Discourse trajectories in a nexus of genres

Abstract

Departing from the view that genres are regulative as well as constitutive of social action, this article explores the interconnectedness of genres and Discourses that transit generic boundaries. Situating the study in a local energy transition project in Denmark and exploring what happens in a series of citizen meetings without a narrowly defined agenda, I argue that the meetings may be seen as a nexus of genres constituted by a tissue of interwoven Discourses with a lifespan that extends beyond the specific communicative moment. I understand a nexus of genres as a point where genres in a wider sense meet and interact. Relating the Discourses initiated by the participating citizens to the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual metafunctions in systemic functional linguistics, I analyse topics made salient by actors participating in the citizen meetings. By following these topics intertextually across generic boundaries, I identify Discourses that are mutually entangled and genres that are taken up in the process. These include anticipatory Discourse, Discourse of legitimation, Discourse of motivation, Discourse about technology and Discourse about energy saving initiatives or in other words Discourses that exceed the boundaries of the specific genre in which they are realized.

Keywords

Anticipatory Discourse citizen meetings climate change discourse Discourse of legitimation Discourse of motivation nexus of genres

Introduction

Over the past more than 20 years, a considerable amount of work has been done on written and spoken genres characterized by a high degree of ritualization with ‘predictable elements occurring in a predictable order’ (Bhatia, 1993; Fairclough, 2003: 72; Hasan, 1985; Martin, 1992; Paltridge, 1996; Swales, 1990). In such studies, analysis of generic structure (moves/stages) has been predominant and highly relevant for teasing out institutionalized motives and the rhetorical objectives carried by each move (Lassen, 2006). Drawing on Giddens (1984) and Bawarshi (2003), Collin (2012: 83) has suggested that generic structure helps us better understand the processes involved when actors ‘exercise bounded agency in selecting and adapting the rules they use’ for engaging in social practices. Much of this research has viewed genres as typified and regulative responses to a situation, or in other words as containers available to actors for accomplishing communicative goals (Bawarshi, 2000: 339). This container view of genre (Bawarshi, 2000) has followed the idea that genres are communicative tools for ‘achieving or identifying an already existing communicative purpose’ (p. 340). However, genre theorists increasingly adopt the view that genres are not only regulative, but also constitutive of situations in that they help individuals ‘conceptualize and experience these situations, predicting their notions of what constitutes appropriate and possible responses and actions’ (Bawarshi, 2000).

Similar observations are made by Bhatia (2008a), who has noticed a shift of emphasis from analysing professional genres as merely textual artefacts (Bhatia, 1993; Swales, 1990) to integrating text-external factors by using ethnographic and other multidimensional methods in genre studies (Bhatia, 2004; Smart, 1998; Swales, 1998). Taking inspiration from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Fairclough, 1995, 2003), these observations have led Bhatia (2008b) to argue for the need to pay more attention to interdiscursivity, which he views as ‘appropriation of semiotic resources across genres, professional practices and disciplinary cultures’ (Bhatia, 2008a: 162). Referring to this approach as Critical Genre Analysis, Bhatia (2008a) has emphasized the need to integrate analysis of the multiple discourses, actions and voices that form specific discursive practices.

While we thus seem to have gained extensive knowledge about generic structure within specific genres, understood as artefacts, there is still a need in genre studies to focus on generic boundaries, relations between genres and discourses and how the interrelationship of genres and discourses may constitute as well as regulate social action. This challenge has been taken up by, for example, Collin (2012), who introduces the notion of discourse contact zones (p. 90), suggesting that genres and discourses should be seen as ‘mutually constitutive forms’ in the sense that genres invite particular social groups to perform specific discourses.

In light of these observations, it seems important to explore what happens in situations when actors are involved in less routinized activities in which moves and participant roles are loosely defined and the possibility of ‘reconfiguring the generic space¹’ emerges (Collin, 2012: 91). If moves and participant roles are open to negotiation and actors are not severely constrained by generic conventions, how do actors manage the process of accomplishing a social goal? The purpose of this article is to address these questions by exploring how actors (re)configure the generic space of a series of citizen meetings without a narrowly defined agenda, but with a commonly agreed end-goal. The citizen meetings that are the focus of this study took place in 2009 in a local energy transition project in Denmark known as Energy City Frederikshavn. The citizen meetings were part of a municipal project aiming at full reliance on emission-free energy sources by the year 2030.

Inspired by Freadman’s (2002) notion of ‘uptake’ (defined in the next section), this study explores how citizen meetings, understood as a genre, may build on topics discussed in a series of citizen meetings and how these meetings are interdiscursively related (Bhatia, 2008b; Fairclough, 2003; Swales, 2004). Following Scollon and Scollon (2004), I suggest that a citizen meeting may be seen as a site of engagement, which I shall refer to in this study as a nexus of genres. To quote Scollon and Scollon (2004),

The original meaning of the word ‘nexus’ is a link between two different ideas or objects which links them in a series or network. So in the simplest meaning a ‘nexus analysis’ is the study of the ways in which ideas or objects are linked together. (p. viii)

Staying within this line of thought, I understand a nexus of genres as a point where genres in a wider sense meet and interact. Inspired by Gee (2005), I view a nexus of genres as being constituted partly by ‘little-d-discourses’ (p. 7) that help ‘enact activities and identities’, partly by ‘big-D-Discourses’ (Gee, 2005) that transit generic boundaries on a longer time-scale, involving not only language but also ‘objects, events, actions and interactions’ (Gee, 2005). Gee (2005) refers to ‘big-D-Discourses’ as having no ‘discrete boundaries’ (pp. 29–30). As new Discourses emerge, boundaries between Discourses are contested and pushed, interweaving multiple Discourses into hybrid strands of Discourses that override generic boundaries and reconfigure the generic space.

