect of this
sub‐genre is that the ‘commenting move’, a move which in typical heterosexual
dating ads is usually of the least consequence, in these ads often includes vital
information about legal and health issues that are central to the practice of
surrogate parenthood.

58
The most important point we can take from these two examples is that generic
variation is not just a matter of the different values or styles of different
discourse communities, but is also very often a function of differences in the
overall communicative purpose of the sub‐genre (finding a sexual partner, a wife,
a reproductive partner).

Bending and Blending

Despite the stylistic variety in personal advertisements among different

discourse communities, this genre nevertheless remains very conventionalized,
with fairly strict constraints on what is considered a relevant contribution.
Advertisers must describe themselves, describe the kind of person they are
seeking, and describe the kind of relationship they want to have. Ironically,
however, the strongly conventionalized nature of this genre, the fact that nearly
all examples of it have more or less the same structure, has the potential to work
against the overall communicative purpose, which is attracting the attention of
interested (and interesting) readers. Consequently, it is not uncommon for
‘expert users’ of this genre to try to make their ads stand out by ‘playing with’ the
conventions of the genre.

One way of ‘playing with’ generic conventions, which Bhatia (1997) calls, genre
bending, involves flouting the conventions of a genre in subtle ways which, while
not altering the move structure substantially, makes a particular realization of a
genre seem creative or unique. One way writers of personal advertisements
sometimes bend this genre is by flouting the expectations for self‐
aggrandizement associated with it. The following example comes from a study by
Jones on gay personal ads in Hong Kong:

CHINESE, 20, STILL YOUNG, but not good‐looking, not attractive, not sexy,
not hairy, not fit, not tall, not experienced, not mature, not very intelligent
but Thoughtful and Sincere, looking for friendship and love. (Jones 2000:
46)

Another way of ‘playing with’ generic conventions is to mix the conventions of

one genre with another, a process which Bhatia (1997) refers to as genre
blending. In the following example from Coupland’s study, for instance, the
advertiser blends the conventions of the dating ad genre with the conventions of
another genre, namely ads for automobiles.

CLASSIC LADY limousine, mint condition, excellent runner for years seeks
gentleman enthusiast 45+ for TLC and excursions in the Exeter area BOX
555L. (Coupland 1996: 192)

Ironically, what both of these writers are doing by flouting the conventions of the
genre is subtly distancing themselves from the discourse community of users
while at the same time identifying with it. This seemingly odd strategy is less
surprising when one considers that most people who post such ads feel some
ambivalence about identifying themselves as members of the community of

59
people who have resorted to such means to find a partner. By ‘playing with’ the
genre they succeed in resisting the commodifying nature of the genre (Coupland
1996) and humanizing themselves, one through modesty, and the other through
humor. It is a way of saying, ‘even though I am posting a personal ad, I am not the
usual kind of person who posts such ads.’

While membership in other discourse communities does not usually involve the
same kind of ambivalence, ‘tactical’ aspects of using genres like bending and
blending are common in nearly all communities, and, indeed, are often markers
of users’ expertise. Of course, in order for blending to be effective it must result
in some sort of enhancement that contributes to the overall communicative
purpose being achieved more effectively or more efficiently. Similarly, when
bending a genre, one must be careful not to bend it to the point of breaking.
Whether a particular use of a genre is considered a creative innovation or an
embarrassing failure is ultimately a matter of whether or not the original
communicative purpose of the genre is achieved.

Modes, Media and Context

A number of other important factors determine how genres are used and how
they change. One, which we deal with in more detail in a later Sections A9 and
B9, has to do with the different modes (e.g. writing, graphics, video) that are
available for constructing the genre. Another, which we will discuss in Section
B8, has to do with the media through which genres are produced and distributed.

Both of these factors are important in relation to the genre we have been
discussing, personal advertisements, given the fact that recently this genre has,
to a large extent, migrated online. Nowadays it is more likely that one would
encounter such an advertisement on the Internet than in a newspaper. As a
result of this migration, the genre itself has changed dramatically.
First, it has changed in terms of the different modes that are available to users to
realize the moves discussed above. Because it is so easy to upload digital
photographs and even video, self‐descriptions in online personal advertisements
are not dependent on text alone.

