Genre Theory

The North American Genre School (NAGS)—a brief history
Carol Berkenkotter

No one included in the above group would wish to think of themselves as belonging to a “ school�—we are far too diverse a group--however, Sonny Hyon, a doctoral student of John Swales coined the term her 1996 article, “Genre in three traditions: Implications for ESL� which appeared in TESOL Quarterly (pp. 693-722). Hyon had written a dissertation in which she compared the rhetorically-oriented genre analysts (e.g. Miller 1984; Bazerman, 1988; Devitt, 19 91; Myers, 1990; Berkenkotter and Huckin, 1995, Smart, 19xx, Freedman & Medway, 1994, etc.). Carolyn Miller’s 1984 article, “Genre as social action� in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70: 151-176, was seminal (germinal!) in being the uber text for the flurry of articles that followed by the above authors (I’ll bring copies of Miller, 1984 to class next week, but would encourage you to get it on your own as an “introduction� to the Genre Knowledge book.
The rhetorically-oriented NAGS was compared by Hyon to the genre analysts who mostly were applied linguists by training, and were interested in the pedagogical implications of academic genres for ESL and ESP training. This second group included John Swales, Vijay Bhatia, Ann Johns, Tony Dudley Evans, John Flowerdew, and Brian Paltridge. A third group of genre analysts—according to Hyon—were the Australian functional systemic linguists (FSP), trained by Michael Halliday to think about genre in relation to “registers� of different disciplinary spheres. This group of linguists were interested in direct applications of disciplinary genres as the basis of language learning, especially when it came to the language training of non-native speakers in elementary schools. This group included Gunter Kress (who has since moved away from Halliday’s views), J.R. Martin, Francis Christie, Paul Thiebault, and a group of linguists at the University of Sidney, who thought it would be possible to design an entire elementary school genre-based curriculum in which scientific genres would be as much a part of the curriculum and instruction as the narrative and personal experience genres that language arts teachers usually teach

Hyon’s categories have stuck; and genre theory (outside of literary theory) is commonly divided into the above three camps--; however, in actuality there is considerable overlap, since no researcher or theorist ever stays in the same place, and many who have been categorized as being in one group or the other have moved on to new interests, and new issues and problems which call for new approaches to genre studies. One of the most important of these is, I believe, the issue of multimodality. Most Americans are shifting from a print-based form of learning to alternative modes that include a semiotic array including graphics and visuals, streaming video, three dimensional objects in virtual reality, and interactive oral and written forms of communication. Thus genre theorists will have to develop new vocabularies and new tools for understanding and describing these emerging communicative forms. Cristina’s presentation last night hinted at this new vocabulary and new tools for analysis. . .