This study will mainly focus on Discourses that traverse boundaries. However, to begin to understand the relationship between Discourse and genre, and before engaging in analysis of Discourses, it is important to clarify what I understand by genre. While aligning with genre research of a more recent date that subscribes to the view that genre should not be reduced to a regulative artefact for accomplishing communicative purposes, and taking inspiration from Bawarshi (2000), I take the position that genres are regulative as well as constitutive of social action. The corollary is that I understand genre as a concept that includes artefacts as a part of ‘thoughts, words, objects, events, actions and interactions in Discourses’ (Gee, 2005: 7). Genres are to be understood as artefacts that are discursively constructed, but they are more than that and thus cannot be reduced to Discourse. Gee (2005) has referred to ‘big-D-Discourses’ which have the potential for extending beyond the boundaries of genres understood as artefacts as well as social actions. On that basis I argue that ‘big-D-Discourses’ play a constitutive role in forming the nexus of genres, and in this sense, Discourses may be viewed as the interdiscursive tissue that weaves genres together in a Nexus of Genres.

Theoretical framework

Central concepts in genre and discourse studies

To be able to recognize the citizen meetings in Energy City Frederikshavn as a nexus of genres, a clarification of concepts central to genres and discourse studies is needed. For this purpose, I draw on essentially three traditions in genre analysis commonly known as the North American New Rhetoric tradition (e.g. Bazerman, 1994; Miller, 1984; Tardy, 2009), the Australian tradition (e.g. Christie and Martin, 1997; Martin and Rose, 2007, 2008) and the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) approach originating in Europe (Bhatia, 1993, 2004; Dudley-Evans, 1998; Johns and Dudley-Evans, 1991; Swales, 1990, 1998, 2004). Comparing the three traditions, Hyon (1996) found that despite many similarities there are also important differences, particularly as to how genre studies are applied and the importance each of the three traditions attaches to form and function (Koester, 2010). In the North American New Rhetoric tradition, genre is seen as social action with focus on function, while the Australian and European traditions have focused more narrowly on formal genre features, using genre studies as a pedagogical approach to teaching genre awareness and writing.

Towards a definition of genre

In his book on Academic Research Articles, Swales (1990) defined genre as ‘a class of communicative events, the members of which share some set of communicative purposes. These purposes are recognized by the expert members of the parent discourse community and thereby constitute the rationale for the genre’ (p. 58). However, in his later work and referring to the Kantian categorical imperative, Swales (2004) seems less convinced that his definition from 1990 remains true ‘in all possible worlds and all possible times’ (p. 61). Inspired by Lemke (1994), the problem he foresees is that definitions may blind us to new emerging genres and make us see genres as rules rather than as resources (Swales, 2004: 242). Following on from studies by other genre researchers, Swales (2004: ch. 1) offers conceptual clarification of concepts such as genre chains (Räisänen, 1999), genre networks (Bakhtin, 1986; Fairclough, 1995, 2003) and genre sets (Devitt, 1991). Genres linked together in a chronological order may be perceived as genre chains (Swales, 2004: 18). This involves transformation from one genre to the next over time, and exploring relations between genres has become a crucial element in studying social change. Swales (2004: 21) links the idea of genre networks to Bakhtin’s notion of intertextuality, a notion that has gained centrality in much discourse and genre research (see e.g. Bhatia, 2008b; Devitt, 1991; Fairclough, 1995, 2003). To illustrate the notion of genre network, Swales (2004: 21) usefully quotes a remark by Todorow (1990): ‘Where do genres come from? Quite simply from other genres. A new genre is always the transformation of an earlier one or of several’ (p. 15). This seems much in line with the idea of genre chains and transformation of genres over time, however with the difference that genres are not linked chronologically in genre networks.

Genre ‘uptake’

Much in line with Bakhtin’s conceptualization of intertextuality, Freadman (2002) uses the concept ‘uptake’ for the bidirectional relationship between a text and an uptake text where an uptake text may either confirm the generic status of a preceding text (e.g. an invitation followed by an acceptance) or may alternatively disconfirm the generic status of a preceding text by construing ‘its object as some other kind’ (p. 40). This implies that the generic status of one text thus constitutes the socio-rhetorical condition for another. Freadman (2002) adapted the concept of uptake from speech act theory where one speech act requires an appropriate response from another (e.g. question followed by answer). She applies the concept on genres where ‘antecedent genres play a role in constituting subsequent actions’ (Bawarshi, 2000: 341), and in this sense there seems to be a close relationship between Freadman’s thinking and that of Bakhtin in terms of intertextuality.

If we understand genre as social action (Miller, 1984), genres embedded in a nexus of practices will be intertextually and inter-semiotically related, rather than appearing as isolated phenomena. In her conceptualization of genre, Freadman (2002) transits the boundaries of an individual text, pointing to the importance of looking at text pairs:

Genre is more usefully applied to the interaction of, minimally, a pair of texts than to the properties of a single text, and I have used the term ‘uptake’ to name the bidirectional relation that holds between this pair. (p. 40)

In Freadman’s understanding of the notion, ‘uptake’ traverses boundaries between texts or genres. This does not necessarily happen in a linear way in the sense that a given genre is taken up directly by another genre. Rather, certain genres may function as ‘intermediary genres’ (Tachino, 2012), which are genres that assist genre ‘uptake’. The notion of genre ‘uptake’ and the relationship between genres across generic boundaries naturally invoke the idea of recontextualization of different realizations of social practices.

