Opening Remarks

This book can be conceived of as having three parts. The first three chapters work toward establishing a framework, both theoretical and pragmatic, for the extensive discussion of research genres themselves (both spoken and written) to come. Among other things, this framework “situates” the research world in a wider context, discusses its various constellations of genres, reviews the status of the “non-native speaker of English” in that world, and reflects on possible roles for the analyst. The following four chapters deal with a selection of research genres themselves, often closing with suggestions for those involved in English for Academic Purpose (EAP) and English for Research Purpose (ERP) activities of various kinds and for those interested in gaining a better understanding of the research world and its discoursal products and processes. Finally, in the shorter concluding chapter, I attempt to relate the main arguments and findings to a number of issues, particularly those raised by contrastive rhetoric, critical discourse analysis, and corpus linguistics.

Research Genres is different in many respects from my earlier volume in this series, Genre Analysis (1990). Obviously enough, there have been dramatic changes in applied language studies between the late 1980s and the first years of the new millennium. Specifically, in the intervening years there has been a continuing and accelerating interest in centralizing the concept of genre in specialized language teaching and in the development of professional communication skills.