Available online at www.sciencedirect.

com

Journal of Second Language Writing 20 (2011) 1–5

Editorial
The history and future of genre in second language writing

A (very) brief history

This special issue of Journal of Second Language Writing takes as its focus the future of genre in second language
writing, but it may be useful to begin by examining the history of the relationship between the concept of genre and the
theory, research, and practice of second language writing. As readers will note, the perspective taken by the authors in this
issue is influenced by the North American contexts in which they work; this brief history adopts a similar perspective.
With the acknowledgement, then, that histories are multiperspectival, at least one origin of the relationship between genre
and L2 writing can be traced back to 1980. A lecturer at Aston University in Birmingham, England, named John Swales,
was carrying out a small research project with the help of his research assistant, Vijay Bhatia. The two compiled and
analyzed a corpus of research article introductions from 48 publications in a range of disciplines. Swales wanted to
understand the article introduction form better for the sake of teaching it to the overseas students he was working with at
Aston and, in the spirit of prevailing English for Specific Purposes (ESP) research approaches, textual description was the
key. In his recent memoir, Swales (2009) reveals that he had two important epiphanies during this project. The first was
the identification of a common rhetorical pattern in the texts, made up of four parts or ‘‘moves’’ used to indicate a gap in
previous research. (This common pattern of moves is now well known as the CARS model, in which writers ‘‘Create a
Research Space’’ for their work.) The identification and examination of rhetorical moves was a significant departure from
previous ESP studies, which had focused on the analysis of lexical or grammatical linguistic units.
Swales’ second epiphany was one of moving to a new concept of discourse, one that looked seriously at the social
and rhetorical dynamics of text production. Swales writes:
I happened, also in 1980, to be casually reading a review of a recent work about traditional Javanese customs by
the great cultural anthropologist, Clifford Geertz. The reviewer several times mentioned the word genre in
connection with cock-fighting rituals and the arrangements required for princely audiences and the like.
Suddenly, I realized that the concept of genre was the one that I had sub-consciously been searching for over the
previous year or two. (2009, p. 141)
In his introduction to the monograph that resulted from this project, Aspects of Article Introductions (1981), Swales
defines genre as ‘‘a more or less standardized communicative event with a goal or set of goals mutually understood by
the participants in that event and occurring within a functional rather than a social or personal setting’’ (p. 10). He
argues that genre is an important concept because ‘‘it is only within genres that language is sufficiently
conventionalized and the range of communicative purpose sufficiently narrow for us to hope to establish
pedagogically-employable generalizations that will capture certain relationships between function and form’’ (p. 10).
Just before the 1981 publication of Aspects of Article Introductions, the term genre was also employed in an article
on the use of passive voice by Tarone, Dwyer, Gillette, and Icke (1981) published in English for Specific Purposes
Journal. Again, the term was used as a way to consider not simply the linguistic features of a text (as had been typical
of research at the time) but also the rhetorical functions that those features carried out. Tarone (personal
communication, August 2, 2010) reflects that her use of the term genre in the 1981 article was likely influenced by

1060-3743/$ – see front matter # 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jslw.2010.12.004
2 Editorial / Journal of Second Language Writing 20 (2011) 1–5

Swales, who had used it in a 1981 festschrift for Louis Trimble (Selinker, Tarone, & Hanzeli, 1981) in reference to
‘‘discourse types,’’ the term more commonly used at the time by the so-called Washington School of ESP. Importantly,
Tarone et al. (1981) research, like Swales’, was motivated by pedagogical concerns in working with L2 writers. For
example, they conclude their article by stating that