Recontextualization, interdiscursivity and genre networks

When mapping the semiotic cycles of actors, discourses and their interaction, we explore how they are interdiscursively and intertextually related. A central question we may ponder is how these actors are constituted semiotically and how discourses emerge at a specific moment in time and space that enables a specific action. To answer this question, it may be relevant to analyse discourses as a recontextualization (Bernstein, 1990; Linell, 1998) of preceding discourses and genres into re-semiotized forms (Iedema, 2003) and how discourses and genres may anticipate future activities. For this purpose, the notions of interdiscursivity, intertextuality and genre networks will be central for studying the activities and genres that aim at accomplishing common goals such as, for instance, green growth and transition towards full reliance on renewable energy, which are the goals set for Energy City Frederikshavn. In other words, it is interesting to study how discourses may traverse genres, but also how they may change or blend within a given genre, such as a Discourse about technology blending with, for instance, a Discourse about sustainability (Fairclough, 2003; Gee, 2005).

The meeting as a genre

Koester (2010: 28) discusses generic differences between decision-making meetings and other meetings in workplace contexts. In line with Holmes and Stubbe (2003), Koester (2010: 26) contends that meetings can have many different goals and thus cannot be categorized as a genre on the basis of the criterion of communicative purpose. However, aligning with Handford (2007), Koester (2010: 26) argues that meetings usually have a predetermined structure with recognizable practices and strategies and therefore should be viewed as a genre category. Based on a discussion of goal-based versus structure-based definitions of genre, Koester (2010: 28) concludes that decision-making meetings, which can also take place in contexts other than in workplaces, may be seen as a primary genre with a specific goal, while other meetings with more diverse goals may be seen as a secondary genre with a more open-ended agenda, despite a recognizable structure of (1) opening phase, (2) debating phase and (3) closing phase (Koester, 2010). The three-part model has been further nuanced by Handford (2007), who adds complexity to the model by including pre-meeting moves, transition moves and a post-meeting move, indicating that meetings do not take place in a vacuum but are ‘highly intertextual’ (Koester, 2010: 29). There is always something leading up to the meeting and there will usually be follow-up activities after a meeting.

From a genre point of view, each of the citizen meetings in Energy City Frederikshavn had a fairly loose structure, although phases were clearly demarcated in terms of an opening phase, a debating phase and a closing phase. However, because the organizers had expressed a wish for a democratic, bottom-up process, they encouraged the participating citizens to set the agenda in the meetings, and it was largely left to citizens to decide which direction the meetings were going to take. It is in the nature of things that follow-up activities were happening in between the citizen meetings and that various genres were drawn upon to mediate the process. However, because I did not have access to follow-up activities after the meetings, it has not been possible to study the uptake of genres outside of the meetings, apart from instances referred to and thus made relevant by actors participating in the meetings analysed.

Defining discourse

Discourse means different things to different researchers. As noted by Wodak and Meyer (2010: 2), the concept of discourse has been used to mean ‘anything from a historical monument, a lieu de mémoire, a policy, a political strategy, narratives in a restricted or broad sense of the term, text, talk, a speech, topic-related conversions to language per se’, thus spanning a wide range of meaning ‘from genre to a register or style’ and ‘from a building to a political programme’ (Wodak and Meyer, 2010: 3). Obviously, such broad definitions of discourse have brought about some confusion in how to apply the concept, and it is therefore important to provide a more concise definition, recognizing that this may be no easy task given its multidimensional nature (Van Dijk, 2010: 67). In Van Dijk’s (2010) wording, offering a complete ‘definition’ of the notion of discourse would require ‘whole theories or disciplines of the objects or phenomena we are dealing with’.

In Critical Discourse Studies, discourse understood as language use in speech and writing is seen as social practice. In this sense, discourse is ‘socially constitutive as well as socially conditioned’ (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997: 258). To Reisigl and Wodak (2010), ‘a discourse is not a closed unit, but a dynamic semiotic entity that is open to reinterpretation and continuation’ (p. 89). Fairclough (2010) has offered a more recent definition of discourses as ‘semiotic ways of construing aspects of the world (physical, social or mental) which can generally be identified with different positions or perspectives of different groups of social actors’ (p. 164). By using the concept ‘construe’ rather than ‘represent’, Fairclough emphasizes the view that the world may be understood from different perspectives. Fairclough (2003) distinguishes discourse (singular) from discourses (plural) in line with Gee (2005), where big-D-Discourse corresponds to Fairclough’s notion of discourse in the plural.

Actors and social structures

As will have become evident, the interaction order including genres, actors and social structures depends on Discourses for accomplishing social goals. Thus far, I have argued that genres are regulative as well as constitutive of social action. However, social action is hardly conceivable without the interplay of actors, discourses, generic spaces and, I would add, social structures. No clear distinction can be drawn between actors and social structures. As noted by Van Dijk (2010: 82), ‘local situations of interaction enact, manifest, or challenge global societal structures’, and through actions – including also discursive actions – the participants are able to build legislation or other constraints on actions and discourse (p. 83). In CDA, the dialectics between discourse structures and social structures is of particular interest (Van Dijk, 2010: 82). It follows from a CDA perspective that actors may be seen as subjects that have a potential for acting, while social structures should be understood as actions that have established themselves as relatively fixed patterns of social practice (Fairclough, 2003: 223). The concept includes habitual action as well as legislation, regulations and institutions that contribute to ensuring societal coherence by organizing, maintaining and prioritizing certain forms of social practice while at the same time being challenged by political processes. Social structures at different levels of society are bound to influence local decisions as to how to accomplish project goals. As may be illustrated through the example of Energy City Frederikshavn, legislation passed at the European or national level might very well have implications at the local level, constraining the freedom of action of local citizens. A national state being bound by European Union (EU) climate regulations may pass legislation that guides citizens at the local level. This would include energy saving measures such as renovation and insulation of houses or installation of solar heating.

On the boundaries of discourses and genres

Delimiting the boundaries of a ‘discourse’ and delimiting it from other discourses is tricky. Boundaries between discourses are fluid (Reisigl and Wodak, 2010: 89). Reisigl and Wodak (2010) distinguish between discourse and text in the sense that texts ‘make speech acts durable over time and thus bridge two dilated speech situations’. Moreover, texts may constitute a genre characterized as ‘a socially ratified way of using language in connection with a particular type of social activity’ (Fairclough, 1995: 14). A discourse on climate change, for instance, will draw on various genres and texts in the process of accomplishing a socially motivated goal through intertextuality (Fairclough, 1995; Reisigl and Wodak, 2010: 90).

