ELSEVIER Journal of Pragmatics 24 (1995) 393--406 Working with genre" A pragmatic perspective Brian Paltridge* Department of Applied Linguistics and Language Studies, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Vic., 3052, Australia Received September 1993; revised version May 1994 Abstract A number of different approaches to genre analysis have emerged in recent years. The two main approaches which dominate the literature are those based on the work of systemic func- tional linguists and those based on the work of John Swales. Whilst both approaches to genre analysis offer important perspectives on the notion of genre, neither, as yet, has provided, within a single integrated framework, a model for genre analysis which incorporates both social and cognitive aspects of language comprehension and production. This paper is an attempt to integrate these factors into a framework for genre analysis and aims to account for them, and for the relationship between them, in the perception and production of commu- nicative events as instances of particular genres. The key to this description, it is argued, lies in a pragmatic perspective on the notion of genre based on the concepts of prototype, inter- textuality and inheritance. I. Introduction Recent years have seen increased attention being given to the notion of genre in language studies, and a number of different approaches to genre analysis have emerged. The two main approaches which dominate the literature are those based on the work of systemic functional linguists such as Halliday, Hasan, Martin, Ventola, Christie and Kress I and those based on the work of John Swales. 2 The first of these approaches is based on a social-semiotic perspective on language description (Halli- day and Hasan, 1989) whereas the second of these is much more eclectic in its per- ception of the notion of genre. Whilst both approaches to genre analysis offer impor- Special thanks to Winifred Crombie, Jacob Mey and to the anonymous Journal of Pragmatics reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. * Tel.: +61 3 3445488; Fax: +61 3 3444980; E-mail: Brian_Paltridge@muwayf.unimelb.edu.au See, for example, Halliday (1985), Halliday and Hasan (1989), Martin (1989, 1992), Ventola (1987), Christie (1989), Threadgold (1989), Kress (1989, 1993). See also Cope and Kalantzis (1993) and Reid (1987), where debates which surround the systemic view of genre are discussed. z See Swales (1990) for a review of much of this work. See also Bhatia (1993). 0378-2166/95/$09.50 © 1995 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved SSDI 0378-2166(94)00058-M