Genre and the Merits of Genre-Based Approaches

Abstract

Every different kind of discourse that happens in a specific context which contains its own
particular pattern, style, register, structure and is representative of a certain community is called a
genre. Before writing, a writer should consider using only certain features of the text based on the
particular genre and a reader expects specific features of a text in accordance with the genre
expectation. (Richards and Schmidt, 2010, p.245). A specific type or class of language use that
belongs to certain communities is called a genre (Allison, 1999, cited in Basturkman, 2006, p.52).
Genre analysis compares and contrasts these different kinds of texts in order to find the similarities
and differences between genres. Genre analysis is going to analyze the linguistic characteristics,
the social setting, culture, ideology, and organization of certain discourse community (Luzon,
2005). Genre is an expression that can be applied in many disciplines and fields such as literature,
film, art theory, and cultural studies (Huang, 2005). Since there were a lot of controversies over
the concept of genre, a workshop was organized and a lot of participants from Australia, Fiji,
Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand took
part in it. They aimed at sharing their knowledge and arrived at a consistent meaning. Most of
them agreed on two definitions by Martin (1984) and Swales (1990). Martin claims that a genre is
"a staged, goal-oriented purposeful activity in which speakers engage as members of our culture."
Swales defines genre as "a genre comprises a class of communicative events the members of
which share some set of communicative purposes ". Both of them agree on a common term
"communicative purpose" that results in creating a genre. (Kay and Dudley-Evans, 1998, p. 308).A
lot of varieties of genres can be found in every day communicative and in every ordinary day of
our life "buying vegetable, telling a story, writing a letter to the editor, inviting someone to
dinner"(Martin,1984). As mentioned earlier, Martin defined genre as goal oriented staging
structure of genres. For example, "after entering a shop, a customer greets a salesperson, he states
his needs, and he asks how much it costs. Then he pays and says goodbye and leaves. (Using ^ to
indicate sequence):