Context, data and methods

Energy City Frederikshavn

The study presented here focuses on an ongoing energy transition town project in Frederikshavn, a Danish municipality that has set the goal of becoming fully self-reliant on sustainable energy by 2015, a date now postponed to 2030. The original idea for the project was conceived in a so-called energy camp where local policy makers from municipalities in Denmark voted for the municipality to serve as a ‘demonstratorium’ to other municipalities in Denmark (Energy City Frederikshavn, n.d.). Following a period of recession in the 1980s, the local shipyard had been closed down which had led to a loss of jobs, gradually changing Frederikshavn into a marginalized community with limited potential for attracting inhabitants from other areas of the country. Faced with a downward population growth spiral, and inspired by a visit by Al Gore in 2007, local politicians took the initiative to establish a project whose aims seemed to have various underlying rationales: to address climate change by developing and implementing new sustainable technology, to create jobs, to brand the town as an attractive place to live and to secure the supply of energy. These rationales were based on the overall assumption that participation by citizens, local business enterprises and institutions was of paramount importance for a successful outcome of the energy transition project that was initiated in 2008.

Data and methods

For analysing the energy transition project as a nexus of genres and Discourses, I take my point of departure in six thematic citizen meetings that took place in Frederikshavn in 2009. The meetings focused on how to implement project goals, and as an intermediate milestone towards this goal, it was decided to plan an energy fair to be held in October 2009. For this purpose, the participating citizens drew on a variety of genres by referring to earlier meetings, press releases, invitation letters and a catalogue listing possible ideas for implementation in the process. Although there are many genres of possible relevance to the purpose of my study, I have delimited my analyses to genres specifically relied upon by the participating citizens. For analysing Discourse trajectories, I have been guided by the thematic choices made by the participants as well as the genres (artefacts and social actions) invoked during the discussions. Following a Hallidayan approach to language as a social semiotic (Halliday, 2004), I have analysed Discourses along three dimensions: an ideational dimension, an interpersonal dimension and a textual dimension.

Analysis and discussion

Socio-cultural context analysis

To analyse how Discourses interact with genres to form a nexus of genres, I take a point of departure in the socio-cultural context of the energy town project in which the Discourses and genres are embedded. For this purpose, the notion of ‘genre uptake’ may usefully be invoked, seeing that some genres and Discourses are taken up and others ignored. As observed earlier, genres understood as social action are not only enabled but also constrained by the conventions and norms that define and characterize discourse communities and communities of practice, and to these conventions and norms we may add social structures at international, national and local levels. One may ask then to what extent ‘genre uptake’ is a function of the enabling or constraining nature of social structures, which brings us to an analysis of social structures and actors possibly affecting ‘genre uptake’ in the energy town project in Frederikshavn.

Construing actors and social structures in Energy City Frederikshavn

The idea of an energy transition town was born in a so-called Energy Camp, which took place in 2006 at the Nordic Centre for Renewable Energy. The camp gave birth to the formation of what was called a ‘demonstratorium’, in other words a project that would be a model city showcasing Danish energy technology. An important aspect of the project was to disseminate the concept to the rest of Denmark (Energy City Frederikshavn, n.d.). During the initial phases of the project, the municipal council teamed up with the Local Energy Utility and Board of Business and Enterprise to sign agreements with the Danish Society for Nature Conservation, and at a later stage the European Covenant of Mayors was signed by mayors in Europe who committed European municipalities to developing environmentally sustainable energy solutions (Energy City Frederikshavn, n.d.).

Discussions in the citizen meetings revealed a close relationship between external partners and the energy town project in that a variety of companies were represented in the thematic group ‘business’. Among those, the Danish energy supply and procurement company, Dong Energy, had entered into collaboration agreements with the energy transition project about erecting offshore windmills and establishing a coherent, renewable energy system in the municipality for supply of electricity, heating and transport. In a similar vein, the energy town project had signed an agreement with the electric car manufacturer, Better Place, for manufacturing electric cars. Dong Energy and Better Place have been active participants in an annual energy fair organized by the energy town project, together with other companies that have contributed actively in the transition process and have used the energy fair as a window of opportunity for displaying green technology and entering into dialogue with citizens potentially interested in climate change mitigation and energy efficient renovation of homes.

The energy town project as a nexus of genres

Based on the idea that Energy City Frederikshavn is made up of actors and social structures, I would suggest that a citizen meeting may be seen as a nexus of genres performed by actors constrained as well as enabled by a variety of social structures. The intertwinement of genres may be seen as a result of Discourses and genres emerging in new contexts (recontextualization) and possibly in new forms (e.g. re-semiosis from social action to text to image). In this process, some genres are taken up by other genres (Freadman, 2002) or not taken up at all.

In this connection, it is important to point out that Energy City Frederikshavn is to be understood here as a superordinate nexus of genres with subordinate nexuses of genre embedded (the citizen meetings). The interrelationship between the superordinate and the subordinate nexuses emerges through the discourses and genres activated in the citizen meetings which are the focus in this study. The interrelationship between Discourses, genres and nexuses of genres is illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Re-semiosis across genres, social actions and texts.