Second, websites that host such advertisements often require users to fill out
web forms, which specify exactly which information should be included and
render that information in a predetermined format. Such standardization leads
to more uniformity, but also makes it easier for users to electronically search
through thousands of ads using keywords.

Third, Internet‐based dating advertisements include all kinds of ways for the
advertiser and target to interact, including sending online messages, engaging in
real‐time video chat, or exchanging forms of communication unique to this
medium like virtual ‘kisses’, ‘pokes’ and ‘hugs’, ‘winks’ and ‘hearts’ (see Jones
2009a).

60
Finally, with the development of mobile technologies, users of such genres can
access them anywhere through their mobile phones and use GPS tools to search
for suitable partners within a certain radius of their present location.
The point is that genres inevitably change, either because the communicative
goals of users change or because technologies for the production or distribution
of texts introduce new, more efficient ways of fulfilling old communicative goals.
Every time a genre changes, however, new sets of conventions and constraints
are introduced, and users need to invent new ways to operate strategically
within these constraints and to bend or blend the genre in creative ways.

 Look deeper into this topic online

61
C3 ANALYZING GENRES
Analyzing genres involves more than just analyzing the structure of particular
types of texts. It involves understanding how these text types function in social
groups, how they reinforce and reflect the concerns of and social relationships in
these groups, and how they change over time as societies and the groups within
them change. Therefore, analyzing genres requires as much attention to social
context as it does to texts.

Part of this context includes other genres that the genre under consideration is
related to. Genres are related to other genres in a number of different ways. First,
actions or ‘communicative events’ associated with genres are usually part of
larger chains of events that involve different genres. The personal ads we looked
at in the Section B3, for example, might be followed by letters or emails, phone
calls and dinner dates. And so, just as moves in a genre are often arranged in a
kind of sequential structure, genres themselves are also often related to one
another in sequential chains based on the ways they are employed by people as
they work to achieve larger communicative purposes.

Genres are also related to other genres in non‐sequential relationships that are
called networks. A job application letter, for example is related to the job ad that
prompted it, the applicant’s résumé which might accompany the letter, and any
letters of reference former employers or teachers of the applicant might have
written in support of the application. The letter is also related to the letters of all
of the other applicants who are applying for the same job. Genres are said to be
linked together in networks when they have some sort of intertextual
relationship with one another, that is, when one genre makes reference to
another genre or when the users of a genre need to make reference to another
genre in order to realize the communicative purpose for which the genre is
intended.

Genres can also be seen as existing in larger genre ecologies in which texts that
are not directly related to one another in chains or networks can nevertheless
affect one another in sometimes subtle and sometimes dramatic ways. Like
natural ecologies, genre ecologies are not static: conditions change; old discourse
communities dissolve and new ones form; and genres change and evolve as users
creatively bend or blend them, or else become extinct if they can no longer fulfill
the communicative goals of their users. Online personal ads, for example, are fast
replacing print‐based personal ads because they offer users more efficient ways
to fulfill their communicative goals. Similarly, online news sources are giving rise
to changes in print‐based news magazines, many of which now contain shorter
articles and more pictures in imitation of their online counterparts.

Genre analysis, therefore, must account not just for the way a particular genre is
structured and its function in a particular discourse community, but also the
dynamic nature of the genre, how it has and continues to evolve in response to
changing social conditions, the relationships it has to other genres past and

110
present, and the multiple functions it might serve in multiple discourse
communities.

One particularly good example of the dynamic nature of genres and their
adaptability to different discourse communities and different communicative
purposes is the genre of the weblog or blog. Technically a blog is simply a
dynamic web page that is frequently updated with entries appearing in reverse
chronological order. Since the introduction of blogs in the mid 1990s, however,
they have developed certain conventionalized features: blog entries, for example,
are typically short, written in an informal style, and often contain links to other
blogs, web pages or online content such as videos. Blogs also often contain
features such as opportunities for readers to comment, ‘blogrolls’ (a list of
hyperlinks to related blogs) and ‘permalinks’ (hyperlinks that point to specific
entries or forums contained in the blog’s archives).

