Genre Analysis

Cambridge Applied Linguistics

by John M. Swales

In recent years the concept of 'register' has been increasingly replaced by emphasis on the analysis of genre, which relates work in sociolinguistics, text linguistics and discourse analysis to the study of specialist areas of language. This book is a clear, authoritative guide to this complex area. He provides a survey of approaches to varieties of language, and considers these in relation to communication and task-based language learning. Swales outlines an approach to the analysis of genre, and then proceeds to consider examples of different genres and how they can be made accessible through genre analysis. This is important reading for all those working in teaching English for academic purposes and also of interest to those working in post-secondary writing and composition due to relevant issues in writing across the curriculum.

Genres: Writing, Research, Nonfiction, Language

274 pages, Paperback

First published November 8, 1990

About the author

John Malcolm Swales was an English linguist. He joined the University of Michigan as a faculty member in 1985. He retired in 2006 as professor emeritus of linguistics and co-director of the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English project.
Swales was best known for his work on genre analysis, particularly with regard to its application to the fields of rhetoric, discourse analysis, English for Academic Purposes and, more recently, information science. His writing has studied second language acquisition.

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's possible that this is more useful for language teachers than it is for students of conversation analysis. I know this is a seminal work in the field, but reading it could not be less of an enjoyable experience. If Swales' aim was to introduce the methodology of move structure analysis, I'm not sure why he never actually does so, beyond providing several examples of analyses he's done. Allan Bell, Bhatia, Van Dijk etc. all offer more accessible and informative introductions to genre analysis.

[Tanya · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the book was so informative especially for those who are busy in their final year dissertation The writer has very swiftly and smoothly described all the processes that one need to know to complete their these. I know it is a very tiresome process but the author has made it his responsibility to show us the right and straight path to the completion of our desired topic with the help of this book.