It is extremely important to determine what rhetorical functions condition the choice of the passive in particular
EST [English for Science and Technology] genres. Only when we have addressed these issues will we be able to
provide accurate information to students of EST. (p. 136, emphasis mine)
Since its appearance in the literature in 1981, genre has become a central and remarkably productive concept in
second language writing studies as well as in writing studies more broadly. By the time Swales was completing Genre
Analysis in the late 1980s, key works in rhetoric and composition studies had also been published, including Miller’s
(1984) ‘‘Genre as Social Action’’ and Bazerman’s (1988) Shaping Written Knowledge, both of which developed
theories of genre within a rhetorical tradition. Meanwhile, Australian educationists had begun drawing on Halliday’s
Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) framework to further explore the notion of genre from that perspective (Cope &
Kalantzis, 1993; Martin, 1985, 1993). Drawing on these works and others, Swales (1990) developed a more robust
theory of genre and further elaborated an approach to teaching writing through a genre-based pedagogy which utilized
awareness-raising activities as a way to sensitize L2 writers to the relationships between a text’s form, rhetorical
functions, and community of users. This approach is best illustrated by the popular textbooks co-authored with
Christine Feak (Swales & Feak, 1994, 2000). Vijay Bhatia’s (1993) own work on analysis and teaching of professional
genres became similarly influential in ESP instruction during the 1990s.
A few years later, in her book Text, Role, and Context (1997), Ann Johns outlined an approach to writing instruction
which also focused on genre and awareness-raising but emphasized socioliterate activity to an even greater extent than
previous work had. With the needs of diverse first-year university students in mind, Johns demonstrated how students
could themselves carry out investigations of such socioliterate activity through ethnographic and interview-based
work as part of writing instruction. Around the same time, Ken Hyland’s (2000) blending of corpus linguistics and
genre analysis provided further insight into the relationships between disciplinary epistemological values and generic
form. While Hyland turned to large collections of academic writing as the basis of his analysis, he drew on writer
interviews to provide important insight into disciplinary discourses, taking a social constructionist perspective that
marked a clear departure from ESP studies of discourse types carried out in the 1970s and 1980s.
For teachers of writing, a focus on genre, regardless of theoretical orientation, is grounded in the belief that helping
students to demystify socially situated writing can facilitate the learning of privileged forms of discourse. Yet, second
language writers may face unique challenges in learning new genres. Issues related to learners’ sociocultural histories,
identities, prior learning experiences and expectations, and language proficiencies impact L2 writers differently than
monolingual writers. Second language writing teachers may see more value in and need for focusing on generic form,
for example, than L1 writing teachers. Meanwhile, the expansion of English as a language of education and research,
along with recent upswings in immigration in English-dominant countries, suggests that the global population of
second language writers (particularly in English) is growing. As a result, there is a significant need for continued
scholarship that examines genre specifically in second language writing. One challenge in this endeavor is to look
beyond a single genre tradition—most commonly, ESP—to other theoretical and pedagogical frameworks that may
inform an understanding of genre in second language writing.
Since the mid-1990s, writing scholars have begun to address this challenge, exploring the distinctions between
ESP-oriented work on genre, the SFL-oriented work from Australia, and the rhetoric-oriented work in the U.S. and
Canada (Freedman & Medway, 1994a, 1994b; Hyon, 1996; Paltridge, 1997). The tensions among these traditions
result from distinct—yet often overlapping—theoretical frameworks and student populations which have motivated
research and practice. The need for a focus on form in ESP writing instruction, for example, may cause concern for L1
writing scholars; the terminology of SFL-based work may daunt scholars unfamiliar with the Hallidayan grammar;
and the unique context of ‘‘first-year composition’’ may seem too localized for those working in K-12, workplace, or
advanced academic settings around the world. Though these tensions persist today, they have arguably become more
productive in recent years, as writing scholars have attempted to reach across theoretical boundaries to explore genres
from multiple perspectives and build richer theories and more flexible pedagogical approaches (see, e.g., Bawarshi &
Reiff, 2010; Bazerman, Bonini, & Figueiredo, 2009; Johns, 2002; Johns et al., 2006). It may indeed be harder to
 Editorial / Journal of Second Language Writing 20 (2011) 1–5 3

categorize much of today’s L2 writing genre scholarship into a single genre orientation, as the contributions to this
volume illustrate.

The future of genre in second language writing: Contributions to this special issue