Like the personal advertisements analyzed in the last section, the genre of the
blog also contains many sub‐genres used by different discourse communities for
different communicative purposes. There are, for example, art blogs and photo
blogs and video blogs and microblogs, just to mention a few varieties. Scholars of
this genre, however, have identified two broad types of blogs: the filter‐type and
the diary‐type. These two types have different conventions associated with them
and tend to serve different discourse communities.

Filter‐type blogs are blogs whose main purpose is to deliver to readers news
stories and links to other media which are ‘filtered’ based on readers’ presumed
membership in a particular discourse community (usually characterized by
things like political beliefs, lifestyle, or profession). Below (figure C3.1) is an
entry from one of these types of blogs called The Daily Dish, a political blog
moderated by the commentator Andrew Sullivan from 2006 to 2011, which
advocated socially progressive and fiscally conservative views.

This entry illustrates many of the moves typical of entries in filter‐type blogs.
They usually begin with a title, followed by information about when the entry
was published (Date/Time) and who wrote it (Author). The body typically
begins with an introduction to the material that will be linked to, quoted or
embedded, as well as some kind of comment on the material. Introducing and
commenting moves are sometimes realized separately, but sometimes, as in this
example, they are realized together (‘A powerful video of a man standing up for
his mothers.’) The most important move in entries in filter‐type blogs is that of
pointing readers to some news, information or media external to the blog itself.
This is sometimes done with a hyperlink, sometimes with a quote from the
original source, sometimes with some embedded media (such as a photograph or
a video), and sometimes with a combination of these methods. All three methods
are present in the example below. Some sort of attribution of the original source
or author of the material is also usually included. Finally, such entries also
commonly include tools at the end which give readers a chance to comment on
the entry or to share it through email or social media like Facebook.

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Figure C3.1 From The Daily Dish

As was noted above, the main communicative purpose of this type of blog entry
is to ‘filter’ or select content from other websites that may be of interest to
readers of a particular blog. It is this process of selection, along with the
perspective that the blogger takes on the selected content that acts to define
membership in the particular discourse community that the blog serves. By
linking to this particular story, embedding this particular video, and referring to
it as ‘powerful’ and to the speaker as ‘a man standing up for his mothers,’ the
author of this entry constructs the discourse community which this blog serves
as made up of people who are likely to support marriage rights for same sex
couples. At the same time, readers of the blog who choose to ‘share’ this entry
are also likely to share it with other like‐minded people. For this reason, critics of
filter‐type blogs have pointed out that, rather than encouraging political debate,
they tend to act as ‘echo‐chambers’ in which members of discourse communities
simply communicate among themselves and reinforce one another’s opinions.
Diary‐type blogs tend to follow a slightly different structure and include different
kinds of moves. The example below is from the blog of a young woman from
Singapore attending Brown University in the United States.

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Figure C3.2 From Don’t Make Me Mad (Cheryn­ann Chew’s blog)

As in filter‐type blogs, diary‐type blog entries begin with a title and the date and
time the entry was written. Sometimes, as in this entry, they do not contain the
author’s name since all of the entries in the blog are by the same author. The
move structure of diary‐type blogs tends to be more open and unpredictable
than in filter‐type blogs, since the purpose is for the author to reflect on an
experience, thought or memory, and this reflection may take the form of a
narrative, an analysis or even an argument. In the example above, the blogger
begins by introducing the topic she is going to be writing about, then goes on to
give some evaluative comment on this topic, and then goes on to offer some
elaboration or details about the topic. Diary‐type blogs also sometimes include
embedded media, usually in the form of digital photographs.

As with filter‐type blog entries, the communicative purpose of these entries, to

share personal experiences, thoughts and impressions, helps to define the
discourse community. Although anyone can read such blogs, they are primarily
intended for the author’s friends and serve the function of developing and
strengthening personal relationships. It is, in fact, the often intensely personal
nature of the material in such blogs expressed in a public forum that makes this
genre particularly unique.

This focus on creating solidarity within a particular discourse community, then,

is something that both filter‐type and diary‐type blogs share. Often this is

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facilitated through processes like commenting and linking to blogs and blog
entries posted by other members of the community. These practices of
commenting and linking also serve to uphold the norms of the community and
police its membership, communicating things like approval, acceptance and
shared values. Although links or references to other texts are not as central a
part of diary‐type blogs as they are of filter‐type blogs, they do occur. In the
example above, for example, the author refers to pictures posted on her
Facebook page.

