ABSTRACT
The genre of the introductory textbook has attracted attention from applied linguists, both because of its problematic relationship to professional academic genres (e.g. Myers, 1992b; Swales, 1995; Hyland, 1999b) and because of its centrality as a pedagogical genre (e.g. H enderson and Hewings, 1990; Love, 1991, 1993; Johns, 1997). It is generally agreed that the generic purpose of the textbook is not only to provide information, but crucially to introduce students to the epistemology of the discipline (Love, 1991; Hyland, 1999b). The perception of the textbook as genre has frequently been influenced by K uhn’s characterisation of scientific textbooks as ‘a body of knowledge backed by a consensus of practitioners’ (Myers, 1992b: 5; Swales, 1995: 4). Johns (1997: 46-9) provides a useful overview of some of the features which have been described, including the absence of discussion of disciplinary conflict, the ‘absence of the au th o r’, and some o f the grammatical structures realising this consensus.
