Critical genre analysis: contributions to language teaching and research

There is an increasing interest on the analysis of discursive practices in specific contexts, involving recurrent social activities and roles. The concept of discursive genre has emerged as a tool for theorizing and explaining on how language functions in order to create and to re-contextualize social interactions. The objective of the present article is to present an overview of the research work around the concept of genre in recent literature, especially relating to the delimitation, analysis and interpretation of language as genre under a critical perspective. Contributions to the language pedagogy are pointed out with reference to Genre Analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis, Systemic-Functional Linguistics, and Socio-Discursive Interactionism.

Critical Genre Analysis; overview of research work; language and activity; implications for language teaching and learning