Thus blog entries exist in an intertextual relationship with other texts and other
genres. They are sequentially linked in chains to previously posted entries and
are often entrained to a sequence of external events, whether it is an unfolding
news story or the unfolding personal life of the blogger. They form networks
with other texts like entries on other blogs, web pages, social media sites, stories
in online newspapers and YouTube videos. They are also part of wider ecologies
of texts and relationships within discourse communities and societies, often
playing an important part in the management of social networks or in public
debates about important events or political issues.

Blogs also have a complex evolutionary history and relationship with older
genres. Although blogger Rebecca Blood (2000) insists that blogs are the
internet’s first ‘native genre’, other scholars have pointed out their relationship
to older genres. Diary‐type blogs, for example, fulfill some of the communicative
functions previously fulfilled by handwritten journals, travel logs, personal
letters, and personal web pages; and filter‐type blogs draw on the traditions of
press clipping services, news digests, edited anthologies, newspaper editorials
and letters to the editor. Many scholars therefore consider blogs to be a hybrid
genre, the result of a creative blending of multiple other genres made possible by
new technology.

 Find additional examples online

Activity

Because of their short history and the multiple purposes to which they can be
put, the conventions and constraints associated with blogs are difficult to pin
down. Even the distinction between filter‐type blogs and diary‐type blogs
discussed here is not hard and fast; many blog entries combine features of both
types.

The advantage of analyzing blogs is that they give us an opportunity to observe a

newly emerging and dynamic genre, which has the potential to fulfill many
different kinds of communicative purposes for many different kinds of discourse
communities. In order to understand something about this variety, go to a blog
directory like Technorati.com (http://technorati.com/blogs/directory/) and
compare entries from blogs from two different categories. The categories listed

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in Technorati include: entertainment, business, sports, politics, autos,
technology, living, green and science.

Use the following questions to guide your analysis:

 What are the discourse communities these blogs serve? How do you
know? In what ways do they fulfill Swales’s defining characteristics of
a discourse community (see D3) and in what ways do they deviate
from these defining characteristics? How do the blogs you have chosen
contribute to defining and maintaining these discourse communities?
 What are the communicative purposes of these blogs? How do they
differ?
 How are the move structures of the two entries that you have chosen
similar or different? Do they resemble diary‐type blog entries or filter‐
type blog entries, or do they constitute a different type altogether?
How do the moves and the ways they are structured contribute to the
realization of the overall communicative purposes of the two entries?
 How are the blog entries that you have chosen linked to other texts or
genres in either genre chains or genre networks? How are they
situated within larger textual ecologies? What other genres do they
resemble?

 Do more activities online

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D3 GENRES, DISCOURSE COMMUNITIES AND POWER
The two excerpts below are from two important figures in the field of genre
analysis. In the first, John Swales, clarifies the concept of ‘discourse community’
by providing six ‘defining characteristics’ having to do with people’s
relationships to one another and to the texts that they use together. In the
second, Vijay Bhatia discusses the tension between creativity and conformity in
genre and how this relates to issues of power and politics among members of a
discourse community.

A.
A conceptualization of discourse community
John Swales (reprinted from J. Swales, Genre Analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990, pp. 24‐27)

I would now like to propose six defining characteristics that will be necessary
and sufficient for identifying a group of individuals as a discourse community.

1. A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.

These public goals may be formally inscribed in documents (as is often

the case with associations and clubs), or they may be more tacit. The
goals are public, because spies may join speech and discourse communities
for hidden purposes of subversion, while more ordinary people may join
organizations with private hopes of commercial or romantic advancement. In
some instances, but not in many, the goals may be high level or abstract. In a
Senate or Parliament there may well exist overtly adversarial groups of
members, but these adversaries may broadly share some common objective as
striving for improved government. In the much more typical non‐adversarial
discourse communities, reduction in the broad level of agreement may fall to a
point where communication breaks down and the discourse community splits. It
is commonality of goal, not shared object of study that is criterial, even if the
former often subsumes the latter. But not always. The fact that the shared object
of study is, say, the Vatican, does not imply that students of the Vatican in history
departments, the Kremlin, dioceses, birth control agencies and liberation
theology seminaries form a discourse community.

