Transcript Slide 1
The Almighty A Critical Overview of Critical Genre Analysis Introduction Genre is a trendy term which is traditionally more associated with art and literature than with other, real-life texts or communicative events. However, it has been employed increasingly outside this traditional domain, for example, in the field of ESP. Genre analysis has always been a multi- disciplinary activity attracting attention not only from linguists, discourse analysts, communication experts and rhetoricians, but also from sociologists, cognitive scientists, translators, advertisers, and plain English campaigners, to name only a few. Definitions of Genre Definitions: Miller (1984) defines genre as typification of social and rhetorical action. For Martin (1984, cited in Hyon, 1996), a genre is a staged, goal-oriented, purposeful activity in which speakers engage as members of our culture. Swales (1990) defines it as "a class of communicative events, the member of which share some set of communicative purposes" (p. 58). Genre in three traditions To understand all of the currents in this new area of study as well as their implications for L1 and L2 teaching requires a close examination of the various approaches to genre, particularly in three research traditions where genre scholarship has been most fully developed and where its theory and pedagogical applications have taken significantly different paths. These three focal areas are (a) ESP, (b) North American New Rhetoric studies, and (c) Australian systemic functional linguistics. Genre analysis: Pedagogical implications Since, to some professionals in ELT, genre is society (Key, 1998), researchers and practitioners in SLA should focus more on the pedagogical implications of genre analysis. The concept of genre provides a way of looking at what students have to pedagogic do linguistically—what kinds of discourses they have to be able to potential understand and produce in speech and writing. It also provides us with an understanding of why a discourse is the way it is, through a consideration of its social context and its purpose. Genre would thus seem to be a potentially very powerful pedagogic tool. Genre analysis: Pedagogical implications From a critical pedagogy, even within composition, teachers often see the power of genres to inhibit creativity more than the power of genres to reveal constraint. Genre teaching can indeed be formulaic and constraining, if genres are taught as forms without social or cultural meaning. Genre teaching can also be enlightening and freeing, if genres are taught as part of a larger critical awareness (Devitt, 2003). Genres will impact students as they read, write, and move about their worlds. Teaching critical genre awareness will help students perceive that impact and make deliberate generic choices. Critical Genre Analysis Up to now, little attention has been given to the ideological dimensions of genre in the ESL classroom. ESP researchers have generally adopted a pragmatic and uncritical approach to analyzing and teaching academic and professional texts, which has recently been the focus of some criticism (Benesch, 1993). According to Bhatia (2004), Text and context have been assigned varying importance in the analysis of professional genres. In the early conceptualizations of genre the focus was more centrally on text, and context played a relatively less important background role. Critical Genre Analysis However, in more recent versions of genre analysis context has been assigned a more important role, redefining genre as a configuration of text-internal and text-external resources, thus highlighting two kinds of relationships involving texts and contexts. Interrelationships within and across texts focusing primarily on text-internal properties are viewed as inter-textual in nature, whereas interactions within and across genres involving primarily text-external resources may be viewed as inter-discursive in nature. Genre-based pedagogy & critical genre-based pedagogy Drawing on the framework mentioned above (Bhatia: 2004), these dimensions can be Critical genre analysis, especially targeting specific professional practices, crucially depends on the availability of discursive data from the professional practice under investigation, which is not always easy to access. Identified as textual, genrespecific, professional practice, and professional culture, which can be represented visually as follows: Diagram 1: Patterns of discourse realization in professional contexts Critical Genre Awareness Devitt (2004) rightly proposes the notion of critical genre awareness in critical genre analysis since it does not solve any problem just to add critique to our explicit analysis and teaching of specific genres. We cannot teach all the expectations and details of a particular genre. According to Devitt (2004), teachers cannot possibly tease out all the ideological importance import of a genre, both because of the impossibility of that venture and because teachers themselves are wrapped in ideologies. Conclusion One way to build more complex genre pedagogy is to build a curriculum that addresses multiple approaches. Genres are languages and forms; and they are processes of developing, spreading, and learning; and they are ideologically embedded constructs. We have a “pedagogic responsibility” “to teach students to speak and write for academic purposes in first and second languages” (2005). While teaching academic purposes and academic registers, however, we cannot possibly teach all of the specific academic genres that students may need in academia. Conclusion The end goal is a critical consciousness of genre, a genre awareness—a conscious attention to genres and their potential influences on people and the ability to consider acting differently within genres. To help students understand genres both intellectually and experientially, one should lead students through a series of assignments that have them analyze, write, critique, and change or rewrite genres, a series of assignments that gives some idea of how my conceptualization of genre pedagogy translates into practices. Thank You! Wish You All Good Luck and Success!