The theme of the 2009 Symposium on Second Language Writing (SSLW), held in Tempe, Arizona, was ‘‘The
Future of Second Language Writing,’’ and the symposium featured an array of colloquia centered around this theme.
Paul Kei Matsuda had asked me to organize a colloquium on the future of genre in second language writing, and I
happily took the opportunity. As genre scholarship has grown so significantly in the past few decades, and as the
various traditions of genre scholarship have increasingly conversed and collaborated, this seems like an opportune
time to tackle the issue of what the future of genre in second language writing holds. Three of the articles in this issue
(Hyon and Costino, Cheng, and Gentil) are based on papers presented in the 2009 SSLW colloquium,1 while others
(Johns, Gebhard & Harman, Swales) have been brought in to offer additional perspectives. Together, they explore a
range of student populations and learning contexts, helping to build a relatively broad view of contemporary issues
relevant to genre in second language writing, within and—at least to some extent—outside of North America.
The first two articles in the special issue lay out research agendas with implications for L2 writing instruction.
Guillaume Gentil’s opening article, ‘‘A Biliteracy Agenda for Genre Research,’’ explores the important, yet relatively
unexplored, relationship between genre and language. As Gentil accurately notes, the bulk of scholarship in second
language genre studies thus far has considered writers’ L2 genre knowledge while overlooking the knowledge that
these biliterate writers might hold in their multiple languages. Gentil adds much to genre scholarship by taking a
biliteracy perspective to some of the enduring questions in second language genre studies. He points out that research
in genre knowledge and language knowledge have so far remained rather distinct; redressing this gap by comparing
models of genre knowledge to those of second language proficiency, Gentil reaches the conclusion that the theoretical
models are somewhat eerily similar. Next, he argues for the value of multilingual research which looks at how
multilingual writers negotiate essentially the same genre in two (or more) different ethnolinguistic communities. His
article concludes by coming back around to the issue of pedagogy, an issue which underlies all of the articles in this
issue.
Next, in ‘‘Sidestepping Our ‘Scare Words’: Genre as a Possible Bridge between L1 and L2 Compositions,’’ Sunny
Hyon and Kim Costino address the tensions between L1 and L2 writing studies head on. Hyon and Costino reflect on
the challenges they have faced as collaborators crossing the L1/L2 divide, identifying several ‘‘scare words’’ that tend
to carry different epistemological assumptions to L1 and L2 writing scholars and therefore may hinder productive
cross-disciplinary conversations. The authors identify genre as a potential bridge term, a construct that is valued in
both L1 and L2 writing studies. Through a reflective dialogue on the authors’ genre-based writing assignment in their
first-year composition classroom, Hyon and Costino illustrate how disciplinary tensions can be eased through such
collaboration, ultimately leading to pedagogical approaches that can even better serve students.
The next two papers in this issue take positions on the future of genre as a pedagogical tool in L2 writing. In
‘‘Reconsidering Genre Theory in K-12 Schools: A Response to School Reforms in the United States,’’ Meg Gebhard
and Ruth Harman describe the increasing importance of high-stakes testing in U.S. elementary and secondary schools,
and they turn to genre theory as a promising conceptual tool for addressing the achievement gap that disadvantages
young English language learners. As they overview the key epistemological and methodological assumptions of ESP,
SFL, and New Literacy Studies, Gebhard and Harman draw out some of the connections—and disjunctions—among
these orientations as they relate to the study of young L2 literacy learners. The authors conclude by calling for a richly
integrated approach to such research, grounded in SFL and incorporating an ethnographic approach to studying
context. While the agenda they set out may be ambitious, it is perhaps what is needed in a learning context in which so
much is at stake.
Next, in ‘‘Genre as a Pedagogical Tool: Some Unresolved Issues,’’ Ann Johns explores some of the issues faced by
teachers and students when introducing genre into the academic literacy classroom. Johns’ essay centers around four
topics about which practitioners must make decisions when employing a genre-based approach to writing instruction:
naming, genre awareness, the major pedagogical focus, and ideology. As she reviews these four issues and identifies

1
An additional paper presented by Diane Belcher in the colloquium is published elsewhere (Kandil & Belcher, in press).
4 Editorial / Journal of Second Language Writing 20 (2011) 1–5