2. A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its

members.

The participatory mechanisms will vary according to the community: meetings,

telecommunications, correspondence, newsletters, conversations and so forth.
This criterion is quite stringent because it produces a negative answer to the
case of 'The Cafe Owner Problem' (Najjar, personal communication). [n
generalized form, the problem goes as follows: individuals A, B, C and so on
occupy the same professional roles in life. They interact (in speech and writing)

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with the same clienteles; they originate, receive and respond to the same kind of
messages for the same purposes; they have an approximately similar range of
genre skills. And yet, as cafe owners working long hours in their own
establishments, and not being members of the Local Chamber of Commerce, A,
Band C never interact with one another. Do they form a discourse community?
We can notice first that 'The Cafe Owner Problem' is not quite [ike those
situations where A, Band C operate as 'point'. A, Band C may be lighthouse
keepers on their lonely rocks, or missionaries in their separate Jungles, or
neglected consular officials in their rotting outposts. In all these cases, although
A, Band C may never interact, they all have lines of communication back to base,
and presumably acquired discourse community membership as a key element in
their initial training. Bizzell (1987) argues that the cafe owner kind of social
group will be a discourse community because 'its members may share the social‐
class based or ethnically‐based discursive practices of people who are likely to
become cafe owners in their neighborhood' (1987:5). However, even if this
sharing of discursive practice occurs, it does not resolve the logical problem of
assigning membership of a community to individuals who neither admit nor
recognize that such a community exists.

3. A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide

information and feedback.

Thus, membership implies uptake of the informational opportunities. Individuals

might pay an annual subscription to the Acoustical Society of America but if they
never open any of its communications they cannot be said to belong to the
discourse community, even though they are formally members of the society.
The secondary purposes of the information exchange will vary according to the
common goals: to improve performance in a football squad or in an orchestra, to
make money in a brokerage house, to grow better roses in a gardening club, or to
dent the research front in an academic department.

4. A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the
communicative furtherance of its aims. .

A discourse community has developed and continues to develop discoursal

expectations. These may involve appropriacy of topics, the form, function and
positioning of discoursal elements, and the roles texts play in the operation of
the discourse community. In so far as 'genres are how things get done, when
language is used to accomplish them' (Martin, 1985 :250), these discoursal
expectations are created by the genres that articulate the operations of the
discourse. community. One of the purposes of this criterion is to question
discourse community status for new or newly‐emergent groupings. Such
groupings need, as it were, to settle down and work out their communicative
proceedings and practices before they can be recognized as discourse
communities. If a new grouping 'borrows' genres from other discourse
communities, such borrowings have to be assimilated. .

5. In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired

some specific lexis.

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This specialization may involve using lexical items known to the wider speech
communities in special and technical ways, as in information technology
discourse communities, or using highly technical terminology as in medical
communities. Most commonly, however, the inbuilt dynamic towards an
increasingly shared and specialized terminology is realized_ through the
development of community‐specific abbreviations and acronyms. The use of
these (ESL, EAP, WAC, NCTE, TOEFL,etc.) is, of course, driven by the
requirements for efficient communication exchange between "experts. It is hard
to conceive, at least in the contemporary, English‐speaking world, of a group of
well‐established members of a discourse community communicating among
themselves on topics relevant to the goals of the community and not using lexical
items puzzling to outsiders. It is hard to imagine attending perchance the
convention of some group of which one is an outsider and understanding every
word, If it were to happen ‐ as might occur in the inaugural meeting of some
quite new grouping ‐ then that grouping would not yet constitute a discourse
community.

6. A discourse community has a· 'threshold level of members with a suitable degree

of relevant content and discoursal expertise.

Discourse communities have changing memberships; individuals enter as

apprentices and leave by death or in other less involuntary ways. However,
survival of the community depends on a reasonable ratio between novices and
experts.

