the cognitive analysis of the dynamics of genre (Bhatia, 1993). This weak point can be
overcome by coordinating schema theory with Swales’ approach. This will be explored in
detail below in the discussion of Swales’ views on discourse community, genre and
rhetorical structures.
3.1 Discourse community
‘Discourse community’ derives from the concept of the speech community used in
sociolinguistics (Bloomfield, 1933; Braithwaite, 1984; Hymes, 1974; Hudson, 1980; Labov,
1966; Saville-Troike, 1984) which is defined as composed of a group of people sharing
‘similar linguistic rules’ (Bloomfield, 1933), or ‘shared norms’ (Labov, 1966). For example,
we can legitimately refer to people who speak Chinese as the Chinese-speaking community.
However, according to Swales, the concept of speech community may not be adequate to
explain and analyse written genres, for it is too general and is too abstract in its extension.
He suggests that a discourse community is a group in which particular communicative tasks
are central to the functioning of the group. Moreover, a discourse community is related to
achieving goals. Therefore it is necessary to differentiate the speech community from a
discourse community (Swales, 1990:24). To be specific, Swales (1990:24-27) assigns six
characteristics to a discourse community which can be summarised as:
(1) . A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals, either formally described or implicitly understood. All the members share these goals and this sharing gives unity to the discourse community.
(2) . A discourse community has mechanisms with which its members communicate with each other. The means may vary, but the purpose of these mechanisms remains the same: to enable the members to communicate and express the communicative needs of the discourse community.
(3) . A discourse community uses its mechanisms of communication primarily to provide information and feedback, and membership implies that the members participate in the information flow of their community. In addition, the discourse community may also have secondary goals to improve its performance.
(4) . The discourse community uses and possesses one or more genres to further realise its aims. A discourse community shares discoursal expectations which are related to the appropriate use of topics, form, and function of texts.
(5) . In addition to genres, the discourse community has acquired some specific lexis. This specialisation may refer to the use of specialised technical terminologies such as in medical communities. The lexis can make the communication more effective among its members who
share an understanding of the terminologies, but may sound confusing to outsiders.
(6) . A discourse community has a threshold level for members, which ensures that they have a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.
However, Swales’ features of the discourse community given above need to be expanded by another feature when schema theory is taken into consideration. A discourse community requires its members to exhibit a basic or general level of knowledge structures which are the prerequisite for anyone to become a member. These basic knowledge
structures relate to the basic understanding of the world, which members need in order to understand the goals of the community, communicate with each other, and understand the genres used by the community as well. Without this basic knowledge, one could not do any of the above, and could not be accepted by the discourse community. For example, the Chinese managers’ discourse community requires a certain level of basic knowledge, and this knowledge is shared by all of its members. As Swales (1990:24) explains, a discourse
community enrols its membership by training or relevant education, which implies the existence of such knowledge structures in the discourse community, but he does not explore this any further.
The discourse community can thus be defined by a set of features with the focus placed on the realisation of purposes. These goals are understood by its members, who share the general knowledge structures for communicating with each other and continuously exploit linguistic resources in using genres.
For example, in this thesis, managers in Chinese business enterprises can be seen as members of the business writing discourse community because they can meet all the above criteria: they share the basic knowledge structures, they communicate with each other, and above all, they share the common public goals of promoting business and doing business with each other. On the other hand, students who are learning business writing would not be considered to be members of this discourse community because they do not really share the basic knowledge structures required by this discourse community. Therefore, they will be seen as a separate group who are being trained to enter this discourse community.
As elaborated above, a discourse community is closely related to the use of genre — another important concept to be explored below.
3.2 Genre
According to Swales, genre is defined as follows:
A genre comprises a class of communicative events, the members of which share some set of communicative purposes. These purposes are recognised by the expert members of the parent discourse community, and thereby constitute the rationale for the genre. This rationale shapes the schematic structure of the discourse and
influences and constrains choice of content and style.
(Swales, 1990:58)
For the purpose of this study, communicative events will include those events in which language plays a central role. In this definition, at least three factors are involved. They are communicative purposes, the expert members and the linguistic choices. All of these need further elaboration.
