All of these aspects have been studied both within and between genres as they have been conceived previously, testifying to their applica- bility as attributes of discourse at various levels of abstraction e. This is a tantalizing sketch that raises more questions than it can answer at the moment.
For instance, there is the matter of the number and nature of the attri- butes and their values. Moreover, some attributes have more variables—should they be seen as distinct attributes themselves? Another question involves the in- terrelations between the attributes. Then there is the problem of deciding which class of discourse is to be taken as a genre and which is not. These are just three issues that are on the agenda for further research into a taxonomy of discourse.
This is the highlighting of the conceptual connection between distinct genres on the one hand and literature and its definition on the other. Following the approach Downloaded by [Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam] at 06 December outlined previously, literature may be argued to be the superordinate of genres such as the novel, the poem, and the play, each of which displays a number of fa- miliar subgenres, such as the western, the detective, and so on, for the novel.
It would follow that it might be harder to define the category of literature than the categories of novel, poem, or play, and this might accord with the experience of both ordinary language users as well as experts. An empirical study of literature that wishes to be in touch with other studies of discourse could do worse than ex- plore the consequences of this ordering of the field.
This is particularly useful be- cause it redresses situations in which genre studies are pursued without much reference to the definition of literature, and vice versa. Before we turn to such consequences, let us first examine some of the assump- tions of this approach.
The basic idea would be that the series of concepts literature, novel, and western is a hierarchy of concepts, of which the novel would be the basic level term, literature the superordinate, and western the subordinate. Language users would, hence, be predicted to have relatively richer representations of novels than of westerns or of literature, when these are compared to competing concepts at the same level, respectively, such as poems on the basic level, spy novels on the sub- ordinate, and philosophy on the superordinate.
To pursue this example somewhat further, a novel might be characterized as follows: Its content would be fictional and portray a significant action or process. Its type would be narrative in that se- mantically causal relations would somehow govern the text structure e.
Its function would be to positively affect the mood of the reader. Its medium would be printed matter for a mass readership. Its domain would be the one of the arts. Its language could be characterized, with Biber , as "extremely narrative, moderately involved, situated, nonabstract, and not marked for persua- sion" p. This is a rich and typical description of the concept of the novel, which should be easily recognizable to the ordinary language user.
Again, however, it is probably wise to add a warning that we are talking about a prototype that may, moreover, be socially and culturally variable: As we have seen previously, such a caveat only suggests that there is a lot of empirical work to be done.
The novel may be fruitfully opposed to the poem. The form of a poem could be highly diverse, from the haiku and the epigram, through the sonnet and free verse, to the epic. Its type could be nar- rative but just as easily argumentative, descriptive, and expository.
Its function would also be to positively affect the mood of the reader. Its medium could be printed matter for a mass readership, just like the novel, but oral poetry and po- etry to music are just as common, so the medium does not seem to be fixed. Its domain would be the one of the arts, again, but its language should be character- ized as relatively foregrounded in comparison with the novel cf.
Fishelov, In sum, function and domain would not be different between novel and poem, but form, type, medium, and language would be different. Content is both different Downloaded by [Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam] at 06 December and identical between the two in that fiction is an important shared characteristic.
This may lead to a description of the superordinate concept in these terms: Literature is a type of discourse that is characterized by the domain value "artis- tic," the content value "fictional," and the functional value "positively affective," or simply "divertive.
In other words, the superordinates literature and adver- tising are positively distinguished from each other by means of two properties, whereas the basic level concepts novel and poem require five attributes for a cor- rect discrimination between them. This is in support of the argument for the adop- tion of the prototype approach and its use of genres as basic level concepts.
One of the" most striking and, at first glance, questionable features in this de- scription of literature might be the one of "positively affective," or simply "di- vertive.
However, tragedy mainly has to do with the content of the literary text in that it deals with a negatively valenced story. It is one of the complex characteristics of literature that the reader may turn to sad stories to experience pleasure: The fa- mous American critic Leslie Fiedler held that all literature is meant to water the emotions.
In such cases, there is a clash between content and function that is typ- ical of many texts belonging to this artistic domain. That negative mood triggered by negatively valenced content may be dominant during some stages of the read- ing process does not mean that the overall function of the text cannot be said to be divertive at the end of the day. According to Czech Structuralism, literature is typically characterized by experiencing pleasure in displeasure.
Let us turn to subordinate concepts. As has been pointed out by Brewer and Lichtenstein , the thriller and the detective are kinds of novels that only dif- fer from each other with respect to form, in that the causal structure of the events described is portrayed in a typically different order or form; in the terminology of prototypical categorization theory, they require only one attribute for their dis- tinction.
