Genre. Mary Jo Reiff

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      3 Genre in Linguistic Traditions: Systemic Functional and Corpus Linguistics

      While current approaches to genre in Rhetoric and Composition studies draw in part from work in literary theory, they draw more so from linguistic, rhetorical, and sociological traditions. In this and the following chapter, we will examine genre studies within linguistic traditions, namely Systemic Functional Linguistics, Corpus Linguistics, and English for Specific Purposes. Then in Chapters 5 and 6, we will focus on genre studies within rhetorical and sociological traditions, since Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) has been most closely linked with and has most directly informed the study and teaching of genre in Rhetoric and Composition studies.

Genre and Systemic Functional Linguistics

      Systemic Functional approaches to genre have contributed richly to how genre is understood and applied in textual analysis and language teaching over the last twenty-five years. Influenced in large part by the work of Michael Halliday (Halliday; Halliday and Hasan) at the University of Sydney, and applied to genre particularly in the work of J. R. Martin, Frances Christie, Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, Gunther Kress, Brian Paltridge, Joan Rothery, Eija Ventola, and others, Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) operates from the premise that language structure is integrally related to social function and context. Language is organized the way it is within a culture because such an organization serves a social purpose within that culture. “Functional” thus refers to the work that language does within particular contexts. “Systemic” refers to the structure or organization of language so that it can be used to get things done within those contexts. “Systemic” then refers to the “systems of choices” available to language users for the realization of meaning (Christie, “Genre Theory” 759; emphasis added). The concept of “realization” is especially important within SFL, for it describes the dynamic way that language realizes social purposes and contexts as specific linguistic interactions, at the same time as social purposes and contexts realize language as specific social actions and meanings.

      A great deal of the work in SFL can be traced to Halliday’s Language as Social Semiotic, in which Halliday describes how “the network of meanings” that constitute any culture, what he calls the “social semiotic,” is to a large extent encoded in and maintained by its discourse-semantic system, which represents a culture’s “meaning potential” (100, 13). This is why, as Halliday argues, language is a form of socialization, playing a role in how individuals become socialized and perform meaningful actions within what he calls “contexts of situation.”

      Halliday explains that contexts of situation are not isolated and unique, but often reoccur as “situation types,” a set of typified semiotic and semantic relations that make up “a scenario . . . of persons and actions and events from which the things which are said derive their meaning” (28-30). Examples of situation types include “players instructing novice in a game,” “mother reading bedtime story to a child,” “customers ordering goods over the phone” (29). Because contexts of situation reoccur as situation types, those who participate in these situation types develop typified ways of linguistically interacting within them. As these situation types become conventionalized over time, they begin to “specify the semantic configurations that the speaker will typically fashion” (110).

      Halliday refers to this “clustering of semantic features according to situation types” as register (68). By linking a situation type with particular semantic and lexico-grammatic patterns, register describes what actually takes place (the “field”), how participants relate to one another (the “tenor”), and what role language is playing (the “mode”). For example, the “field” of discourse represents the system of activity within a particular setting, including the participants, practices, and circumstances involved. The “tenor” of discourse represents the social relations between the participants—their interactions—within the discourse. And the “mode” of discourse represents the channel or wavelength of communication (face-to-face, via e-mail, telephone, and so on) used by the participants to perform their actions and relations (Halliday 33). When linguists identify a “scientific register,” then, they not only describe a style of language but also the practices, interactional patterns, and means of communication associated with scientific contexts.

      What happens at the level of context of situation in terms of field, tenor, and mode corresponds to what happens at the linguistic level in terms of what Halliday refers to as the three language “metafunctions”: ideational, interpersonal, and textual. “Ideational” refers to the linguistic representation of action (who is doing what, to whom, when, and where). As such, the ideational metafunction corresponds with field. “Interpersonal” describes interactions between participants (such as asking questions, making statements, or giving commands) at the linguistic level. The interpersonal corresponds with tenor. “Textual” describes the flow of information within and between texts, including how texts are organized, what is made explicit and what is assumed as background knowledge, how the known and the new are related, and how coherence and cohesion are achieved. The textual metafunction thus corresponds to mode. At the level of register, then, context of situation and language realize one another as follows (informed by Martin, “Analysing” 34-40):