First, genres are characterised as a set of communicative purposes. There have been a number of studies (Hymes, 1974; Miller, 1984; Saville-Troike, 1984; Martin and Rothery,
1986; Shopen, 1993) that focus on this issue. Among them Miller (1984: 32) pays special attention to the importance of communicative purposes, and points out that genre study should not only focus on the different forms genres employ but also on understanding their goals. Swales (1990) further points out that communicative purposes can offer protection against an inadequate classification based on stylistic similarities or inherited beliefs (Swales,
1990:46). The purpose-based approach can be more reliable than the form-based approach. This is especially true with genres that share similar forms. For example, a personal letter can be easily distinguished from a sales letter based on their different communicative purposes, although both genres may have similar forms of salutations and well-wishes. The personal letter is related to personal matters and social relationships, while a sales letter aims to sell a product. This difference in the two genres sets them apart in spite of the similar forms both letters might employ.
What then are communicative purposes and how can one identify them? There does not seem to be any ready answer to these questions. Swales explains that communicative purposes are the goals a genre aims to achieve and are less overt than form, and there is a need for the analyst to undertake independent and open-minded investigation to find them (Swales, 1990:46). As an important clue, Martin (1985:251) discusses genre as being used to accomplish social purposes. Here ‘social purposes’ offer some understanding of
communicative purposes. Genre can be seen as related to purposes arising from the needs of the social context. Another possible clue can be found in Austin (1962), who discusses illocutionary and perlocutionary force. Illocutionary force refers to what a person wishes to accomplish by an utterance, such as making a request. The perlocutionary force refers to the effect the utterance has or the speaker hopes to have upon the hearer, such as convincing someone to do something. Similarly in a written genre, the communicative purposes can be seen as a combination of these two aspects: the intention to accomplish something and to influence the reader’s mind as well. However, a genre, unlike individual utterances as often discussed in speech act theory, should be treated as a whole text to determine these
purposes. For example, sales invitations may invite the reader to come to an exhibition, but the writer will also try to introduce the variety of products at the show with an effort to persuade the reader that s/he should come.
With regard to identifying communicative purposes, Bhatia (1993:21) points out that they are “reflected in the interpretative cognitive structuring of the genre, and represent the typical regularities of organisation”. Bhatia’s analysis implies that the communicative purposes of a genre are not readily expressed in a text, but have to be worked out by the reader or learner based on conventional social knowledge, reflecting directly the world schemata discussed Section 2 of this chapter. Since identifying communicative purposes is related to the cognitive process of making predictions, the way to identify them can be explained in a clearer way if schema theory is applied here. In fact, their identification mainly involves top-down processing in which the reader or learner has to make predictions at the higher levels of the text. Here, based on Swales (1990:58), a text is seen as an exemplar of genre both in purpose and form. However, since working out communicative purposes is not a simple matter of decoding the text, the reader or analyst has to refer to his/her own
schemata concerning institutional knowledge and genre-specific formal knowledge to complete his/her predictions, and then use these predictions as the central idea to check that lower levels, including specific linguistic forms, verify the predictions. During this process, only people with appropriate schemata can make correct predictions and verifications. A lack of appropriate knowledge structures will lead to incomplete or even wrong
understanding. It needs to be pointed out that the illocutionary force can be more explicit than the perlocutionary force, as the former is about specific tasks while the latter is about an effect or intended effect. Therefore, perlocutionary force will be more difficult to identify, and to identify this successfully requires one to have the appropriate knowledge structures.
It is even more difficult to determine communicative purposes since complex genres may have a set of communicative purposes. Take Chinese sales letters for example.
Although the ultimate goal is to bring about the sale of products and services (cf. Aurner, 1958:279), a Chinese sales letter may involve other communicative purposes, such as achieving a positive public image, attracting the reader’s attention, and encouraging further communication. When communicative purposes have been determined, there is another problem, ie. to determine the relationships between them. In a genre that has a set of communicative purposes, one purpose may be complementary to another, or may be in conflict with another. The effectiveness of a text is determined by balancing the relationships between the communicative purposes (Miller, 1984; Horowitz, 1986). In Chinese sales