Blog

• This is an updated, more complete version of the post “How to approach text analysis” published on 9th Dec. 2016, which we are leaving here while the current ones are being updated. It has now been divided into two parts for easier reading: The first, this one, Focus on Genre and the second, in process, Focus on Register and Text Macrofunctions.
• In the Competitive exam or Oposición for Secondary Education and Official School of Languages, you are often requested to identify genre, register, audience, purpose, context, text type, and some language-related issues concerning text analysis.
• These posts may also serve you for your essay on some of the topic contents from the current list of topics.

When approaching text analysis, we can do so from 3 wide angles: Genre, Register & Language.

GENRE is concerned with the social function of the text, i.e., its socio-cultural context. It therefore takes into account its structure and layout conventions.

REGISTER is associated with a specific situation, i.e., the situational context in which the text –or an extract– occurs, and, in systemic-functional analysis, three components are considered: field, mode and tenor.

LANGUAGE refers to the realisation of Genre and Register through language forms, meaning and functions, i.e., the Linguistic Context or Style, which includes the one required by genre-type and register, and the personal style of the author or sender of the message.

Analyses of language regarding form, meaning, discourse and functions as are often requested in the Language Part of the Exam have been thoroughly covered in our books published with Editorial MAD Volumen Práctico or Análisis de Texto, and in some of the contents at PoppieS’ Foundation 1 & 2.  In these posts, the focus will be on Genre and Register, mainly, with an analysis of some of their most distinctive linguistic features, when required.

Genre

Traditionally, the term “genre” has been used to classify literary works, typically according to:

• Form or structure of the text.
• Technique(s) or distinctive language used.
• Content or subject matter.

Thus, the first broad division concerning genre is between fiction and non-fiction.

Fiction

Literature is the realm of fiction or invention –even when based on facts or experiences–, and we have traditionally distinguished between prose, poetry and drama. 

Within prose, we would have a variety of sub-genres like:

• Novels (realism, gothic, mystery, science-fiction, thrillers, dystopia, etc.)
• Short stories
• Novellas
• Historical fiction
• Children’s literature
• Humour
• Satire, etc

Likewise, drama typically involves comedy, tragedy or comic-tragedy, while poetry might be subdivided into elegies, odes, sonnets, epigrams, limericks, etc.

We should not overlook the fact, however, that “traditional genres” often overlap, and we find plays written in verse, like those by Lope de Vega, Marlow, and Shakespeare, or, more recently, Ros Barber’s novel The Marlowe Papers

Non-Fiction

In non-fiction, recent studies on text and discourse analysis describe “Genre” in different ways, sometimes with similar meaning or referring to them as text types. We believe a distinction needs to be made, as we hope we’ll be able to clarify through these two posts.

Genre could be defined as the set of structural, linguistic and rhetorical conventions that characterise a whole text. These conventions determine the text organisation, layout, and rhetorical and language features, marked primarily by the Cultural Context of the Communicative Event.

Thus, to identify the genre of a text, we need to have a complete sample of it. Only then can we identify the rhetorical and linguistic conventions used, for instance:

*** How it begins and ends,

*** How its structure follows the cultural conventions that govern that genre.

*** The genre markers or formulaic (stock) expressions required in the different parts, etc.

To illustrate, when dealing with non-fiction texts in English, we can distinguish among the following, each having distinctive features, in terms of

=> Structure and layout on the one hand,

==>and linguistic and rhetorical conventions on the other.

In this post, we’ll analyse letters in greater detail and provide links to definitions of other genres and sub-genres, depending on Register, for you to see differences and similarities:

• Letters/E-mails: 

  •  Personal, Business, Formal, Social, etc.
    • Common features: Indication of sender and recipient of the letter or email; Opening salutation following appropriate cultural conventions; body of the letter with the key contents; Closing salutation using politeness conventions established by the Cultural contextual conventions and which, among other things, will take into account the relationship between sender and receiver in their choice of genre markers (e.g., “Hi” vs “Dear Sir/Madam”; “Love”, “Best wishes”, Sincerely”)
    • Specific features: The examples above illustrate how, depending on the subgenre, i.e., the field, mode and tenor in a given situation, the structure will likely follow some further specific cultural conventions and use distinctive language. Thus, a business letter, for instance, will include
      • The date, following a culture-specific format (consider how this varies in British and American English).
      • Addressee’s Name or Position and address,
      • Opening salutation, which will use formulaic language or Genre markers such as Dear Sir/Madam, or “Dear Mr/Ms Nash”·
      • The first line of the Body, stating the purpose of the letter and/or thanking the recipient for their previous communication, as appropriate. 
      • The closing salutation, which will follow the formulaic conventions governed by the opening salutation, i.e., whether the sender knows the recipient’s name or not 

• Articles

For publication in newspapers, magazines, or specialised journals or magazines, either in paper or online, articles are generally defined as a complete text that serves to educate, inform about or illustrate a topic through insights and perspectives that engage an audience. As we have seen, articles follow a structure and layout, as indicated under :

• Common features, defined by Cambridge
• Specific features: The structure may vary depending on key elements based on Register, but in general,
  • A Newspaper article (and very often any kind of online article) typically requires a Headline and a Byline that, depending on the paper, may state the name of the writer, the date and the position or location, or a one-line summary of the contents. It then often follows an Inverted Pyramid structure:
    • Leading First paragraph, to attract the reader’s attention and/or with the most important info, including Who-What-Where-hen-Why-how, as relevant.
      • Main Body, with additional information structured in order of importance.
        • Conclusion/Summary or some closing line, which may refer back to the original point of the article.

• Reports

  Reports aim to present factual information about a state of affairs, and normally include an analysis of the data and possible recommendations: 
  • News, General, Scientific, research, Business, Legal, Police, Journalistic, etc.
  • Common features, defined by Cambridge
  • Specific features, depending on Types.
    • As an example, Scientific research reports (often referred to as papers or articles, even though there are some differences between articles and reports in the Scientific world ) normally include the title, the author(s), and the University. If relevant, they may include the author’s email. They follow an IMRADC or, most often, an AIM(RaD)CR structure with possible variations, depending on the journal or magazine’s requirements:
      • Abstract, which summarises the main aspects of the article.
      • Introduction, with the background information required to understand the article.
      • Materials and Methods/Methodology – sometimes Results appear here.
      • Results-and-Discussion -sometimes Discussion follows Results, and then Methods and Materials
      • Conclusion
      • References

Other Genres that may appear in the exam are the following:

Essays

•  General (Exam) Essays Defined by Cambridge
• Academic Essays, defined by York University

Reviews

• General ( film, book, games, etc.) Reviews, as defined by the BBC
• (Academic) Systematic & Literature Review

Needless to say, the above is not an exhaustive list of genres. Indeed, you will find that different and further classifications are possible and that Genre is intertwined with Register, as we’ll see in the next post

In a nutshell, genre could be described as the term that serves to categorise a complete text in terms of its cultural context, particularly the cultural conventions that govern its structure and layout, its most appropriate register for the situational context and required linguistic formulae and conventions. This notwithstanding, we should not forget that genre is dynamic and the conventions governing each type may blur or vary over time.

Apart from the links included in the posts, we have consulted, the following sources:

Banks, D.: Systemic Functional Linguistics.

Biber, D. and Conrad, S.: Register, Genre and Style (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. 2nd Ed. 2019)

Paltridge, B. Genre and the Language Learning Classroom (Michigan Teacher Training, 2004)
Pardede, P. Scientific Articles Structure. (2012)

Thompson, G et al., editors: The Cambridge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics (CUP 2019)