A similar opposition may be observed between comedies and tragedies in plays. Hence, subordinates are also less richly differentiated from each other than are basic level concepts. All of these comments are crude simplifications when it comes to examining in- dividual instances of beautiful texts prized by the literary scholar, and many impor- tant aspects of literary comprehension have been omitted.
But this is precisely why the theory of genres and the definition of literature have been problematic for so long. This proposal is not intended to be the answer to all of these problems; on the contrary, it is merely the beginning of a research program that requires a great deal of support from the expertise residing in traditional literary scholarship and its ex- Downloaded by [Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam] at 06 December perience with individual texts.
However, it also offers a framework for mobilizing and revealing that expertise in empirical work by pointing to the possibility of data collection on properties of classes of discourse in the manner of prototype catego- rization theory.
That the definition of literature should be directly geared to people's experience of concrete genres and subgenres is a novel perspective on this issue, which may help explain why the category of literature itself is such an elusive cat- egory. This may not be due to the nature of literature itself but to the abstract nature of superordinates and our conceptualization of them as fuzzy categories. The ap- proach, thus, ultimately aims to ground the distinctness of central literary genres and the specificity of the literary reading experience in the individual's conceptual repertoire, leaving ample scope for the role of representation by means of exemplars in a fashion that might be highly attractive to the traditional scholar.
Moreover, the framework also guarantees that we link up with other instances of discourse processes outside literature, enhancing our understanding of constancies and varia- tion between literary and nonliterary classes of discourse.
To further strengthen the appeal of this proposal, let us finally take a brief look at some alternatives and ex- plain what is wrong with them. From that perspective, there is a direct relation between genres of literary discourse and the definition of literature itself.
They are all classes of discourse, with different num- bers of typical values for the possible attributes at each level of abstraction. Let us examine how this starting point can explain the problems of some recent proposals. Brewer advanced an interesting theoretical contribution on "Discourse Force and Empirical Studies of Literature. There is a good number of details that would merit further discussion, but in this context, only one issue may receive extended treatment.
The dimension of discourse force has four values in Brewer's proposal: informative, entertaining, persuasive, and literary-aesthetic. If the basis of dis- course force or function is the presumed effect of the text on the reader, "liter- ary-aesthetic" is the odd one out: Texts can aim to entertain, inform, and persuade readers and instruct, exhort, and direct them , but they cannot "literary-aesthetic" Downloaded by [Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam] at 06 December readers.
They may have an aesthetic affect, but that is just one kind of affect, a spe- cific form of "entertaining. In that case, which is the interpretation I prefer, Brewer's taxonomy would require another dimension—the one of domain—which could have values such as "artistic," "scientific," "business," and so on.
Treating literature as part of a domain of discourse is what sociologically oriented literary theorists have done for a while now, although few people would hazard to regard literature as a function. As an aside, it should be noted that this does not mean that literature does not have a function, which, in some cases, may be to defamiliarize the reader's per- ceptions. Indeed, defamiliarization may be seen as one specific effect of the di- vertive discourse function, as was also suggested by the Czech Structuralists, and it can be traced by conducting empirical work of the kind referred to at the out- set of this article.
However, the point is that literature cannot be solely defined as a function, conceptualized as the expressive, divertive, informative, persuasive, and other presumed effects of a text on the reader. It is precisely the multidimen- sional nature of a prototypical approach to discourse genres that aims to accom- modate the complex, multifaceted nature of literature, including features such as function and domain, besides some other ones.
The oddity of Brewer's proposal can be explained by connecting it to a taxonomy of more abstract classes of discourse, as is a natural thing to do in a pro- totype-theoretical approach. Just as genres such as poems and novels have values for attributes such as discourse force and so on, so do their superordinates, includ- ing literature.
As a result, "literary" cannot come up as one value of the attribute of "discourse force" or "function" for the basic level concepts of the various concrete genres, for it is not a property of discourse but a superordinate category of discourse in itself. A more comprehensive prototypical approach with its emphasis on hierarchical ordering next to prototypical ordering highlights the need for the inclusion of literature as a defined, more abstract class of discourse.
Such approaches sometimes deal with literature as a superordinate class of dis- course without having sufficient recourse to the basic level terms of concrete gen- res out of which the superordinate arises. Literature is often regarded as a cultural domain governed by a set of conventions for social action, perhaps in connection with the typical function of achieving some kind of positive affect Schmidt, ; cf.
This is an abstract definition of literature that is not very rich in itself, as is to be expected at the level of superordinates. What should not be forgotten, however, is the fact that such superordinates and their prototyp- ical properties function in a larger conceptual system, in which it is the basic level Downloaded by [Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam] at 06 December terms that provide more meat to the entire domain.
As we have seen, we know a lot about typical literary genres such as the poem and the novel, but the variation between them is too large to be uniformly reflected in the definition of their su- perordinate category, literature itself. The problem in some of the more radical approaches to literature as a social domain, however, is that this basic level experience of literature is left aside.
