The Blogging Artist: a Genre-Analysis Approach to Teaching English for Art Purposes

Abstract

Building on the now classic approaches to Discourse Analysis offered by Swales and Bhatia, the present paper tries to establish the benefits and value of applying the method of Genre Analysis to teaching English for Art Purposes, with a focus on a more recent Internet genre, that of the artist’s blog (weblog). The artist’s blog is seen as part of the greater genre of the weblog, which has already been classified into a number of subgenres. The paper proposes yet another dimension to be added to those already considered when classifying the weblogs: the dimension of “occupational-oriented content” as a descriptive for further classifications; it also tries to uncover the generic features of this type of discourse. The ultimate aim of this study is, on the one hand, that of providing art students with the necessary know-how of using the weblog genre for their current and future professional purposes, as part of the complex system of genres devised by the artistic discourse community in order to communicate both within and without itself, and, on the other hand, to help students use their knowledge of the English language to create such a discourse type in order to obtain maximum benefits.