1.3 Theoretical Framework
Following Connor(2011b),I use intercultural communication to refer to the communication between and within discourse communities.To investigate genre knowledge for intercultural communication,a key construct is discourse community,the locus in which communication is conducted.When introducing the term in 1990,Swales proposed some defining characteristics:a discourse community is made up of a group of individuals who share common goals;possess mechanisms of communication and information exchange;own one or more genres and specific lexis;and have expert members with content and discoursal expertise.
Although the characteristics given by Swales are specific,the identification of a discourse community in the real world is still problematic.A number of comparative genre analysis studies have been conducted to identify the nature of academic discourse communities.The first type of comparative research explores whether there is a boundary between disciplines by examining the schematic structure of the same genre in different disciplines(Basturkmen,2012:Dentistry vs.Language Teaching;Bruce,2009:Sociology vs.Organic Chemistry;Holmes,1997:History vs.Political Science vs.Sociology;Lim,2010:Education vs.Applied Linguistics;Pho,2008:Educational Technology vs.Applied Linguistics).Most of the studies of this type find evidence of disciplinary variation.The second type of research focusses on the writer’s first language which is typically inferred from the information concerning the writer’s geographical community.Studies in this strand look at texts collected from the same discipline but written by authors located in different countries(Duszak,1994,Poland vs.English-speaking countries;Loi &Evans,2010,China vs.English-speaking countries;Sheldon,2011,Spain vs.English-speaking countries).Evidence of considerable geographical variation comes out of these studies.Combining the findings of the two types of comparative studies,we can assume that the intersection of a disciplinary community and a geographical community forms a relatively stable community of coherent genre practices,which will be referred to as a local disciplinary community in this thesis.It is the locus of my empirical investigations.
Although studies of contrastive genre analysis have found evidence of intercultural variation in genre practices,the findings were not well integrated into genre theories or genre-based instruction.Theories of genre knowledge typically focus on a single local disciplinary community(Berkenkotter &Huckin,1995;Bhatia,1999;Hyland,2004;Johns,1997;Paltridge,2001;Tardy,2009).The framework used in this thesis is built on the differences of genre knowledge between communities,including the differences in form and content(i.e.schematic structure),and the differences in disciplinary culture(i.e.epistemological and social traditions)that can be used to explain the differences in form and content(see Figure 2).An understanding of differences in process and discursive practice are important for successful participation in community practice.However,since the discursive practice may vary from institution to institution,and each supervisor and writer may have their preferred process of writing,differences in this aspect are not the focus of this thesis.
Figure 2 The relation between intercultural and other types of genre knowledge
This study approaches differences in form and content on two levels,namely the differences between communities(i.e.community level)and within a community(i.e.individual level).On the community level,features of the disciplinary culture are examined in order to look for possible causes for genre differences,while on the individual level,learner differences are investigated to look for explanations for individual variation in genre practices.The knowledge of both levels is helpful for ESL and EFL learners either to acquire genre conventions of an English-medium community or have a better understanding of the genre knowledge of their home community.Empirical investigations of the present study were conducted within this framework.As shown in Table 2,the present study examines genre differences in form and content on both levels and investigates possible factors in disciplinary community or learner factors underlying the difference.The differences on the two levels are reported in Study 2 and 3 separately.
Table 2 A framework of genre knowledge for intercultural communication