The illustration is based on the underlying assumption that genres are regulative as well as constitutive and emerge as a response to ‘exigence’ understood as socially motivated needs (Miller, 1984: 158) that translate into communicative purposes (Swales, 1990) conveyed through genres and addressed and potentially re-semiotized across generic boundaries. The translation of socially motivated needs is assisted by Discourses activated by language or other semiotic modes in specific situational and cultural contexts. Inspired by systemic functional linguistics (SFL), we may conceptualize the Discourses as contributing to the three strands of meaning subsumed under the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual metafunctions (Halliday, 1994, 2004). In SFL, Discourses, understood as meaning that extends beyond a specific situation, would be categorized as ideational meaning. However, I would argue that some of the Discourses activated in the citizen meetings have interpersonal or textual implications. More concretely, I would argue that Discourses carrying interpersonal content, such as Discourses of legitimation (Van Leeuwen, 2008) or Discourses of motivation, where interpersonal relations are at stake, may be naturally subsumed under the interpersonal Discourse dimension. In a similar vein, I see a need to categorize Discourses that organize meaning through intertextuality and temporality, for example, anticipatory Discourses (De Saint-Georges, 2003; Jaworski and Fitzgerald, 2008; Scollon and Scollon, 2004), under the textual Discourse dimension, thus saving the ideational Discourse dimension for Discourses carrying an ideational content, such as ‘technological Discourse’ or ‘energy saving Discourse’, which seemed to predominate the data analysed (Figure 2). A note of caution is needed at this point, seeing that in practice, a sharp division between the three metafunctions is difficult to uphold due to Discourses always containing elements from the three meaning strands. For analytical purposes, however, it makes sense to foreground the strand of meaning seen as predominant in a specific Discourse.

Figure 2.

Overview of central genres in Energy City Frederikshavn as a nexus of genres.

Among the Discourses referred to in Figure 1, Discourses that organize textual meaning are particularly relevant for creating temporal coherence between the past, the present and the future, offering the potential of talking about plans for achieving energy transition goals through intertextual references that cut across genres, contexts and situations. Combined, such Discourses as well as ideational and interpersonal Discourses may be seen as the tissue that weaves together genres across generic boundaries. This may happen through re-semiosis of text to social action or artefact or from social action or artefact to text across time and space. To exemplify this, an energy fair (social action) may be seen as re-semiosis of ideas rewritten as minutes (artefact) of a citizen meeting (social action). Similarly, a video of Energy City Frederikshavn (text) may be re-semiotized as a low-energy house (artefact), which may in turn be re-semiotized as a poster. Figure 1 illustrates this through examples of genres performed in the energy transition project, with the ultimate goal of complete reliance on renewable energy sources before 2030. The energy transition project as a nexus of genres is illustrated in Figure 2.

Discourse analysis

In what follows, I offer examples of Discourses traversing generic boundaries. The examples, which all depart from a series of six public citizen meetings held in 2009, represent the three metafunctional Discourse dimensions illustrated in Figure 1. Among lexical topics pervading the citizens’ negotiations of project goals, four in particular were prominent, namely, ‘ideas’, ‘energy taxation’, ‘The Energy Utility’ and ‘The Energy Week’. These topics traversed generic boundaries and emerged in re-contextualized and re-semiotized forms, while at the same time activating Discourses at the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual Discourse dimensions through the lexico-grammatical choices made. The examples that follow are sampled across re-semiotized genres to illustrate how lexical topics activate various kinds of Discourses and transit generic boundaries.

As pre-empted in Figure 1, various Discourses cut across genres, social actions and texts, and in what follows I will illustrate this by commenting on examples of Discourses organized along the three metafunctions referred to earlier. For selecting examples across genres in the nexus of genres, I have followed topical chains frequently addressed in the citizens’ meetings. Among these I shall focus on four topics, namely, ‘ideas’, ‘energy taxation’, ‘The Energy Utility’ and ‘The Energy Week’. These topics seem to be enveloped in a variety of intertwining Discourses relating to the three metafunctions described, such as, for instance, technological Discourse, environmental Discourse, Discourses of motivation or legitimation and anticipatory Discourse. In what follows, I shall analyse the topics, Discourses and genres on the basis of examples selected from my data. Overviews of the intertwinement of Discourses across generic boundaries are offered in Tables 1 and 2.

Table 1.

A trajectory of ideas across generic boundaries.^a

Example	Topic (bold)	Genre	Discourses	Characteristics
1	good ideas	Meeting agenda	Anticipatory Discourse (underlined)	How to make attractive? How to contribute?
			Discourse of motivation (italics)	JOA will stimulate generation of ideas
2	100 ideasIdea of change	Citizen meeting (270109)	Anticipatory Discourse	I have ambitions …We will have generated …Might want to realize …Will get something going …
			Discourse of motivation	I have a feeling that …And that is why it is wonderful that …You are very nice people. That’s cool …
			Discourse of legitimation	Barack Obama … wanting to change something … not able to do it alone … wonderful 50 people have turned up
3	good ideas	Press release	Anticipatory Discourse	Replace … secure … award … construct … let video-record and publish …
			Discourse of legitimation	50 citizens sacrificed a men’s handball match to use their energy on Energy City Frederikshavn …
4	it might be really good if …a lot of ideas …loads of ideas …one suggestion could be …their own ideas …box for ideas …all the good ideas …Energy week	Citizen meeting (180809)	Anticipatory Discourse	If companies could participate … and tell about their ‘green’ projects …
			Discourse of motivation	I would strongly encourage you to …
			Discourse of legitimation	So that the citizens also know what happens …We did have a lot of ideas …All the good ideas … they must be implemented

JOA: Jens Ole Amstrup.

Legend: Topics; Discourse of legitimation; Discourse of motivation; anticipatory Discourse.

Table 2.

