List of Figures List of Tables Foreword Introduction Robin P. Fawcett, M.A.K. Halliday, Sydney M. Lamb and Adam Makkai 1 Language as Code and Language as Behaviour: A Systemic-Functional Interpretation of the Nature and Ontogenesis of Dialogue M.A.K. Halliday 2 Metaphors of Information John Regan 3 How Universal is a Localist Hypothesis? A Linguistic Contribution to the Study of 'Semantic Styles' of Language Yoshihiko Ikegami 4 Some Speculations on Language Contact in a Wider Setting Jeffrey Ellis 5 Ways of Saying: Ways of Meaning Ruqaiya Hasan Index

Language as social semiotic

What kind of knowledge is needed by information specialists working in a specific subject field like medicine, sociology or music? What approaches have been used in information science to produce kinds of domain‐specific knowledge? This article presents 11 approaches to domain analysis. Together these approaches make a unique competence for information specialists. The approaches are: producing literature guides and subject gateways; producing special classifications and thesauri; research on indexing and retrieving specialities; empirical user studies; bibliometrical studies; historical studies; document and genre studies; epistemological and critical studies; terminological studies, LSP (languages for special purposes), discourse studies; studies of structures and institutions in scientific communication; and domain analysis in professional cognition and artificial intelligence. Specific examples and selective reviews of literature are provided, and the strengths and drawbacks of each of these approaches are discussed.

Domain analysis in information science

This article is a review of two dominant approaches to academic writing instruction in higher education, English for Academic Purposes (EAP), which is used internationally, and Academic Literacies, which has become an influential model in the UK. The review was driven by a concern that Academic Literacies has been mainly focused on the situations of ‘non-traditional’ students, and has not sufficiently acknowledged the theoretical and pedagogical potential of EAP for developing a mainstream instructional model. Another concern was that EAP is too focused on the needs of non-native speakers of English and has, therefore, failed to make an impact on mainstream writing instruction. The aim of this article is to critically examine both approaches and to identify shared principles that can be used for developing relevant writing support programmes for students from all backgrounds at UK universities and elsewhere.

The best of both worlds? Towards an English for Academic Purposes/Academic Literacies writing pedagogy

Enterprise social networking

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to account for the genre characteristics of non‐linear, multi‐modal, web‐mediated documents. It involves a two‐dimensional view on genres that allows one to account for the fact that digital genres act not only as text but also as medium.Design/methodology/approach – The theoretical framework of the article is the Swalesian genre theory used in academic settings all over the world to investigate the relationship between discourse and social practice and to teach genre conventions to students of language and communication. Up till now most genre research has focused on the characteristics of “printed” texts, whereas less has been done to apply the genre theory to digital genres.Findings – The article discusses the characteristics of digital genres, notably the media constraints that have a significant effect on the production and reception of digital genres and suggests an extension of the Swalesian genre model that takes the digital characteristics into account.Resea...

Digital genres: a challenge to traditional genre theory

Since the early 1980s, in much of the work within a genre-analytic approach, communicative goal or purpose has been used as an important and often primary criterion for deciding whether a particular discourse falls within a particular generic category (book review, sales letter, cross-examination, etc.). However, as the number of genre studies has increased, and as genre theory has become more complex, the concept of 'communicative purpose' has also become more complex, multiple, variable and generally hard to get at. We believe that one consequence of these developments has gone largely unnoticed: that uncertainties surrounding communicative purpose undermine its claimed role as a means of assigning genre membership. In this paper we discuss this paradox, illustrate the difficulties that can arise, and then suggest a procedure whereby 'communicative purpose' can be retained as a viable and valuable concept.

Genre identification and communicative purpose: A problem and a possible solution

This article is a contribution to the existing debate about the marketization of higher education and offers a detailed study of the way the practices of marketization manifest themselves at the level of discourse in higher education. Taking its point of departure in Critical Discourse Analysis and using a text-driven procedure for genre analysis, the article describes and analyses the international student prospectus as an instance of a highly promotional genre which clearly reflects the values and forces of the free market. The article contains two analyses. The first analysis compares four instances of the international student prospectus genre from Finland, Scotland, Australia and Japan and tries to establish genre membership and genre characteristics by considering the overall text structure, and by looking for similarities in content and `rhetorical moves'. The second analysis is an in-depth analysis of the language use in the international student prospectus from the University of Stirling, Scotlan...

The impact of marketization on higher education genres — the international student prospectus as a case in point:

This paper explores the possibility of extending the functional genre analysis model to account for the genre characteristics of non-linear, multi-modal, web-mediated documents. The extension involves a two-dimensional view on genres which allows us to account for the fact that digital genres not only act as text but also as medium. Genre theoretical concepts such as 'communicative purpose', 'moves', and 'rhetorical structure' are being adapted to accommodate the multi-modal, non-linear characteristics of web texts. The homepage (the first, introductory page on a website - not to be confused with the 'personal homepage' genre) constitutes the material for the theoretical discussions and the exemplary analyses.

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What are the Characteristics of Digital Genres? - Genre Theory from a Multi-Modal Perspective

The production of expert-to-layperson documents in private and public companies is an area of research that is gradually gaining ground in research communities throughout the world. This article discusses the nature of public communication written by experts or semiexperts and aimed at a large and heterogeneous audience, often potentially the entire population of a country. The article analyzes common barriers to this kind of communication, and considers topics such as the implications of very broad target groups, expert-to-layperson communication and the legislative introduction of mandatory genres as opposed to genres which have evolved naturally over time. The case of the patient package insert is outlined as a prototypical example of 'public communication' suffering from the problems brought about by the existence of these common barriers.

Inger Askehave

Papers

Genre identification and communicative purpose: A problem and a possible solution

Digital genres: a challenge to traditional genre theory

The impact of marketization on higher education genres — the international student prospectus as a case in point:

What are the Characteristics of Digital Genres? - Genre Theory from a Multi-Modal Perspective

Communication barriers in public discourse: The patient package insert