ABSTRACT
Recentstudiesongenreprivilegethereal-lifeintentofthespeaker(SeeBerkenkotter &Huckin, 1995;Bhatia, 1997a; Yunik, 1997,forexample). According tothisview, context determines speaker intent. Yunik (1997) remarked:
Context sets the stage where particular meanings unfold, where individuals learn to create themselves, and where societal traditions are recreated and contest ed.... The applicationoftheorytoteaching ... meansraisingavarenessoftheprocessesofmaking meanings, making identities and making ideologies, in order to empower learners to make informed choices. (p. 321; italics mine)
However, previous approaches to teaching genre focus on the text rather than the context and the social action resulting fromawarenessof thecontext.They are based onabeliefthatgenreisdrivenbyrhetoricalfunctionslike“description,”“exposition,” “narration,” and “argumentation,” which are mode-based and text-oriented, instead of by communicative intent, which is probably field-and tenor-based (Halliday, 1985). Genre is thus more a text-type rather than a speech event (see Paltridge, this volume) and associated with certain grammatical and textual features, which form the focus of ESL instruction. Using this assumption, Hammond, Bums, Joyce, Brosnan,&Gerot(1992)foundthatthepasttense,“actionverbs,”“verbsofsaying,” and adverbs oftime and place are commonly associated with news reports. With this information in mind, theteachereitherpointsout the grammatical featuresexplicitly to the learners (see Kalantzis & Wignell, 1988, and to a certain extent, Drury & Gollin, 1986), or requires learners to “discover” them through analysis (see
Holborow, 1991, for example). In stark contrast to textual analysis is a contextual awareness-building approach, more parallel to Yunik (1997), which highlights speaker intent and encourages learners to analyze the speech event and the situational variables underlying genres. Both approaches are elaborated next.