An example of a discourse community

As we have seen, those interested in discourse communities have typically sited

their discussions within academic contexts, thus possibly creating a false
impression that such communities are only to be associated with intellectual
paradigms or scholarly cliques. Therefore, for my principal example of a
discourse community, I have deliberately chosen one that is not academic, but
which nevertheless is probably typical enough of many others. The discourse
community is a hobby group and has an 'umbrella organization' called the Hong
Kong Study Circle, of which I happen to be a member. The aims of the HKSC (note
the abbreviation) are to foster interest in and knowledge of the stamps of Hong
Kong (the various printings, etc.) and of their uses (postal rates, cancellations,
etc.). Currently there are about 320 members scattered across the world, but
with major concentrations in Great Britain, the USA and H.K. (China) itself and
minor ones in Holland and Japan. Based on the membership list, my guess is that
about a third of the members are non‐native speakers of English and about a fifth
women. The membership varies in other ways: a few are rich and have acquired
world‐class collections of classic rarities, but many are not and pursue their
hobby interest with material that costs very little to acquire. Some are full‐time
specialist dealers, auctioneers and catalogue publishers, but most are collectors.
From what little I know, the collectors vary greatly in occupation. One standard
reference work was co‐authored by a stamp dealer and a Dean at Yale; another

170
was written by a retired Lieutenant‐Colonel. The greatest authority on the
nineteenth century carriage of Hong Kong mail, with three books to his credit,
has recently retired from a lifetime of service as a signalman with British Rail. I
mention these brief facts to show that the members the discourse community
have, superficially at least, nothing in common except their shared hobby
interest, although Bizzell (1992) is probably correct in pointing out that there
may be psychological predispositions that attract particular people to collecting
and make them ‘kindred spirits’.

Issues to consider

 The second criterion for a discourse community discussed by Swales is

that members must have a means of intercommunication among
members. He then, however, gives an example of people in the same
profession (cafe owners) who do not necessarily have a means of
communicating with one another. Do you think this group constitutes
a discourse community? Why or why not? Can you think of other
groups that have a similar ambiguous status based on this criterion or
other criteria listed by Swales?

 What groups do you belong to that you think can be considered

discourse communities? What genres are associated with these
communities and how do you learn to use them? Swales says the
newly formed groups take time to ‘settle down’ and establish
themselves as discourse communities. Can you think of any groups
that are in the process of becoming discourse communities but have
not yet attained full status?

B.

The power and politics of genre

Vijay K. Bhatia (reprinted from World Englishes 16(3): 359‐371)

Complexity of generic forms

Although generic forms are products of conventional knowledge embedded in

disciplinary cultures, they are dynamic constructs. Typical realizations of these
institutionalized forms are often characterized by their generic integrity, on the
one hand, and their propensity for innovation, on the other (see Bhatia, 1993,
1995). These two aspects of genre may appear to be somewhat contradictory at
first, but as we shall soon discover, these two characteristics are complementary
to each other. In fact, it will not be inaccurate to suggest that one is, in a way, an
essential prerequisite to the other. Generic integrity is the product of the
conventional features of a specific generic construct. Although these conventions

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are embedded in the rhetorical context, they often constrain the use of linguistic
resources (lexico‐grammatical as well as discoursal), and are frequently invoked
to arrive at a reasonable interpretation of the genre or even determine the choice
of the genre to suit a particular context. Within generic boundaries, experienced
users of genre often manage to exercise considerable freedom to manipulate
generic conventions to respond to novel situations, to mix what Bhatia (1993)
calls 'private intentions' with socially recognized communicative purposes, and
even to produce new forms of discourse.

Therefore the tension between conformity and creativity, so often made an issue
of in applied discourse studies, is not necessarily real. As Dubrow (1982: 39)
points out, 'a concern for generic traditions, far from precluding originality, often
helps to produce it.' Similarly, Fowler (1982: 31) points out:

Far from inhibiting the author, genres are a positive support. They offer
room, as one might say, for him to write in ‐ a habitation of mediated
definiteness, a proportioned mental space; a literary matrix by to order
his experience during composition ... The writer is invited to match
experience and form in a specific yet undetermined way. Accepting the
invitation does not solve his problems of expression ... But it gives him
access to formal ideas as to how a variety of constituents might suitably
be combined. Genre also offers a challenge by provoking a free spirit to
transcend the limitations of previous examples.

In fact, a subtle exploitation of a certain aspect of generic construct is always

seen as tactically superior and effective. It is almost like the advertiser's
exploitation of the cliché the shape of things to come in the following opening
headline of an advertisement for a car.