several future directions for genre pedagogy scholarship, she takes us through the many tensions between the various
orientations to genre pedagogy. Ultimately, Johns favors—much like the previous papers – ‘‘instruction that draws
from the best in the various theoretical schools and is true to the complexity of the concept of genre.’’
Finally, in ‘‘Language Features as the Pathways to Genre: Students’ Attention to Non-Prototypical Features and Its
Implications,’’ An Cheng in many ways takes up the call made by Johns, exploring how L2 writing students develop a
complex understanding of the relationship between generic text and context. Cheng’s study focuses on how students in
an ESP genre-based course for international graduate students can develop both textual and rhetorical knowledge
through classroom genre analysis activities. Cheng illustrates how his students’ focus on non-prototypical textual
features served to build their disciplinary and rhetorical knowledge, challenging the argument that some scholars have
made that ESP genre approaches move uni-directionally from context to text and stop there. Rather, Cheng’s research
shows how an ESP approach can help students simultaneously build knowledge of both rhetorical context and
linguistic textual features, using these knowledge dimensions to inform one another. He concludes his article by
outlining some additional pedagogical questions raised by our increasingly sophisticated theories of genre.
The five main articles in this special issue share several common themes, many of which John Swales reflects on in
his ‘‘Coda: Reflections on the Future of Genre and L2 Writing.’’ As he weaves together his experience as a teacher and
scholar, Swales provides food for thought regarding the role of grammar and metalanguage in genre learning, the
comparative rhetorical awareness involved in biliteracy, the issue of transfer, linguistic features worthy of future study,
and the endurance of the tripartite classification of genre theory orientations. As Swales’ reflection—along with the
main articles in this issue—demonstrates, genre has come a long way in second language writing since the early days
at Aston University. Together, the pieces in this issue provoke new questions and possible directions for teachers and
researchers striving to understand the important relationship between genre and second language writing.

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to the JSLW editors, Ilona Leki and Rosa Manchón, for their invaluable support
throughout the process of preparing this special issue.

References

Bawarshi, A., & Reiff, M. J. (2010). Genre: An introduction to history, theory, research, and pedagogy. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press/WAC
Clearinghouse.
Bazerman, C. (1988). Shaping written knowledge: The genre and activity of the experimental article in science. Madison, WI: University of
Wisconsin Press.
Bazerman, C., Bonini, A., & Figueiredo, D. (Eds.). (2009). Genre in a changing world. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press.
Bhatia, V. K. (1993). Analysing genre: Language use in professional settings. New York: Longman.
Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (Eds.). (1993). The powers of literacy: A genre approach to teaching writing. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Freedman, A., & Medway, P. (Eds.). (1994). Learning and teaching genre. Portsmouth, NJ: Boynton/Cook.
Freedman, A., & Medway, P. (1994b). Locating genre studies: Antecedents and prospects. In A. Freedman & P. Medway (Eds.), Genre and the new
rhetoric (pp. 1–20). Bristol, PA: Taylor & Francis.
Hyland, K. (2000). Disciplinary discourses: Social interactions in academic writing. London: Longman.
Hyon, S. (1996). Genre in three traditions: Implications for ESL. TESOL Quarterly, 30, 693–722.
Johns, A. M. (1997). Text, role, and context: Developing academic literacies. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Johns, A. M. (Ed.). (2002). Genre in the classroom: Multiple perspectives. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Johns, A. M., Bawarshi, A., Coe, R. M., Hyland, K., Paltridge, B., Reiff, M. J., et al. (2006). Crossing the boundaries of genre studies: Commentaries
by experts. Journal of Second Language Writing, 15, 234–249.
Kandil, M., & Belcher, D. (in press). ESP and corpus-informed critical discourse analysis: Understanding the power of genres of power. In D.
Belcher, A. John, & B. Paltridge (Eds.), New directions in English for specific purposes research. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Martin, J. R. (1985). Process and text: Two aspects of human semiosis. In Benson, J. D., & Greaves, W. S. (Eds.) Systemic perspectives on discourse.
Vol. 1 (pp.248–274). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Martin, J. R. (1993). Genre and literacy – Modeling context in educational linguistics. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 13, 141–172.
Miller, C. R. (1984). Genre as social action. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70, 151–167.
Paltridge, B. (1997). Genre, frames and writing in research settings. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Selinker, L., Tarone, E., & Hanzeli, E. (Eds.). (1981). English for academic and technical purposes: Studies on honor of Louis Trimble. Rowley,
Mass: Newbury House Publishers.
Swales, J. (1981). Aspects of article introductions. Aston ESP Research Reports No. 1. Birmingham, UK: University of Aston.
Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
 Editorial / Journal of Second Language Writing 20 (2011) 1–5 5

Swales, J. M. (2009). Incidents in an educational life: A memoir (of sorts). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Swales, J. M., & Feak, C. B. (1994). Academic writing for graduate students: A course for non-native speakers. Ann Arbor, MI: University of
Michigan Press.
Swales, J. M., & Feak, C. B. (2000). English in today’s research world: A writing guide. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Tarone, E., Dwyer, S., Gillette, S., & Icke, V. (1981). On the use of the passive in two astrophysics journal papers. ESP Journal, 1, 123–140.

Christine M. Tardy
DePaul University, United States
E-mail address: [email protected],