Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 11.1 (2015): 3–17 DOI: 10.1515/lpp-2015-0002 Piotr Cap University of Łódź A FEW (SKEPTICAL) NOTES ON THE THEORETICAL RAMIFICATIONS OF GENRES IN THE CONTEMPORARY PUBLIC SPACE Abstract This paper is a tentative attempt to identify some basic-level conceptual and theoretical problems underlying the mainstream genre theory, which adversely affect the analysis of rapidly evolving, complex and hybrid genres in the modern communicative space. Having discussed these problems, I go on to I argue that the space of contemporary public communication should be viewed as not only an “analytic problem”, but also/rather a domain whose explorations could potentially revise the existing principles of genre theory. In particular, I suggest such explorations should focus on the conception of (public communication) genres as (i) abstractions, (ii) activators and realizers of context, (iii) flexible macrostructures, (iv) social field entities, (v) assigners of interpersonal roles. Notwithstanding a possible advancement of genre theory resulting from this approach, I conclude that it is only a first and admittedly uncertain step in trying to establish a sound theoretical framework for communicative genres in the modern discourse space. Keywords communicative genre, genre theory, public communication, genre analysis 1 Introduction The concept of genre in linguistics 1 has been addressed within several research disciplines and empirical fields. The most notable contributions come, apparently, 1 It is beyond the scope of this short paper to discuss work on genres in literary studies (which goes back to at least the 18 th century when the term genre was borrowed from French), albeit one cannot deny the influence of that work on esp. early language studies. Establishing the literary-linguistic analytic link is usually attributed to Mikhail Bakhtin, Brought to you by | University of Sussex Library Authenticated Download Date | 3/2/17 7:39 AM