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A consideration of text is crucial in the various views of genre offered by systemic functional linguists, which, as Hyland (2002f: 16) comments, “all reflect Halliday’s concern with relating form, function and context.”

The relationship between register (described in 2.2.1) and genre is not clearly spelled out in earlier SFL (Leckie-Tarry 1993, 1995; Lewin et al 2001). Halliday (1978: 134) refers to genre structure, describing it as a “projection of higher-level semiotic structure” and suggesting that it “can be brought within the general framework of the concept of register” as an aspect of mode. However, he recognises that “a genre may have implications for other components of meaning: there are often associations between a particular genre and particular semantic features of an ideational or interpersonal kind” (Halliday 1978: 145). He thus associates genre with field and tenor as well. Halliday’s discussion of register (Halliday 1978, 1989c) is generally applicable to the notion of genre which it subsumes. As Leckie- Tarry (1993) explains, this means that the concept of register continues in Halliday’s thinking to represent the relationship between text and context and that genre is seen merely as the organising structure of a text rather than the realisation of social purpose.

Hasan (1977: 230) also considers register and genre as synonymous “for most material purposes”. She associates any genre with, on the one hand, a configuration of elements of structure of a text (later termed the generic structure potential, or GSP) and, on the other, a “contextual configuration” (particular values of field, tenor and mode). A given GSP is the structural output of a context of situation, which is conceptualised as one of the networks which makes up the context of culture (Hasan 1995). Each structural element of the GSP is realised by patterns of language. While Hasan relates texts to social activity, this is accounted for in terms of a contextual configuration (CC), “a specific set of values that realises field, tenor, and mode” (Hasan 1989a: 55). She distinguishes between obligatory and optional elements of structure, with field appearing to be responsible for obligatory elements, while variations originate in tenor and mode (Martin 1992), and the order of elements being criterial for membership of a genre.

It is clear from the account above that register theory in SFL is characterised by an emphasis on context of situation and linguistic features of texts. It was in an attempt to emphasise the wider social context that theorists working in this framework began to stress the notion of context as culture (Kress and Threadgold 1988; Martin et al 1987) and genres as conventionalised forms of characteristic situations (Kress 1989). Couture (1985, 1986), for example, draws a distinction between the function of register and of genre in correlating text and situation. She follows Halliday in linking text with situation type and in showing the implications of register as a function of the variables of field, tenor and mode for writer and reader. However, she goes on to suggest that, while register can be expressed by any stretch of language, for a stretch of language to be recognised as a kind of text it must express a genre. Couture’s model combines the meaning potentials defined by register and genre while making explicit the constraints imposed on texts by each:

While registers impose explicitness constraints at the level of vocabulary and syntax, genres impose additional explicitness constraints at the discourse level. They define conventional patterns of linguistic structure for a complete discourse, and they are intertextual…. Unlike register, genre can only be realized in completed texts or texts that can be projected as complete, for a genre does more than specify kinds of codes extant in a group of related texts; it specifies conditions for beginning, continuing, and ending a text (Couture 1986: 82).

Examples of genres mentioned by Couture include research reports, explanatory essays, business reports and narratives, while examples of registers are the languages of scientific reporting and of newspaper reporting.

What is needed then is a theoretical model that distinguishes genre and register and this is suggested by Martin (1984, 1985, 1991b, 1992, 1999), who posits two different semiotic systems existing in addition to that of language and describes the relationships between them thus:

register function[s] as the expression form of genre, at the same time as language functions as the expression form of register. Register can then itself be organised with respect to field, tenor and mode, reflecting metafunctional diversity in its expression form, leaving genre to concentrate on the integration of meanings engendered by field, tenor and mode as systemically related social processes (Martin 1992: 495).

Of importance here is that different genres are not seen as related to each other in terms of a single register variable, as in Hasan’s approach, and so “texts can be classified in ways which cut across metafunctional components in language” (Martin 1992: 505). Ventola (1987) also follows this approach, taking both genre and register as systems which are realised through language. Seeing genre as an underlying semiotic accounts for the way in which a particular genre may occur within a range of situations (Martin 1986b). For example, a research article may be written in a range of disciplines and so show differences in field while sharing the same genre structure.

