ABSTRACT
Text and context have been assigned varying degrees of importance in the analysis of professional genres. However, as discussed earlier, in more recent versions of genre analysis (Swales, 1998; Bhatia, 2004, 2010) context has been assigned an increasingly prominent role, thus redefi ning genre as a confi guration of textexternal and text-internal factors, highlighting, at the same time, two kinds of relationships involving texts and contexts. Interrelationships between and across texts focusing primarily on text-internal properties are viewed as intertextual in nature, whereas interactions across and between genres resulting primarily from text-external factors are seen as interdiscursive in nature. Intertextuality has attracted extensive attention in discourse and genre theory. Interdiscursivity, however, has been paid relatively little attention, especially in genre theory. In this chapter, I would like to explore in more detail the nature and function of interdiscursivity in genre theory, claiming that interdiscursivity is the function of an appropriation of generic resources, primarily contextual (text-external) in nature focusing on specifi c relationships between and across discursive and professional practices as well as professional cultures. I must point out at the very outset that interdiscursivity is central to our understanding of the complexities of professional genres which are typically used in professional, disciplinary, institutional as well as workplace contexts.
