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GENRE A NA LYS I S : A KEY TO A THEORY OF ESP?

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Md. Mostafa Rashel:
We have noted differences in the use of epistemic modality between genres (academic
a rti cle v. popular scien ce arti cl e , and ac ademic arti cle v. tex tbook) and bet ween
different disciplines. Bloor and Bloor (1993) have taken this kind of analysis a stage
further in that they noted a very interesting difference in the use of hedging devices
within one genre and one discipline. They found that in economic articles published in that discipline's most general academic journal The Economic Journal writers were
either making claims that were related to the real world (field central claims) or claims
that were related to issues within the discipline itself (substantive claims). Bloor and
Bloor noted that the substantive claims tended to be hedged while field central claims
were not.

The variation in hedging between disciplines (and within disciplines) is probably the
most devel oped area of re s e a rch . But other intere s ting work is em er gi n g. Hyl a n d
(1999) has shown how citations practices vary across disciplines and suggests that this
results from differences in epistemological and social conventions of the disciplines.
Hyland analysed citations in 80 articles taken from the fields of Sociology,Marketing,
P h i l o s ophy, App l i ed Linguisti c s , Bi o l ogy, P hys i c s , Mechanical Engi n eering and
E l ectronic Engi n eeri n g. In gen era l , he found that the social scien ce and hu m a n i ti e s
writers used more citation than the science and engineering writers.With the regard to
the use of integral v. non-integral citation structures (an integral structure will name
the cited author in the actual sentence), the overall preference in all the disciplines,
except Philosophy, was for non - i n tegral stru ctu re s . Th ere was, h owever, a mu ch
greater use of integral structures in the four Humanities and Social Science disciplines
com p a red with the Scien ce and Engi n eering disciplines. Th ere were also major
differences in the reporting verbs used by the different disciplines with the science and
engineering writers favouring more neutral verbs such as report, use, develop and the
humanities and social science writers favouring more tentative verbs such as suggest,
claim, argue.


Tony Dudley-Evans, The University of Birmingham


Enduring..........

Md. Mostafa Rashel:
Discussion and Conclusion
The initial work on Move and Step analysis (Sw a l e s , 1981 and 1990; Bh a ti a , 1 9 9 3 )
suggested that the models proposed were generalised models that applied to academic
a rti cles wri t ten in all ac ademic fiel d s . Cl e a rly it was ack n owl ed ged that there were
s ome differen ces bet ween disciplines, but it was argued that the models propo s ed ,
su ch as the CARS model for the arti cle introdu cti on , a re pro to types and actu a l
examples will vary in the degree to which they conform with this prototype.
What is becoming cl e a r, h owever, is that disciplinary va ri a ti on is mu ch more
significant than allowed for in the original work on genre analysis.We need to devise a
theory that goes beyond the ideas of prototypicality to acknowledge that variation in
the disco u rse stru ctu ring of gen res ref l ecting different ep i s tem o l ogical and soc i a l practices in disciplines is a key factor in genre theory. The danger is that the theory will
become immensely complicated with a proliferation of genres for each discipline. It
could be, however, that the simplicity of Martin's model (Martin, 1989) which places
register between genre and language in the hierarchy, as in the diagram below, will
capture variation without over-complicating the theory:

(PLEASE NOTE THAT WE NEED TO ADD ARROWS FROM GENRE TO REGISTER TO LANGUAGE)
Genre – Register – Language
This sys tem all ows us to account for differen ces in discipline and bet ween form a l
academic papers and those in popular journals through the use of Field and Tenor, two
of the three components of register in the Hallidayan system (Halliday 1985).

I am thus arguing for a theory of ESP based on text, but one that starts from the point
of view that texts in different disciplines will have different patterns of organisation
rather than variations on one 'common-core' pattern. Common-core patterns are, I
am suggesting, a convenient starting point for pedagogical purposes, but may not have
much basis in actual genre analysis.

The teaching of academic writing will clearly need to reflect this variation. It is clearly
possible to use the generalised CARS model as the starting point for the teaching of
ac ademic wri ti n g, p a rti c u l a rly if one is te aching heterogen eous groups of s tu den t s
f rom different disciplines, but with hom ogen eous groups it may be mu ch more
ef f i c i ent to focus on the specific fe a tu res of the actual gen res that stu dents actu a lly
have to read or write. This is especially the case where students are in an EFL situation
studying their subject course in their first language. Such students will not have the
high proficiency levels in English that most students have in a first or second language
s i tu a ti on and wi ll need , in my op i n i on , a mu ch more stra i gh tforw a rdly linguisti c
a pproach based on the actual texts they use. Th ey do not have the linguisti c
sophistication to deal with issues about the readership and the discourse community
in any depth. They need to see how the Moves and Steps work in the genres they use
and how they are expressed in English.

Tony Dudley-Evans, The University of Birmingham


Enduring..........

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