A Review of Approaches to Genre Analysis

Section: Arabic language
Published
Jun 24, 2025
Pages
809-826

Abstract

Genre analysis has been widely investigated from various theoretical and practical perspectives. Genre analysis was found to play an essential role in building up a coherent text and speech at the structural and functional levels. The proper way of producing discourse, spoken or written, structurally and functionally enables hearers/readers to comprehend information presented in the text easily and effectively. Due to its importance in written and spoken discourse, Genre analysis includes various approaches to examine the linguistic forms and functions of discourse. In this regard, three prominent approaches were reviewed: the English for Specific Purpose Approach (ESP), the Systemic Functional Linguistics Approach (SFL), and the New-Rhetorical Approach. Although these three approaches have widely been used, they were not without theoretical and practical limitations. The present study aims to provide a critical review of these approaches as used in various types of contexts. This investigation highlighted their strengths, weaknesses, applicability and suitability for analysing various types of spoken and written discourses. Despite the huge variance between the three approaches, the review showed they complete each other. While the discourse-coherence approach answers the role of these markers in creating discourse coherence, the relevance-based approach demonstrates with evidence that these markers are necessary tools in the hand of speakers to control the direction of their speech and how this speech can be interpreted whether semantically or pragmatically by hearers.

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How to Cite

Hussein, J., مروان, Abbas, M., & جمعة. (2025). A Review of Approaches to Genre Analysis. Journal of Education for the Humanities, 4(16), 809–826. Retrieved from https://ojs.uomosul.edu.iq/index.php/jeh/article/view/5987