As a result, the impression may arise that concrete properties of texts with regard to language, medium, form, content, and type are immaterial when we speak about literature, leading to the conclusion that anything may be literature.
To a certain extent this is true, but it also goes against our typical experience of literature through its basic level genres. The only explanation of this paradox is to adopt a prototypical and encompassing approach to the genres and definition of litera- ture.
It shows that almost any text as an instance of a specific genre may be dealt with as if it were literature, but it also shows that many such texts would be ex- perienced as atypical examples of literature, which are far removed from what we would expect for the genre in question. A final note may be in order about other superordinates, such as fiction and narrative.
Fiction and narrative are two interesting and important superordinates that arise out of the grouping of texts according to values of attributes other than the one of domain. Fiction is one value of the attribute of content, whereas nar- rative is one value of the attribute of type. One observation that may be made is that some of these superordinates are more functional than others: Literature and its alternatives—academic writing, journalism, and so on—are probably more generally recognizable as superordinate classes of discourse than are fiction and narrative.
Apparently, the domain factor is more important than the ones of con- tent and type. Why is this? Moreover, fiction is beginning to be used as a func- tional label in bookshops, libraries, and review articles as well Fishelov, , but narrative is not. Why should this be? Yet Graesser and Kreuz used nar- rative as one of their four main factors in an inference generation model. Is this justifiable? It raises questions as to the weight of this particular superordinate in comparison with other conceivable ones, either derived from the same attribute like argumentation , or from other attributes like fiction for content, and so on.
I am also grateful to J. Speech genres and other late essays V W. McGee, Trans. Holquist, Eds. Austin: University of Texas Press. Biber, D. A typology of English texts. An analytical framework for register studies. Finegan Eds. New York: Oxford University Press. Brewer, W. Discourse force and empirical studies of literature. Rusch Ed. IGEL pp. Stories are to entertain: A structural-affect theory of sto- ries. Journal of Pragmatics, 6, Cook, G. The discourse of advertising. London: Routledge.
Fishelov, D. Studying literary genres: The empirical angle. The institutional definition of poetry: Some heretical thoughts. Empirical Studies of the Arts, 16, Fowler, A. Kinds of literature. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Graesser, A. C , Gernsbacher, M. Discourse as structure and process pp.
London: Sage. A theory of inference generation during text comprehension. Discourse Processes, 16, Griswold, W. Transformation of genre in Nigerian fiction: The case of the village novel. MacNealy Eds. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Hymes, D. Models of the interaction of language and social life. Hymes Eds. Fairclough, ; Wodak and Chilton, This, as I said before, clearly enhances the explanatory power of individual studies within their area of investiga- tion.
The question remains: to what extent is such a study representative of the genre it addresses and the methods it utilizes? This concern leads to another, more general one.
Rich in theoretical and empirical input as such analyses are at the level of each particular domain of inves- tigation, do they really contribute to crystallization of the concept of business discourse, so it could yield an organized agenda for further research?
Take an example that brings together research data, genre analysis and the intercultural perspective. In the contem- porary world of business organizations, communication often occurs across national borders between people who do not share the same cul- ture.
This causes many business discourse analysts working on a generic description of a specific form of business communication for instance, the business meeting; see e. Yamada, , to collect data from different organizations based in different countries and cultures , in order to work out a conceptual compromise on the definition, scope and characteristics of the genre Sarangi and Roberts, Unfortu- nately, results are often disappointing because access to some of these organizations can be more difficult than to others, let alone confiden- tiality constraints on publishing the data, which differ not only across organization types, but also across countries Bargiela-Chiappini et al.
In response to such limita- tions, researchers frequently complement their studies with simulated data i. In this sense, the use of simulated data can produce a mismatch between analytic expectations and the actual-time and -place functions of a business discourse, the kind of flaw anticipated indirectly as early as by scholars working in the applied tradition Williams, Consider the extensive research on negotiation, originally management-based and normative e.
Putnam and Jones, ; Donohue and Diez, , and later essen- tially language-based e. Firth, ; Ehlich and Wagner, The focus of these works is primarily on the spoken mode of communica- tion and analytic tools are applied and advocated accordingly, with a clear preference for conversation analysis Firth, On the other hand, research in negotiations has yet to fully accommodate the rapidly growing importance of mostly written electronic communication — e-mail in particular Louhiala-Salminen et al.
Does all this mean that we are currently unable to capture and high- light any regularities in business discourse that could successfully stand the test of time, thus indicating ways in which research methods could be systematized for the benefit of future studies? There seem to be some optimistic prospects, after all. While it is difficult to say from the subsequent argument whether such has been the intention of the authors, this pos- tulate invites two levels from which business discourse could be looked at.
