Genre performances: John Swales' Genre Analysis and rhetorical-linguistic genre studies

Abstract

Although scholars have studied some sources of variation within genres, the variation that is each individual performance of a genre requires further investigation. In Genre Analysis, John Swales combined rhetoric and linguistics to explain genre as grounded in shared communicative purposes and discoverable through text analysis. Although the disciplines differ in some of their purposes and settings, they share the difficulty of helping students advance beyond simplified understandings of genre to the complex decisions needed to address particular situations. Building from a rhetorical-linguistic genre studies and using metaphorically the linguistic concepts of competence and performance, this article proposes that genre theory and instruction should account for genre performances as well as genre competence. Genre theory can then better address such issues as identity, affect, and cognition. Genre instruction can lead students to examine not just similarity within a genre but also differences, in both communicative event and individual language-users. The uniqueness of each performance also affects assessment of genre knowledge and transfer, complicating the ability to assess genre competence through genre performance. Considering genre performances as well as competence within a rhetorical-linguistic genre studies allows genre scholars and teachers to address the fact that genre-in-use is simultaneously unique and shared.