A trajectory of themes across generic boundaries: Energy taxation and The Energy Utility.^a

Example	Topic (bold)	Genre	Discourses	Characteristics
5	pay a tax … pay a tax …	Citizen meeting (310309)	Technological Discourse	when they test an engine (.) in fact they let out enormous amounts of heat …
	The Utility …
			Discourse of legitimation	That is due to legislation …They would have to pay tax …That was not possible … it had to be released …
6	fixed tax rates … fixed tax …	Citizen meeting(040509)	Discourse of legitimation	because of compulsory connection …it is so expensive …and we can hardly avoid those …because then the fixed tax could be removed …
			Discourse of motivation	If we could get rid of that …It is a carrot in itself already …
			Anticipatory Discourse	An area where we should go into building zero-energy houses
			Energy saving Discourse	Done a lot of energy efficient renovations compelled to used district heating
		Exophoric reference to other genre (energy bill)
7	fixed tax … fixed taxes …	Citizen meeting(160609)	Technological Discourse	when they try to install solar heaters and mount new doors and windows and energy efficient window panes …
	The Utility …
			Anticipatory Discourse	How do we go about reducing the fixed tax …How do we go about reducing them …
			Discourse of legitimation	Because this is what many have experienced …Does not motivate people …Actually not such a large percentage …
8	The Utility … The Utility … The Utility …	Citizen meeting(180809)	Anticipatory Discourse	Something we could encourage the Utility to do …
			Discourse of motivation	I am sure that … you can enter the age of the house … household.
			Discourse of legitimation	It was somewhat demotivating …Because the tax rates are relatively high …
			Energy saving Discourse	The possibilities of saving energy …Reducing the energy bill by saving energy …
		Exophoric reference to other genre (annual statement; energy bill)

Legend: Technological Discourse; Energy saving Discourse; Discourse of legitimation; Anticipatory Discourse.

‘Ideas’

That the notion of ‘idea’ is salient in the genres permeating the energy transition project is hardly surprising. From the outset, the Energy City was born on the basis of an idea that by nature incarnates the essence of anticipation and anticipatory Discourse. What began as an idea of creating a project aimed at accomplishing the goal of being fully reliable on renewable energy, mushroomed into a myriad of ideas, from the business plan was signed in 2007 until Energy City Frederikshavn was fully established in 2009. This may be shown through analysis of a lexical chain for which an overview is provided in Table 1. For full transcripts of the examples (1–4), see Appendix 1, transcript 1a. In Table 1, we may notice that the topic ‘idea’ is taken up and discussed in different genres such as a meeting agenda, two different citizen meetings and a press release. This is done explicitly by referring to ‘good ideas’, ‘100 ideas’ and ‘loads of ideas’ or implicitly through suggestions such as ‘it might be really good if’ or ‘one suggestion might be that’, indicating that the interlocutors are in a process of idea generation. While understanding the notion of ‘idea’ as something that by the nature of things should be implemented at a future point in time, we may also notice that it paves the way for anticipatory Discourse as well as Discourse of legitimation. This may be seen in example 4, in which citizens discuss ideas for a forthcoming energy week, suggesting that

it might be really good if the companies that focus on some sort of ‘greenness’ could participate in the energy week and tell the citizens about their ‘green’ projects (anticipatory Discourse) [….] so that the citizens also know what happens (Discourse of legitimation).

Anticipatory Discourse is here triggered by a suggestion about a future activity through irrealis ‘could participate and tell’ and en epistemic modal verb ‘might be’ expressing uncertainty about the future. Discourse of legitimation is here activated by the interlocutor producing a reason as an argument supporting the suggestion. A different version of anticipatory Discourse is found in example 3, where the imperative voice is used for carrying out ‘good ideas’ in the future. Policy-makers and citizens are encouraged to make sustainable decisions, and the imperative mood is very salient in the press release in example 3 in examples such as ‘replace the homecare vehicles with electric bikes’ and ‘secure interest-free loans for sustainable energy’, thus providing linguistic elements characteristic of anticipatory Discourse. The Discourses of anticipation and legitimation seem to be interspersed with Discourses of motivation, as shown in example 2, where a moderator builds up an argument by referring to Barack Obama, explaining that in a campaign, Obama has an ‘idea of change’ and a wish to ‘initiate something’. Using Obama as a role model, the moderator confers the idea of change on the citizens, saying that ‘I have a feeling that this is also part of what you are dying to do’. And he continues in the same motivating spirit by saying, ‘And that is why it is wonderful that 50 people have turned up tonight, people who are ready to help. [….] No doubt, you are very nice people. That’s cool’. We may notice here that anticipatory Discourse intertwines with Discourse of legitimation. By stressing that a large number of people have turned up, the moderator legitimizes the course of action as laudable and something to be proud of.

It is important to point out that the examples selected on the basis of topical cohesion traverse generic boundaries. The examples analysed thus far indicate that in addition to topical cohesion across different genres, cohesion is also maintained through the various Discourses that permeate the nexus of genres. Moreover, it should be noted that although the citizen meetings may be viewed as a single genre, they should be conceptualized as separate genres in an overall meeting genre. Due to the lapse of time in between the individual citizen meetings, each meeting may unfold differently from the meeting that preceded it and I consequently consider the lapse of time a generic boundary. This caveat is relevant to the next part of the analysis where I focus on further two prominent topics addressed in the nexus of genres studied, namely, ‘energy taxation’ and ‘The Energy Utility’.

Energy taxation and The Energy Utility

In a series of citizen meetings, ‘taxation’ and ‘The Energy Utility’ are all-pervading topics. This is illustrated in Table 2 through examples 5–8, which are examples spanning a range of meetings held over eight months in 2009. It may also be noticed that the citizens refer exophorically to other genres related to the field of Energy taxation, such as ‘energy bill’ and ‘annual statement’ (examples 6 and 8). In the discussions, the citizens are worrying about the size of energy bills and how to reduce the tax on energy used. This entails a discussion of rules and regulations concerning energy renovation and the monopoly of The Energy Utility of supplying district heating to all households in the municipality. As a matter of course, the citizens thus evoke a vocabulary of concepts relating to energy supply, energy saving, taxation and so on, and the local Energy Utility seems to be a powerful actor in this regard and thus frequently alluded to, like in example 5:

But I must say they are somewhat peculiar over there [the Energy Utility] (.) but of course that is due to legislation. I visited Alfa-Diesel [….] when they test an engine (.) then the energy used while the engine is running (.) in fact they let out enormous amounts of heat. And they are not allowed to use that for heating or anything. It was to just go out into the air. [….] Complete idiocy!