One is the global conceptual level, which involves representation of the organization, i. Studying these ways can range from an analysis of advertising leaflets and brochures, to fully fledged mediatized communication, such as press releases or broadcast business speeches in which the speaker is the mouthpiece of the orga- nization — all of which have been exemplified in the present book.
Although we shall see that the two lev- els and, thus, two lines of research seem to attract different methods a much-promising factor in terms of defining the division of analytic labour , they still feed into each other in a manner that warrants an extensive coverage of the field. The representa- tion line takes it from there, extending the scope of analysis towards the description of complex, interdependent, cognitive—pragmatic strategies by means of which the organization enacts its image and identity.
The proposed distinction is not merely a result of pondering upon the contents of Bargiela-Chiappini et al. The important thing is that, as has been mentioned before, the commitment to one of the two lines of research means, essentially, a commitment to a specific set of apparatuses of anal- ysis.
Thus we have, for instance, cognitive linguistics, frame semantics, critical approaches informed by political research or cognitive prag- matics as viable handles on the issues of representation, and discourse analysis, conversation analysis, corpus linguistics and societal pragmat- ics as instruments to account for the interactional phenomena.
And although the above breakdown involves inevitable simplifications, it may be sketching some potentially useful ways in which to organize research in business discourse according to its focus and level of analysis. Organization of the volume and the contributions That said, we can move to the structure of this collection and an overview of the chapters.
There are, first, eight chapters which deal with issues of general representation, followed eventually by five contribu- tions whose focus is on various kinds of interaction within the orga- nization. The first two chapters, by Norman Fairclough and Carlos Gouveia respectively, demonstrate the most general focus, discussing issues of organizational identity and culture in the broad contexts of political economy and developments in theories of social change.
Close already in their methodological fit, they show further similarities on empirical grounds, addressing and analysing fragments of texts related to e-culture in business settings. Mauro Sobhie places his critical lens on advertising brochures and analyses them in terms of four stages of company—customer interaction: presen- tation of the brochure, presentation of product or service, legitimiza- tion, and request for contact.
The next three chapters, by Dorien van de Mieroop, Yvonne McLaren and Calin Gurau, and Marcel Burger, are all examples of data-driven search for methods that would suit the macro analysis of represen- tation of the organization in the most systematic manner possible. In addition, the latter two show common interest in the ways of researching mediatized business communication.
The objectivity factor raised in Burger is further addressed by Piotr Cap, whose contribution on persuasive properties of legal language con- stitutes, in a sense, a meta-theoretical coda to the section on researching representation.
His main question, informed by cognitive and pragmatic research, is the following: is there a link between a type of business dis- course being investigated as well as the degree of expert knowledge that the discourse analyst has about it, and the methods that are employed in analysis? All-importantly, both chapters make it clear that conflict management within an organization is equally crucial to the personal well-being of the members, and, in the longer run, to the reputation of the orga- nization as a whole.
Next, and finally, come five chapters whose primary focus is on vari- ous forms of interaction between the organization members. The issue of intra-company relationships, reflected in as well as constructed through, discourse, is further investi- gated by Fabienne Alvarez-Pompilius. This time, however, the problem is tackled in a much heated context of organizational change. Look- ing at social consequences of a major company merger in the French health-care industry, Alvarez-Pompilius investigates strategies that could be used to legitimate and implement the change, thus winning support of clinicians towards the new arrangements.
Some common themes, such as organizational and technological innovation, resound in the contribution by Attila Bruni and Lucia Parolin, who discuss the role and potential benefits of teleconsulting in working out a medical diag- nosis. They conclude that in order for any medical practitioner to make the most of this technique, he or she must be equipped with not merely professional knowledge, but also specific discursive skills.
Lastly, there are two chapters which both deal with minimal units of interaction, yet of a different semiotic nature. The focus is on how fixed sequences of words contribute to role assignment and topic sequenc- ing, which count among the most important of the meeting discourse procedures. Notes 1. While accepting the fact that, unlike business discourse, business communication might once imply a pedagogical or vocational focus Swales, , I use the two terms interchangeably and without any applied orientation.
In Marian Williams published an article reporting on the relationship between the language used by native speakers of English in business meetings and the language taught by business English textbooks at that time for use in meetings.
She analysed the language used in three meetings by a total of 12 native speakers of English and then compared this with the language taught for meetings in 30 English textbooks. References Bargiela-Chiappini, F. Bulow-Moller, C. Nickerson, G. Poncini and Y. Bargiela-Chiappini, F. Nickerson and B. Boden, D. Braecke, Ch. Jacobs, K. Pelsmaekers and T. Candlin, C. Donohue, W.
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