Sunday 19 March 2017

Self-Contradiction: Genre As Both Text Type And Context

 Martin & Rose (2007: 8):
We use the term genre in this book to refer to different types of texts that enact various types of social contexts.

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[1] The notion of genre as text type is consistent with SFL theory.  In the architecture of SFL theory, text type is a point of variation on the cline of instantiation; it is register viewed from the instance pole (text) of the cline of instantiation.



However, most importantly, this use of the term 'genre' is not consistent with the model of genre presented throughout this work, as (a level of) context.  Types of text are language, not context.  Types of context are context, not language.

[2] In SFL theory, text types (genres) do not "enact" situation types (context); text types realise situation types.  Text types (language) and situation types (context) are different levels of symbolic abstraction.  It is the use of the term 'enact' that blurs the distinction between these two levels of abstraction.

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