Why do genres change?

This paper provides a tentative analysis of the main factors that have contributed to determining an extensive evolution in non literary genres in the last few decades. It relies on some general considerations as well as on the discussion of some representative examples with a view to generalizing the elements thus gathered. In any discussion concerning genres, the first element to be considered is the exquisitely social nature of this construct. In Jim Martin’s definition, genres are “configurations of meaning that are recurrently phased together to enact social practices” (Martin 2002: 269). This fact is recognized in all three main traditions of genre studies (cf. Hyon 1996: 694-696), with an increasing interest for the exploration of the social practices and the contextual variables associated with them (e.g. Bhatia 2004). As regards domain-specific communication in particular, genres are part of professional practices and the acquisition of an adequate command of the relevant genres is part of the basic process of socialization of anyone aspiring to become part of a professional community. The view of genre as a social artifact responding to a whole range of external / pragmatic variables is also an inevitable starting point if one is to shed light on the process through which genres are generated and how they change over time, as this implies that when genres change they do so in response to changes in the social, cultural and institutional contexts they are imbricated in (cf. Kress 1987: 42; Devitt 2008: 89-91). Within this very general picture, this paper aims to identify the factors involved in genre change with more precision, looking at how variables associated with the various participants and contextual factors interact causing a given genre to change or determining the rise of a new one. In order to achieve these aims, I shall start by outlining some broad trends in genre change in the contemporary world, discussing some representative cases. The first type of genre change considered in this paper is self-induced and spontaneous, and responds directly to social and/or societal changes. It can be exemplified by certain new trends in external corporate communication, such as the appearance in Annual Company Reports of a section devoted to Corporate Social Responsibility (e.g. Kolk 2008), as well as by the gradual spread of advertisements that focus more on companies’ environmentally and socially responsible policies than on product promotion (e.g. the so-called green advertising) (e.g. Hansen/Machin 2008). These developments in the relevant genres respond to a new attitude of the general public towards the corporate world. In turn, this attitude reflects the profound changes in the structure and organization of the business enterprise in post-industrial society, and its new status in society as a partially open socio-technical system interacting with stakeholders and social actors, and being accountable to them. In other cases changes originate from a contamination in professional practices and in communicative conventions between two professional discourse communities, as is the case for the colonization of arbitration by litigation (Nariman 2000: 262; Marriott 2004: 354) observed by scholars in the last few years, which has taken place gradually and endogenously, simply because recently there experts acting as arbitrators have been ever more often chosen among lawyers. In a way this endogenous process is similar to linguistic interference. A totally different process of change is that initiated by a more or less direct imposition of conventions. An example is that of Research Articles, which in the course of the last few decades have become increasingly subject to very detailed conventions in terms