Contents
Acknowledgements xxvii
Preface xxix
1 Getting going with genre 1
1.1 Back to school 1
1.2 Where did we turn? 8
1.3 Modelling context 9
1.4 Systemic functional linguistics 21
1.5 Tools for analysis: discourse semantics 30
1.6 Grammatical metaphor 38
1.7 A note on multimodality 44
1.8 This book 47
2 Stories 49
2.0 Variation in stories 49
2.1 Recount: recording personal experience 53
2.2 Anecdotes - reacting to events 56
2.3 Exemplum - interpreting incidents 62
2.4 Observations - commenting on events 65
2.5 Narratives - resolving complications 67
2.6 News stories - new kinds of stories 74
2.7 A system of story genres 81
2.8 Story phases - another perspective 82
2.9 Response genres - evaluating stories 93
3 Histories 99
3.0 From stories to histories 99
3.1 Biographical recounts - telling life histories 100
3.2 Historical recounts - recording public histories 105
3.3 Historical accounts and explanations - explaining the past 114
3.4 Expositions, discussions and challenges - debating the past 118
3.5 Packaging value - what history means 125
3.6 Typology - classifying difference 131
3.7 Topology - proximating likeness 132
4 Reports and explanations 141
4.0 Classifying and explaining 141
4.1 Reports: classifying and describing things 142
4.2 Explanations: how processes happen 150
4.3 Genres in science 166
4.4 Multimodal reports and explanations 167
5 Procedures and procedural recounts 181
5.1 Procedures: directing specialised activities 182
5.2 Procedural recounts 198
5.3 Protocol 213
5.4 Procedural systems 217
5.5 Macrogenres 218
5.6 Education and production 226
6 Keeping going with genre 231
6.1 Is genre everything? 231
6.2 Relations among genres - paradigmatic relations 235
6.3 Relations between genres - syntagmatic relations 250
6.4 Dialogue 260
Notes 262
References 267
Index 286