The shape of things to come: Mitsubishi Cordia

Or, the use of the famous statement about the British colonial empire in the
Lufthansa advertisment The sun never sets on Lufthansa territory, or in the
following slogan for energy conservation, which says, Don't be fuelish, where the
whole idea of waste of energy is lost unless it is associated with 'Don't be foolish.'

The whole point about such associations is that they communicate best in the
context of what is already familiar. In such contexts, words on their own carry no
meanings; it is the experience which gives them the desired effect. Therefore, if
one is not familiar with the original, the value of the novel expression is
undermined. Just as the advertiser makes use of the well‐known and the familiar
in existing knowledge, a clever genre writer makes use of what is conventionally
available to a discourse community to further his or her own subtle ends. The
innovation, the creativity or the exploitation becomes effective only in the
context of the already available and familiar. The main focus of this paper is on
these two interrelated aspects of genre theory, i.e., the constraints on generic
construction, a pre‐knowledge of which gives power to insiders in specific
discourse communities, and the exploitation of this power by experienced and
expert members of such disciplinary cultures to achieve their 'private intentions'

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within 'socially recognized communicative purposes.'

Organizational preferences and generic controls

The other interesting area of generic variation, although within a restricted

range, one finds in organizational preferences. In the case of academic
publications, we often come across what we commonly refer to as housestyles.
Although every single journal claims to have its own style sheet, most of them
can be characterized more by their overlap rather than variation.

Similarly, in the case of newspaper genres, especially the news reports and the
editorials, we find an unmistakable 'generic identity' (Bhatia, 1993) in almost all
of the exploits of these genres from various newspapers, although all of them
have their own preferences in terms of style, stance and substance. Some may be
more objective, while others more interpretative; some more socially
responsible, while others more sensational. In spite of all these differences, most
of them display common characteristics in terms of their use of generic
resources, in terms of their structure, interpretation and communication of
intentions. These somewhat different orientations to the events of the day do not
make their stories very different in terms of their generic form.

Even in the case of business communities, we often find different organizations

displaying their unique identities through their organizational preferences in the
matters of their choice of generic forms, but the broad range of genres they tend
to exploit to further their organizational objectives show remarkable similarities
rather than differences.

All these areas of generic use indicate that although their preferred generic
forms show a subtle degree of variation for what could be seen as 'tactical
advantage,' they never disregard some of the basic features of individual generic
constructs, which give these genres their essential identities.

The Power of Genre

There is no better illustration of the saying 'knowledge is power' than the one in
the case of generic power. Power to use, interpret, exploit and innovate novel
generic forms is the function of generic knowledge which is accessible only to the
members of disciplinary communities.

Maintaining generic integrity: editorial intervention

In some forms of academic discourse, especially the research articles, one can
see generally two kinds of mechanism in place to ensure generic integrity: the
peer review process, and editorial intervention. Both these mechanisms, though
operating at different levels, are actively invoked to ensure that all accounts of
new knowledge conform to the standards of institutionalized behaviour that is
expected by a community of established peers in a specific discipline. Although
individual judgements can vary within the membership of specific disciplinary

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communities, a high degree of consensus is often ensured by selecting like‐
minded scholars from within well‐defined disciplinary boundaries.

After peer review, the second most important intervention comes from the
editors, who enjoy all the power one can imagine to maintain the identity and
integrity of the research article genre. Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995)
document an in‐depth and fascinating study of this kind of editorial control to
maintain generic integrity. They point out that for the construction and
dissemination of knowledge 'textual activity' is as important as the 'scientific
activity.'

Generic conventions as authority: the case of citations and references

To us academics, the power of genre is nowhere better illustrated than in the

publication of research articles. Swales in his research report Aspects of Research
Article Introductions (1981) was the first one to point out the importance of the
description of previous research on the rhetorical activity of knowledge
dissemination as distinct from knowledge creation. In order to become
acceptable to the specialist community of fellow researchers, one must relate his
or her knowledge claims to the accumulated knowledge of the discipline, without
which his or her claims in the field are unlikely to find recognition through
publication.

