Analysing Professional Genres

272 Pages·2000·24.8 MB·English

by  Anna Trosborg (ed.)

ANALYSING PROFESSIONAL GENRES
Pragmatics & Beyond
New Series
Editor:
Andreas H. Jucker
(Justus Liebig University, Giessen)
Associate Editors:
Jacob L. Mey
(Odense University)
Herman Parret
(Belgian National Science Foundation, Universities of Louvain and Antwerp)
Jef Verschueren
(Belgian National Science Foundation, University of Antwerp)
Editorial Address:
Justus Liebig University Giessen, English Department
Otto-Behaghel-Strasse 10, D-35394 Giessen, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
Editorial Board:
Shoshana Blum-Kulka (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Chris Butler (University College of Ripon and York)
Jean Caron (Université de Poitiers); Robyn Carston (University College London)
Bruce Fraser (Boston University); John Heritage (University of California at Los Angeles)
David Holdcroft (University of Leeds); Sachiko Ide (Japan Women’s University)
Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni (University of Lyon 2)
Claudia de Lemos (University of Campinas, Brasil); Marina Sbisà (University of Trieste)
Emanuel Schegloff (University of California at Los Angeles)
Paul O. Takahara (Kobe City University of Foreign Studies)
Sandra Thompson (University of California at Santa Barbara)
Teun A. Van Dijk (University of Amsterdam); Richard Watts (University of Bern)
74
Anna Trosborg (ed.)
Analysing Professional Genres
ANALYSING
PROFESSIONAL
GENRES
Edited by
ANNA TROSBORG
Aarhus School of Business
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8 American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Analysing professional genres / edited by Anna Trosborg.
p. cm. -- (Pragmatics & beyond, ISSN 0922-842X ; new ser. 74)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Business writing. 2. Technical writing. I. Trosborg, Anna, 1937- II. Series.
HF5718.3.A52 2000
808’.06665--dc21 99-058978
ISBN 90 272 5089 8 (Eur.) / 1 55619 921 X (US) (alk. paper) CIP
© 2000 – John Benjamins B.V.
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John Benjamins Publishing Co. (cid:127) P.O.Box 75577 (cid:127) 1070 AN Amsterdam (cid:127) The Netherlands
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Contents
Introduction
Anna Trosborg vii
Genre, Terminology, and Corpus Studies
Margaret Rogers
Genre and Terminology 3
Intralingual, Interlingual and Intercultural Studies of Genres
Charles Bazerman
Singular Utterances: Realizing Local Activities through
Typified Forms in Typified Circumstances 25
Philip Shaw
Towards Classifying the Arguments in Research Genres 41
Dacia F. Dressen and John M. Swales
"Geological Setting/Cadre Géologique" in English and French
Petrology Articles: Muted Indications of Explored Places. 57
Ines-A. Busch Lauer
Titles of English and German Research Papers in Medicine
and Linguistics Theses and Research Articles 77
vi
Genres and the Media
Torben Vestergaard
That's not News: Persusive and Expository Genres in the Press 97
Anna Trosborg
The Inaugural Address 121
Genres in Conflict
Vijay Bhatia
Genres in Conflict 147
Birgitte Norlyk
Conflicts in Professional Discourse: Language, Law and
Real Estate 163
Genres and New Technology (changing and emerging genres)
Greg Myers
Powerpoints: Technology, Lectures, and Changing Genres 177
Lars Johnsen
Rhetorical Clustering and Perceptual Cohesion in
Technical (Online) Documentation 193
Broadening the Perspective
Susanne Göpferich
Analysing LSP Genres (Text Types): From Perpetuation to
Optimization in Text(-type) Linguistics 227
Index 249
Introduction
ANNA TROSBORG
The Aarhus School of Business
Full participation in disciplinary and professional cultures demands informed
knowledge of written genres. Genres are the media through which scholars and
scientists communicate with their peers. Genres are intimately linked to the dis
cipline's methodology, packaging information in ways that conform to a disci
pline's norms, values and ideology. Understanding the genres of written com
munication in one's field is, therefore, essential to professional success.
At the same time, genre knowledge refers to an individual's repertoire of
situationally appropriate responses to recurrent situations - from immediate en
counters to distanced communication through the medium of print, and more
recently, the electronic media. This volume also includes genres relying on the
spoken medium, which has so far been overlooked in genre analysis.
The notion of genre originates from literary studies, where genres such as
novels, short stories, poems, plays, etc. have been studied for centuries. In rhe
torical studies, genre analysis has been carried out for almost twenty years. The
focus has been on attempts to develop taxonomies or classificatory schemes or
to set forth hierarchical models of constitutive elements of genre, which enable
us to make generalisations about genre's form, substance and context (for
reviews see, e.g. Miller 1984, Swales 1990, Yates and Orlikowski 1992).
Scholars in literary studies, rhetorical studies and in discourse analysis as
well focus on the formal characteristics of texts rather than on the activities or
practices in which genres are embedded. Their view rests on what Brandt
(1990) called "strong text" (formalist) assumptions rather than a dialogical
view of language-in-interaction (see Nystrand and Wiermelt 1991). However, a
traditional rhetorical approach does not enable us to determine anything about
the ways in which genre is embedded in the communicative activities of the
members of the discipline or how the actor draws upon genre knowledge to
perform effectively.
viii INTRODUCTION
Genres and genre knowledge can be more sharply and richly defined to the
extent that they are localised (in both time and place). A dialogical view is
