Professional and Academic Discourse Module
Genres of written academic
discourse
What sort of written academic
discourse?
‘Professional academic’ genres e.g. research
articles, conference abstracts
Student disciplinary genres, e.g. undergraduate
or postgraduate writing in university
disciplines
Language learner genres, e.g. IELTS writing,
writing on EAP courses
School student genres, e.g. narratives,
explanations etc.
Traditions of genre analysis
Hyon, S. 1996. Genre in three traditions: Implications
for ESL. TESOL Quarterly 30: 693-722.
• English for Specific Purposes tradition (Swales, 1990,
2004; Dudley Evans, 1994; Vergaro, 2002; Bhatia,
1993)
• Systemic Functional Linguistics tradition (Martin et
al. 1997; Martin, 2009; Christie, 2008; Paltridge,
2007)
• North American New Rhetoric tradition (Miller, 1984:
Bazerman, 1988; Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995;
Freedman & Medway, 1994; Devitt, 2004)
English for specific purposes
• Primacy of communicative purpose as a
defining characteristic
• Preference for macro-structural analysis
• Understanding of macro structure in terms of
moves
• Focuses on discourse communities as
producers of genres
• For teaching: focuses on ESP/ EAP specialisms
and relatively structured texts
Systemic functional linguistics
• Highlights linguistic features that characterize
different genres
• Uses systemic functional grammar as an analysis
tool
• Considers micro and macro patterns of language
• Uses context to as an explanation for the
linguistic choices observed
• For teaching: focuses on school students and
‘novices’
North American New Rhetoric
• Genre as action and social tradition
• Looking at context at least as much as text
• Focus on the social action that a genre is used
to accomplish
• Ethnographic methods
• For teaching: goes ‘beyond the text’
Genre analysis today
Increasingly mingles elements of all three ‘traditions’
- Which allows for creativity in analysis, but arguably
creates a problem when it comes to defining and
labelling genres.
- When assessing similarity and difference, should we
look at:
• Similarities of form?
• Similarities of communicative purpose?
• Similarities of contexts of production and reception?
Categorising genres in corpora
BAWE Genre Family Labels
MICUSP paper categories
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Case study
Critique
Design specification
Empathy writing
Essay
Exercise
Explanation
Literature survey
Methodology recount
Narrative recount
Problem question
Proposal
Research report
Argumentative essay
Creative writing
Critique/Evaluation
Proposal
Report
Research paper
Response paper
Locating textual examples of genres:
what if the label does not fit?
Example 1: Reflective accounts
Definition: writing which is produced for formal
evaluation in an educational course and which
requires the writer to: narrate personal experience;
comment on associated feelings; appraise their
performance; discuss what they have learned; and
relate the learning to some aspect of future action
Under what categories might you look for such
texts in BAWE and in MICUSP?
Example 2: Undergraduate Engineering
Laboratory Reports
Definition: an account of what an undergraduate
engineering student has done before, during and after
one of her or his ‘laboratories’; i.e. writing produced in
years 1-3 of a degree course in Engineering, in response
to a practice-based session held in a specialist
environment, using Engineering tools and techniques.
Again, where might you look for such texts in BAWE
and in MICUSP?
A solution for BAWE: the UELR flowchart
Textual indicators of ‘laboratory report’
Exophoric references to lab activities e.g. “… In this materials and production assignments associated
with the mechanical testing laboratory, six types of metal specimens were available to test with the Hounsfield
Type W Hand Tensometer. The aim of the experiments was to develop an understanding of the standard tensile
test, to study the mechanical properties of some important engineering materials, to obtain values for the yield
stress…” (BAWE Text ID 0254c)
First person (or first person plural) pronoun (i.e. ‘I’ or ‘We’) + active verb forms e.g. “… I calculated the
current to be 22.mA from the simulated circuit characteristic (Figure 1 – Appendix) with a 240
resister was in series with the diode and the supply voltage was 6V” (BAWE Text ID 0342b).
Authentic graphs and tables that students created using a specialist software after a series of
‘laboratories’ .
Authentic photographs which were taken by students using their own camera during
‘laboratories’ .
Authentic 2 or 3 D (dimensional) drawings – manually or using computers during and/or after
‘laboratories’.
Authentic mathematical calculations by students using their data which they collected during a series of ‘labora
tories’ .
Authentic computer (or machine) codes which have been generated by students using specialist machines or c
omputer software packages such as MATLAB and SIMULUS .
Analysing texts within genres
Macro level approach: the structure of the texts,
the purposes of the moves, how this relates to
the purposes of the genre.
Micro level approach: distribution of specific
linguistic features in the genre, and how this
relates to the purposes of the genre. Tends to
be done comparatively.
Some suggested procedures for going about a move-based
genre analysis (Biber, Connor, Upton & Kanoksilapatham 2007: 34)
Step 1: Determine the rhetorical purpose of the genre
Step 2: Determine the rhetorical function of each text segment in its local context;
identify the possible move types of the genre.
Step 3: Group functional and/or semantic themes that are either in relative proximity
to each other or often occur in similar locations in representative texts. These reflect
the specific steps that can be used to realise a broader move.
Step 4: Conduct a pilot-coding to test and fine-tune the definitions of move purposes.
Step 5: Develop coding protocol with clear definitions and examples of move types
and steps.
Step 6: Code full set of texts, with inter-rater reliability check to confirm that there is a
clear understanding of move definitions and moves/steps are realised in texts.
Step 7: Add any additional steps and/or moves that are revealed in the full analysis.
Step 8: Revise coding protocol to resolve any discrepancies revealed by the inter-rater
reliability check or by the newly ‘discovered’ moves/steps, and re-code problematic
areas.
Step 9: Conduct linguistic analysis of move features and/or other corpus-facilitated
analyses.
Step 10: Describe corpus of texts in terms of typical and alternate move structures and
linguistic characteristics.
Procedures for going about a micro-level genre
analysis
• Have an analytic framework as a starting point
• Establish comparative corpora
• Qualitatively code instances of the features
you are focusing on
• Quantitatively count them
• Look at what the features are doing in each
corpus
An example: Hyland 2005 ch5,
Metadiscourse and Genre
A comparison of metadiscourse in textbooks and research
articles:
Textbooks
Research articles
Items per
1000 words
% of total
Items per
1000 words
% of total
Interactive metadiscourse
49.1
71.7
34.8
52.6
Interactional
metadiscourse
19.4
28.3
31.4
47.4
Reasons for the differences could be because the textbooks do
more explicit teaching and guiding of readers, where the
research article writers do more work to position the writer vis a
vis the audience….?