In a discussion of how manufacturing companies may avoid wasting energy, the issue of using heat emitted when testing engines was raised and The Energy Utility (‘they are somewhat peculiar over there’) is construed as the culprit. However, at the same time, the interlocutor tries to find a legitimate reason as to why ‘enormous amounts of heat’ are let out in the air by saying that ‘of course that is due to legislation’, thus evoking a Discourse of legitimation which ultimately blames the system of taxation: ‘They [the company] would have to pay a tax if they wanted to use it. They asked if they could lead it into the local grid and supply district heating. That was not possible; it just had to be released.’ The Discourse of legitimation is entangled in Discourse of motivation as shown in example 6:

But it is in fact because of compulsory connection to district heating (.) if we could get rid of that (.) it is so expensive (.) because ehm the fixed tax rates are very high (.) and we can hardly avoid those …

The citizen here tries to motivate the other citizens to try to get rid of an obligatory requirement to use district heating which is seen as particularly problematic because of the fixed and high tax rates. By framing the suggestion of getting rid of compulsory district heating as a hypothetical future possibility through deontic modality ‘if we could …’, at the same time legitimizing the reason why it should be removed (‘it is so expensive’), the citizen makes an effort to motivate fellow citizens to try to change social practice.

The discussion about fixed tax rates and compulsory district heating continues in example 7, in which Discourses of legitimation and anticipation are blended with a technological Discourse:

How do we go about reducing the fixed tax on energy? Because this is what many have experienced (.) when they try to install solar heaters and mount new doors and windows and energy efficient window panes and everything (.) and then the heating bill just rises the following year and that does not motivate people.

A similar pattern of blending Discourses may be seen in example 8, in which the Discourses exemplified earlier intertwine with an energy saving Discourse: ‘It ought to be possible to earn some money by investing more. Either by remembering to turn off the light or by replacing bulbs or whatever.’

Throughout the series of citizen meetings analysed, the participants in the Energy City project have been preoccupied with identifying goals and milestones. The many ideas suggested during the meetings bear witness to that. In the last meeting in the series of meetings analysed, one of the participants introduces the idea of involving The Energy Utility more in accomplishing project goals, a suggestion that is, however, not taken up – apparently because it is not possible to persuade The Energy Utility to reduce the fixed taxes on energy supplied by the Utility (example 8). Along with a Discourse of motivation, we thus see what we may call a Discourse of demotivation, mitigated by the downgrader ‘somewhat’ and legitimized through a rational argument signalled by ‘because’: ‘And it was somewhat demotivating because there were not very many possibilities of reducing the energy bill [….] because the fixed tax rates are relatively high’. The Energy Utility is thus not construed as supportive in the energy transition process, and other solutions will then have to be explored.

The energy week

As explained in the previous sub-section, the citizens seemed to be rather disheartened by the lack of prospects of identifying possibilities of motivating fellow citizens, including companies and the local Energy Utility, to work towards accomplishing the common goal of complete reliance on renewable energy. Rather than focusing strictly on a distant ultimate goal, it was decided to work towards milestones, and one such milestone was the annual energy week to be held in October 2009. Many ideas were generated for the energy week and the concept thus became a key topic across the genres analysed. Thus, in an interview with the former director of Energy City Frederikshavn, he mentioned that ‘I would like us to get going (.) if some of the activists would like to work on the energy week (.) because this would benefit the town’ (example 9, Appendix 1, transcript 1c). The topic was then re-activated in the following citizen meetings such as ‘It would be good if all of us could work toward the first milestone (.) which is the energy week. Because here we have a task that we can approach from many different angles’ (example 10, Appendix 1, transcript 1c). Like the examples shown in Tables 1 and 2, we also find a topic (here exemplified by ‘the energy week’) entwined with Discourses of motivation: ‘I would like us to get going’ (example 9), ‘I think it is a task that is manageable’ (example 10) and Discourses of legitimation (‘because this would benefit …’) or (‘because here we have a task that we can approach from many different angles’, stating reasons why a future milestone should be planned (anticipatory Discourse realized through hypothetical statements ‘would like us to’, ‘would like to work’, ‘would benefit’, ‘would be good if’), all suggesting ideas to work on in order to reach the milestones set.

Conclusion

In this article, I have explored how actors manage the process of accomplishing a social goal by configuring and recontextualizing a loosely defined generic space. The examples analysed originated in a series of public citizen meetings in which, without relying on a strict and predetermined agenda for each meeting, the participants jointly construed the accomplishment of a common goal, namely that of making a transition from reliance on fossil fuels to complete reliance on renewable energy. In this process, I studied how genres (artefacts and social actions) are intertextually related (Fairclough, 2003; Swales, 2004) to form what I have referred to as a nexus of genres. To support this idea, I mapped the context of social structures and actors and subsequently analysed how the actors – enabled or constrained by social structures – negotiate the accomplishment of actions across generic boundaries. Arguing that Discourses play an important part in forming a nexus of genres through inter-generic Discourse trajectories where genres are re-semiotized in a movement from artefact to social action or vice-versa, I demonstrated that a variety of genres were taken up in the process. I further demonstrated how Discourses extend beyond generic boundaries such as citizen meetings, a meeting with the local Energy Utility, press releases, invitations and business plans, holding the genres together in a nexus of genres. This was enabled by a variety of Discourses that I related to the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual metafunctions, referring to Systemic Functional Linguistics. The Discourses were topicalized in the ideational metafunction, and four topics were identified as prominent ideational content, namely, ‘ideas’, ‘energy taxation’, ‘The Energy Utility’ and ‘The Energy Week’. By following these threads across generic boundaries, it was possible to identify Discourses that were mutually entangled and intertwined with the topics addressed. These were in no particular order, and were based on the examples analysed – anticipatory Discourse, Discourse of legitimation, Discourse of motivation, Discourse about technology and Discourse about energy saving, in other words big-D-Discourses which together have a lifespan that exceeds the boundaries of the specific genre in which they are realized.

