ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the premise that an understanding of genres is a key component of workplace writing ability. Students need to understand why texts are written in the ways they are in order to be able to produce similar texts for their own purposes. In the field of applied linguistics, genre is defined as "a particular class of speech events which can be considered to be of the same type". More than twenty years ago Bhatia suggested that historical development in the field of linguistic and discourse analysis indicates a clear progression from "pure surface description to a thicker description of various aspects of texts or genres". A full account of a given genre would require an examination not only of the text itself, but of the processes surrounding its construction, i.e. the "particular processes of producing, distributing and consuming texts", along with an investigation of the social or professional context in which these take place.