taken by sociolinguists and educational psychologists who share Baktin's (and
Vygotsky's) view that social intercation is at the center of language and concept
learning. Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995: 1-24) see genres as "inherently dy
namic rhetorical structures that can be manipulated according to the conditions
of use", and for this reason, genre knowledge is best conceptualized as "a form
of situated cognition embedded in disciplinary activities". In their socio-cogni-
tive theory of genre, they focus on five major aspects: Dynamism, situatedness,
form and content, duality of structure and community ownership. These five
aspects are very central to the framework of this volume.
The dynamic aspect has already been stressed. Genres are "dynamic rhetori
cal forms that are developed from actors' responses to recurrent situations" and
"genres change over time in response to their users' sociocognitive needs."
Even the scientific journal article, which has been perceived as a conservative,
relatively static genre, especially on the formal level, has been found by
Berkenkotter and Huckin to undergo significant changes when observed over a
45-year period. Experimental results are being increaingly foregrounded in
titles, abstracts, introductions, and section headings, whereas methods and pro
cedures sections are being increasingly relegated to secondary status. The main
reason for this is to be sought in the information explosion, in which readers of
scientific journals cannot keep up with the literature and are forced to skim
journal articles the way many newspaper readers skim newspapers.
Genres are "a situated form of cognition" and as such our knowledge of
them is derived from and embedded in our participation in the communicative
activites of daily and professional life. Genre knowledge is "inextricably a
product of the activity and situations in which it is produced (Brown, Collins
and Duguid 1989: 33)". As the intellectual content of a field changes over time,
so must the forms used to discuss it. This is why genre knowledge involves
both form and content. Furthermore, as we draw on genre rules to engage in
professional activities, we "constitute social structures and simultaneously re
produce these structures". The use of rhetorical genres is both constitutive of
social structure (as it is instantiated through our observing a genre's rules-for-
use or conventions) and generative as situated, artful practice. In using the
genres customarily employed by other members of their discourse community,
disciplinary actors help constitute the community and simultaneously repro
duce it. For this reason, genres themselves reveal much of "a discourse com
munity's norms, epistemology, ideology, and social ontology" (Berkenkotter
and Huckin 1995:4).
ANALYSING PROFESSIONAL GENRES ix
Studying genres, we observe the relationship between available patterns for
communicative utterances and people's ability to alter or modify such patterns.
Genres are sites of contention between stability and change. As products of
dynamic societies, they are influenced by social structures, by changing social
systems and not least by the rapidly growing technological development in
modern society. As dynamic constructs, genres change with changes in society,
and new genres emerge as a product of new technology. This creates a contin
ual need for research in the changing nature of old genres and the emergence of
new ones.
This volume extends our knowledge of professional genres including genres
which have not previously been analysed. It stretches from genre and terminol
ogy to applied genre analysis. It is concerned with genres in different fields:
economics (taxation), genetic engineering, academic writing, animal nutrition,
geology, petrology, medicine, linguistics, journalism, politics, law, promotional
literature (advertising, job offers), translation and business discourse, and it
contains articles concerned with different media (spoken and written) as well as
texts produced by multimedia.1 The volume provides intralingual, interlingual,
and intercultural studies. It compares closely related genres (theses and re
search articles, reports and leading articles, it provides intralingual as well as
interlingual interdisciplinary studies (English/ French geology articles, English/
German research articles in medicine and linguistics). It takes up types of texts
not previously investigated within genre analysis as diverse as written tax
forms and the inaugural address. In addition to providing genre specific charac
teristics, a point is also made of highlighting the distinction between genre and
text type (see Schäffner; Vestergaard). While German-speaking countries have
maintained a distinction between Testsorten (genres) and Texttyp (text type),
this distinction has often been blurred in other communities. Genres refer to
whole texts often defined by their communicative purposes, whiles the notion
of text type is concerned with properties of a text, in particular the way a text is
built up by means of, for example, narrative, descriptive, expository and/or
argumentative structural patterns.
The volume has a strong focus on socio-cognitive aspects. Genres are em
bedded in social action "as typified forms of typified circumstances" (see
Bazerman, this volume for an extensive Anglo-American reference network).
Genres are the intellectual scaffolds on which community-based knowledge is
constructed (Berkenkotter and Huckin 1995: 24). To be fully effective in this
role, genres must be flexible and dynamic, capable of modification according
to the rhetorical exigencies of the situation. At the same time, they must be
stable enough to capture those aspects of situations that tend to recur. Existing
genres are adapted and new genres arise out of social conflicts, social changes,