Linguistics An Essential Introduction

Not all linguists use the word genre in the sense introduced above (though the majority use it in this or very similar ways), and not all linguists agree that genre in the sense introduced here is the most relevant way of grouping texts into classes.

There are, of course, many other dimensions of language use that can be used to do so. Let us briefly discuss some of the more important ones.

An obvious dimension is modality, discussed in Chapter 3, in particular the large-scale distinction between written and spoken language, but also the distinctions within these modalities (written language may be handwritten, printed, displayed on a computer screen, etc.; spoken language may be transmitted face-to-face or via telephone, etc.). Both the broad distinction between speech and writing and the more specific communication channels influence the structural properties of the language produced. Written language tends to use longer and more complex sentences and a more diverse vocabulary than spoken language, there are certain routines and fixed expressions that are typical of a particular channel, such as the fact that people often identify themselves by name at the beginning of a telephone conversation, but not when writing a letter, the fact that letters, but not telephone conversations, typically close with a phrase like yours sincerely or best regards and the writer’s name, etc. Sometimes, these linguistic structures become conventionalized and thus define a particular genre (the term is used for spoken and written language in linguistics) — telephone calls and letters can both be said to constitute genres, which are defined, in part, by the medium in which they occur.

A second dimension frequently used in classifying texts is register. Like genre, the term is used in slightly different ways by different researchers, but it generally refers to the way that the situation in which a text is produced and the relationship between Speaker and Hearer influence the linguistic structure of the text. One important aspect of register is the dimension of formality — there are words and grammatical structures that Speakers consider formal, i.e., suitable for professional rather than personal situations, and there are those they consider informal, i.e., suitable for personal situations. In the texts discussed above, we see signals of formality in the encyclopedia article (for example, the word device rather than thing, the phrase to the diameter of rather than the size of, or the fact that many passive clauses are used), and also in the recipe (for example, the subjunctive if an apple corer be handy instead of …is handy). In the excerpt from the novel, we see signals of informality, particularly in the passages of quoted speech (such as the phrase How about some… (line 1) rather than Can I offer you… or Would you like…, I think (line 5) rather than In my opinion and pick out (line 8) rather than select. Again, we can see register as one factor characterizing a given genre — encyclopedia articles are a genre characterized by a formal register, conversations between grandmothers and grandchildren are characterized by an informal register.

A third dimension that is sometimes used to classify texts is topic. This is a useful dimension in many applied contexts — for example, internet search engines can serve results of a better quality if they are able to group web sites according to topic —, but it is not really a useful dimension in linguistics. The texts discussed here all overlap heavily in terms of topic — all of them are about coring and baking apples —, but beyond the trivial fact that, because of this, they all contain words like bake, apple, and corer, they have nothing in common that would need to be described from a linguistic perspective, and genres are rarely restricted to a particular topic except in the most general way (such as the fact that recipes are about the preparation of food).