John Flowerdew

City University of Hong Kong

Text and Context in Applied Genre Analysis

This presentation describes an approach to genre analysis which is directed towards the achievement of specific pedagogic objectives. Genre analysis is conceived of broadly, as the study of the systematic variation of language and discourse structure according to context. Drawing on a range of educational research projects the author has been involved in, the paper shows how the specific approach to genre analysis employed may vary according to whether more or less emphasis is put on text, on the one hand, or on context, on the other. Examples where the emphasis is more on textual analysis are provided from projects studying the structure and function of definitions in academic lectures, the role of 'signalling' nouns in academic discourse, and the linguistic contrasts between the spoken and written academic genres. Examples which place more emphasis on context are drawn from work on second language lectures, where the focus is more on the ethnographic study of the sometimes contrasting attitudes and beliefs of Western lecturers and ethnic Chinese students, and in the field of critical language awareness, where the objective is the development of locally relevant materials based on political genres.