Power to innovate (mixing and embedding)

Although this pressure for the 'democratisation' (Fairclough, 1992) of discourse

is becoming increasingly intense in some countries, especially in the USA, it is
unlikely to make a significant dent in the so‐called integrity of professional
genres, at least not in the foreseeable future. However, one can see an increasing
'fragmentation of discursive norms and conventions' (Fairclough, 1992: 221),
often leading to genre‐mixing and embedding in institutionalized orders of
discourse (see Bhatia, 1994, for a detailed discussion of this), on the one hand,
and creation of new genres, on the other. To a large extent, these changes in
discursive practices are making professional genres increasingly dynamic and
complex.

The dynamic complexity of academic and professional communication is further

increased by the role of multimedia, the explosion of information technology, the
multidisciplinary contexts of the world of work, the increasingly competitive
professional environment, and above all, the overwhelmingly compulsive nature
of promotional and advertising activities, so much so that our present‐day world
of work is being increasingly identified as a 'consumer culture' (Featherstone,
1991). The inevitable result of this is that many of the institutionalized genres,
whether they are social, professional or academic, are seen as incorporating
elements of promotion. Fairclough (1992: 207) rightly associates some of these
changes with what he calls 'commodification' of institutional orders of discourse.

Referring to such changes in discourse practices, he (1993: 141) points out, ...
there is an extensive restructuring of boundaries between orders of discourse

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and between discursive practices, for example, the genre of consumer
advertising has been colonising professional and public service orders of
discourse on a massive scale, generating many new hybrid partly promotional
genres ... As an instance of such a hybrid genre, Fairclough (1993) discusses the
case of contemporary university prospectuses, where he highlights an increasing
tendency towards marketization of the discursive practices of British
universities. Bhatia (1995), in his discussion of genre‐mixing in professional
discourse, gives examples from several settings, where genre‐mixing and
embedding is becoming increasingly common. He also mentions several
instances where one may find an increasing use of promotional strategies in
genres which are traditionally considered non‐promotional in intent, especially
academic introductions, including book introductions, forewords, prefaces of
various kinds, which are becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from
publishers' blurbs.

Shared knowledge ­ privileged access/insider information

If generic conventions, on the one hand, give suitable expression to the

communicative intentions of genre writers (who are members of a particular
discourse community), on the other hand, they also match their intentions
against their intended reader's expectations. This is possible only when all the
participants share, not only the code, but also the knowledge of the genre, which
includes the knowledge of its construction, interpretation and use. A necessary
implication of this shared genre knowledge is that it is not routinely available to
the outsiders, which creates a kind of social distance between the legitimate
members of a discourse community and those who are considered outsiders.

Although this creates conditions of homogeneity between the insiders, at the

same time it also increases social distance between them and the outsiders,
sometimes resulting in disastrous consequences for the one who does not have
access to such shared knowledge. This shared knowledge could be in the form of
linguistic resources used to construct a generic form, or it could be in the
awareness of the rules of language use, some of which are socially learnt, as the
ones associated with classroom discourse and academic genres, while others can
be legally enforced, such as the ones associated with courtroom procedures.
Maintaining solidarity within a professional community

One of the most noticeable characteristics of any professional or academic

discourse community is the availability and typical use of a range of appropriate
genres, which their members think serve the goals of their community. The
recurrent use of such discoursal forms create solidarity within its membership
giving them their most powerful weapon to keep the outsiders at a safe distance.
Hudson (1979: 1) rightly claims,

If one wished to kill a profession, to remove its cohesion and its strength,
the most effective way would be to forbid the use of its characteristic
language.

In this context, it is hardly surprising that most of the attempts by the powerful

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reformist lobbies in many Western democracies to introduce plain English in
legislative contexts are seen as imposition from outside and have been firmly
rejected by the professional legal community.

Issues to consider

 According to Bhatia, genres are defined by the tension between their

‘generic integrity’ and their potential for innovation. IN fact, he argues
that these two aspects of genre work together: that generic
conventions provide the basis for innovation. What happens when
genres loose their generic integrity? What happens when they loose
their propensity for innovation?

 ‘There is no better illustration of the saying “knowledge is power'”,’

says Bhatia, ‘than the one in the case of generic power.’ This is
particularly true, he says, when it comes to professional genres. Can
you think of examples of how the power to use, interpret and innovate
particular genres allows certain people to exert power or control over
other people?

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