ABSTRACT
This chapter adopts two viewpoints to the concept of genre: perspectives and patterns - theory and practise. It offers several theoretical perspectives to the concept of genre, drawing on previous research in linguistics, rhetoric, and multimodality. The chapter provides a stark point of contrast: a practical perspective informed by the fields of document theory and information design, which also have used the concept of genre to explore patterns in graphic design. It shows how the genre research in rhetoric and linguistics may inform the current multimodal investigation. The concept of genre agnation has been used in systemic-functional linguistics to model relations between genres. The systemic-functional linguistics treats genre as a staged, goal-oriented process with a linear structure. Hyland points out that genre research within the field of linguistics has paid special attention to the relationship between language and its contexts of use, but this particular relation has also gained attention in the study of rhetoric.
