As it is in human nature to name and categorize, and thus indicate a social recognition of a phenomenon, there is usually a genre name for those sharing knowledge of a particular genre (Johns 1997). Among genre theorists, some do not pay any attention to the name, while others consider it important, such as Paltridge (1997: 107), who writes in his definition of genre that “the names and classification of genres given by particular discourse communities provide important information for the analyst in that they reflect the communities’ perception of these events”. Miller (1984: 155) also claims that genres for which we have names in everyday language tell us something important about discourse.
Generic vs. specific names reflecting genre status. – In his extensive discussion on genre names, Swales (1990) points out that for instance, as a class, letter lacks sufficient indication of purpose for genre status; it only refers to a means of communication. The same observation holds for the subsets of the class that refer to fields of activity such as business letters or official letters. “It’s only when purpose becomes ascribable that the issue of genre arises as in begging letters or letters of condolence” (Swales 1990: 61).
Berkenkotter & Huckin (1995: 17) also argue that traditional generic classifications, such as business letter, are so general that they can only describe superficial parameters of form and content.
In their opinion, genres and genre knowledge should be localized in terms of both time and place; knowing a genre means knowing about appropriate topics and relevant details, not only about formal conventions. This view is not held by, for example, Yates
& Orlikowski (1992: 302), who take business letter as one example of a genre, memo another, and email message a third. In the same vein, Louhiala-Salminen (1995, 1997, 1999a) argues that business
fax is a genre recognized and used in the business discourse community. In other words, if a business community member decides to write a fax to a business partner, the name invokes certain expectations as to the purpose, form, content, etc., of the text. Simultaneously, Louhiala-Salminen (1999a: 166) admits that depending on the level of generalization, business fax can also be regarded as an overarching umbrella term containing more specific subgenres, such as inquiry, order, etc. Mulholland (1999) in her treatment of the email genre does not question the level of abstraction and does not specifically discuss any subgenres.
Mulholland’s (1999: 81) comment about the objective of her study suggests that all messages delivered via the email system represent one email genre and the particular workplace in which they occur only serves as an example as the following citation indicates: “This study has attempted to describe and account for e-mail as a distinct genre in the evolutionary stage it has reached in one particular institution, and in one set of communications, those which manage the preparation committee meetings” (author’s emphasis).
It may be suggested that the membership in a relevant discourse community and the contextual information available for the insider determines the usefulness of a name. In other words, using names such as business letter, memo, or fax among the insiders of a business discourse community is likely to disclose enough of the shared expectations in relation to content, form, purposes, etc.
of the communicative events for the names to be useful for the users of the genre. By the same token, outsiders to the community may feel that such names are too general and do not reveal sufficient detail about the generic features and purposes. In previous times, it was mostly business people who were familiar with business letters and faxes, and the outsiders to the community did not need them, or use them, and thus they were not aware of the shared knowledge and genre rules among the insiders of the business community. Now, however, the situation with the new communication media is different as they are increasingly used not only for work but also for pleasure. It may be suggested that
most business practitioners have shared expectations about the communicative events effected by email. However, the expectations of an appropriate genre exemplar to meet the needs of a specific situation may still be different; a request such as Send me an email about this can evoke different conventions in different organizations (for ‘organizational voice’ see Rogers 2003, also 11.1).
Confusion in genre names.– Although naming is inherent in social recognition of a phenomenon, there seem to be genre names without any referents, genres without explicit names, and genres with conflicting names. Swales (1990: 56) takes an example of a genre name without any genres attached to it: haiku sessions at an IATEFL15 conference. He does not recognize this genre in spite of his long and extensive experience of the conferences in the English-teaching world. In his opinion, this suggests that there must also be genres without names and he also gives an example from his own discourse community. This finding of genres anonymous is supported by Nickerson (2000: 106, 154, 181), who identified seven genres of organizational communication in the texts of eleven British subsidiary companies operating in the Netherlands. These included three types of reports and four types of letters. Similarly, she identified a set of four similar organizational genres in email communication. None of the identified genres had special genre names used by the relevant discourse community. Moreover, Yates
& Orlikowski (2002: 18) report on the reluctance of users of certain electronic team room technology to label the purpose and content of their messages, which can be interpreted as a reluctance to categorize or name the messages. On the other hand, Yates &
Orlikowski (1992: 315) maintain in their discussion of the evolution of the memo genre that the term memorandum or memo rather than business letter to designate internal correspondence was one of
15 IATEFL stands for International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language.
the last features to emerge and signal the recognition of a new genre (see 2.3.7). Thus, it may well be that the time is not yet ripe for naming the genres in email identified by Nickerson.
In addition to some genre names existing without concrete referents and others existing without names, also genres with conflicting names exist. Nickerson (2000: 88) found that documents similar in terms of conventional layout were referred to by different names in different companies. She gives an example of a report in one company sharing the same layout as a memo in another company. Furthermore, Barbara et al. (1996) report that different businesses may use different names, such as bids and reports, for what appear to be texts in the same genre.
Such findings of inconclusive nature give support to Swales’s (1990) skepticism about the discourse community’s own views of genre names; he raises doubts about the insiders’ views and suggests that typically further validation of genre names is needed.
In the same vein, it can be suggested that the name that is used to refer to a genre is irrelevant as long as the conception of the genre is shared among its users, the discourse community members. In other words, social recognition of a genre may be realized when discourse community members use a general name, such as fax or email, which is sufficient in its context of use for the other members to recognize the genre. The names may, however, become confusing when members of different discourse communities using different names for the same genre collaborate or when researchers make comparisons between texts that they assume represent the same genre only because they have the same name.
In the present study, both Stora Enso employees and focus group members were asked to name the messages presented to them simply to find out how email messages are referred to and consequently if the prospective genres have names. The naming practice may also be seen as evidence of stability or instability of the phenomenon in the corporate context.