ABSTRACT
In her widely quoted state-of-the-art article, Hyon (1996) distinguished three “worlds” of genre scholarship-English for Specific Purposes, New Rhetoric, and Australian-categorized according to the different theoretical and pedagogical orientations of their proponents. Although Hyon had valid reasons for grouping work in genre analysis into these three worlds, for my purpose in this chapter two groupings are more useful than three. Th fundamental difference for me is between linguistic and nonlinguisric approaches. ESP and the Australian school take a linguistic approach, applying theories of functional grammar and discourse and concentrating on the lexico-grammatical and rhetorical realization of the communicative purposes embodied in a genre, whereas the New Rhetoric group is less interested in lexico-grammar and rhetorical structure and more focused on situational context-the purposes and functions of genres and the attitudes, beliefs, values, and behaviors of the members of the discourse communities within which genres are situated.The methodology used by the linguistic approach of the ESPand Australian groups is basically that offunctional grammar, but with more concern for social context than is usual in that tradition and an additional interest in organizational patterns at the discourse level. New Rhetoric methodology, by contrast, tends to be more ethnographic than linguistic.