Martin relates his understanding of register and genre to Bakhtin’s (1986) perspective on language variety and context, which not only recognises metafunctional diversity but also “compositional structure” or “speech genre”. Thus while the context of situation is represented by register, genre is now linked with context of culture (Eggins and Martin 1997; Martin 1992), as illustrated below by Eggins (1994):

Figure 2.2 Genre and register in relation to language (Eggins 1994: 34)

Martin (1984: 25) defines genre as “a staged, goal oriented, purposeful activity in which speakers engage as members of our culture”. In other words, social goals are achieved through genres; they are “how things get done, when language is used to accomplish them” (Martin 1985: 250). Genres are ‘staged’ in the sense that they are realised as ‘schematic structures’, or stages in a particular sequence that one moves through to realise a particular genre, that is a “beginning-middle-end structure”. The example Martin offers of such a

LANGUAGE REGISTER GENRE FIELD MODE TENOR

structure is the Orientation-Complication-Evaluation-Resolution-Coda configuration that Labov and Waletsky (1967) have suggested for narrative. He goes on to explain that schematic structure “represents the positive contribution genre makes to text: a way of getting from A to B in the way a given culture accomplishes whatever the genre in question is functioning to do in that culture” (Martin 1985: 251).

The position taken by Martin is clarified by Lee (2002) in his discussion of the terms ‘genre’ and ‘register’. Like Couture, he distinguishes these terms as indicating different points of view concerning the same text:

Register is used when we view text as language: as the instantiation of a

conventionalised, functional configuration of language tied to certain broad societal situations, i.e. variety according to use. Here the point of view is somewhat static and uncritical: different situations ‘require’ different configurations of language, each being ‘appropriate’ to its task, being maximally ‘functionally adapted’ to the immediate situational parameters of contextual use.

Genre is used when we view the text as a member of a category: a culturally

recognised artefact, a grouping of texts according to some conventionally recognised criteria, a grouping according to purposive goals, culturally defined. Here the point of view is more dynamic…: genres are categories established by consensus within a culture, and hence subject to change as generic conventions are contested/challenged and revised perceptibly or imperceptibly over time (Lee 2002: 259).

Examples given by Lee contrast the register of legal language with the genres that instantiate it, such as courtroom arguments, wills and affidavits, in which the focus is on membership of a category. Macken and Slade (1993) make the distinction between genre and the three elements of register in terms of the ‘why’ of a text in contrast to the ‘what’ (field), ‘who’ (tenor) and ‘how’ (mode).

Genre is seen by some proponents of SFL as determining the language that may be chosen in a text (e.g. Eggins 2004; Hasan 1989b). However, Paltridge (1993, 1997), investigating lexicogrammatical patterns in a particular academic genre, shows that the relationship between genre and language is difficult to predict and Eggins and Martin (1997) assert that the relationship between context and language is probabilistic rather than determined. Thus:

an interactant setting out to achieve a particular cultural goal is most likely to initiate a text of a particular genre, and that text is most likely to unfold in a particular way – but the potential for alternatives is inherent in the dialogic relationship between language and context (Eggins and Martin 1997: 236).

This suggests that, while language patterns may be used, as in this study, to support a particular genre analysis and to help determine boundaries of structural elements, they are not necessarily the primary consideration in arriving at genre structure which is rather, as Paltridge (1994) suggests, established primarily in terms of content.

Martin, together with Rothery, (e.g. Martin 1986b, 1991a; Martin and Rothery 1986) has developed his theory of genre initially largely in the context of classroom writing. He thus seems generally to see genre in terms of text types important in school writing such as narrative, recount, procedure and description (e.g. Martin 1996, 2001). Longer texts (i.e. macro-genres) are seen structurally as developments or complexes of these elemental genres (Martin 1993a, 1994, 2002; Unsworth 2001). The texts examined in the current study are associated with a professional/academic setting and so are produced in a very different context from school texts. Assisting students and professionals in acquiring the sort of writing needed in a variety of settings is the motivation for another approach to genre developed in ESP. This forms the third perspective on genre and is discussed in the following section.