Genres In A Functional Perspective

This study takes the concept "Genre" in Functional Grammar as its subject. Built on the "language as social semiotic" theory, the paper examines genre in a functional mode, generic structure potential, and the similarities and differences of several genres in Chinese and English.The language distinctions among different languages in the world are obvious when communication is involved, yet universal linguistic elements are still in existence. The distinctions and similarities are the reflection of the different cultural essence. The introduction of the concept "Genre" into linguistic study, in a way, solves the problem of language study in relation to culture and society. Traditional "text analysis" and "discourse analysis" approach language on the assumption of same or similar genres in languages, without taking into account of genre differences in the first place. In fact, certain genres specific to a culture, or genres of different features resulted from different cultures exist universally. Thus genre contrastive study will be of importance in the sociocultural functions of language.Functional linguists, like Halliday, Hasan, give account of genre concept in their works and generic potential is introduced to genre analysis, by which some daily genres (e.g. the transactional genre) can be broken down into certain generic stages. Different generic stages in different languages give evidence of the cultural psychology and cognition of a nation. Meanwhile, linguists in China have adopted the genre concept to their language study (Fang Yan, etc.) and its relevance to culture is widely acknowledged.However, genre comparison between languages, esp. between English and Chinese has just begun and has been inadequate. This thesis attempts to do some research on this point. Functional linguists consider language as a multi-plate semiotic system. Genre, embedded in a cultural environment, is realized both hi a sociocultural level and in language from textual, syntactical, lexical and phonologicallevels. Genre theory applied in language study will play an increasingly important role in second language learning and intercultural communication.