Genres and Institutions: Functional Perspectives on Educational Discourse

Abstract

A genre is itself an institution, for it is a socially sanctioned means of constructing and negotiating meanings, functioning to mediate the operation of other social institutions, taking its place in the complex interconnecting series of activities and events that constitute social life. Hence, while it is certainly possible to write of genres and institutions, like those of schooling, of the marketplace, or of family life, to mention a few, they are best understood as themselves institutional in character and part of the fabric of social life. The notion of genres is old, although scholarly interest in it for the purposes of educational linguistics dates from the late 1970s and 1980s. All traditions of the relevant research acknowledge that genres are found in both speech and writing. However, in practice, it is written genres and their role in literacy pedagogy which have generated the greatest body of research and debate. This paper reviews aspects of the development of genre theory, with particular relevance to educational discourse.