Footnotes

Appendix 1 Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author biography

Inger Lassen received her PhD in discourse in professional settings from Aalborg University, Denmark. She is professor at the Department of Culture and Global Studies at Aalborg University and former director of the doctoral programme Interdisciplinary Discourse Studies. Her publications include a monograph on stylistics, an edited anthology on Image and Identity and an edited anthology on Gender. She has published articles in international journals such as Document Design, Discourse Studies, Critical Discourse Studies, Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice, Communication and Medicine, Risk Research and Environmental Studies.

References

Bakhtin

(1986) The problem of speech genres. In: Emerson

Holquist

(eds) Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin, TX: The University of Texas Press, pp. 60–102.

Bawarshi

(2000) The genre function. College English 62(3): 335–360.

Bawarshi

(2003) Genre and the Invention of the Writer: Reconsidering the Place of Invention in Composition. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.

Bazerman (1994) Constructing Experience. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University (SIU) Press.

Bernstein

(1990) The structuring of pedagogic discourse. Class, Codes and Control, vol. 4. London: Routledge.

Bhatia

(1993) Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. London; New York: Longman.

Bhatia

(2004) Worlds of Written Discourse. London; New York: Continuum.

Bhatia

(2008a) Genre analysis, ESP and professional practice. English for Specific Purposes 27: 161–174.

Bhatia

(2008b) Towards critical genre analysis. In: Bhatia

Flowerdew

Jones

(eds) Advances in Discourse Studies. London; New York: Routledge, pp. 166–177.

10.

Christie

Martin

(eds) (1997) Genre and Institutions: Social Processes in the Workplace and School. London; New York: Continuum.

11.

Collin

(2012) Genre in Discourse, Discourse in Genre: A new Approach to the Study of Literate Practice. Journal of Literacy Research 44: 76–96.

12.

De Saint-Georges

(2003) Anticipatory discourse: Producing futures of action in a vocational program for long-term unemployed. PhD Dissertation, Georgetown University, Washington, DC.

13.

Devitt

(1991) Intertextuality in tax accounting. In: Bazerman

Paradis

(eds) Textual Dynamics of the Professions. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 336–357.

14.

Dudley-Evans

(1998) Developments in English for Specific Purposes: A Multi-disciplinary Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

15.

Energy City Frederikshavn (n.d.) History. Available at: http://energycity.dk/history/ (accessed 14 June 2016)

16.

Fairclough

(1995) Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. London; New York: Longman.

17.

Fairclough

(2003) Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London; New York: Routledge.

18.

Fairclough

(2010) A dialectical-relational approach to critical discourse analysis in social research. In: Wodak

Meyer

(eds) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: SAGE, pp. 162–186.

19.

Fairclough

Wodak

(1997) Critical discourse analysis. In: Van Dijk

(ed.) Discourse as Social Interaction. London: SAGE, pp. 258–284.

20.

Freadman

(2002) Uptake. In: Coe

Lingard

Teslenko

(eds) The Rhetoric and Ideology of Genre. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, pp. 39–53.

21.

Gee

(2005) An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. New York; London: Routledge.

22.

Giddens

(1984) The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

23.

Halliday

MAK

(1994) An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Hodder Arnold.

24.

Halliday

MAK

(2004) An Introduction to Functional Grammar, 3rd edn (revised by Matthiessen

). London: Hodder Arnold.

25.

Handford

(2007) The genre of the business meeting: A corpus-based study. Unpublished PhD Thesis, School of English Studies, University of Nottingham, Nottingham.

26.

Hasan

(1985) The structure of a text. In: Halliday

MAK

Hasan

(eds) Language, Context and Text: Aspects of Language in a Social-semiotic Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 52–69.

27.

Holmes

Stubbe

(2003) Power and Politeness in the Workplace. London: Pearson Education.

28.

Hyon

(1996) Genres in three traditions: Implications for ESL. TESOL Quarterly 30(4): 693–722.

29.

Iedema

(2003) Discourses of Post-bureaucratic Organization. Amsterdam; Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing.

30.

Jaworski

Fitzgerald

(2008) ‘This poll has not happened yet’: Temporal play in election predictions. Discourse & Communication 2(1): 5–27.

31.

Johns

Dudley-Evans

(1991) English for specific purposes: International in scope, specific in purpose. TESOL Quarterly 25: 297–314.

32.

Koester

(2010) Workplace Discourse. New York: Continuum.

33.

Lassen

(2006) Is the press release a genre? A study of form and content. Discourse Studies 8: 503–530.

34.

Lemke

(1994) Genre as a strategic resource. Presentation at NCTE, Orlando, FL, November.

35.

Linell

(1998) Discourse across boundaries: On recontextualizations and the blending of voices in professional discourse. Text 18(2): 143–157.

36.

Martin

(1992) English Text: System and Structure. Amsterdam; Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing.

37.

Martin

Rose

(2007) Working with Discourse: Meaning beyond the Clause. London: Continuum.

38.

Martin

Rose

(2008) Genre Relations: Mapping Culture. New York: Continuum.

39.

Miller

(1984) Genre as social action. Quarterly Journal of Speech 70: 151–167.

40.

Paltridge

(1996) Genre, text type and the language learning classroom. ELT Journal 50(3): 237–243.

41.

Räisänen

(1999) The conference forum as a system of genres. PhD Thesis, Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, Gothenburg University, Gothenburg.

42.

Reisigl

Wodak

(2010) The discourse-historical approach (DHA). In: Wodak

Meyer

(eds) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: SAGE, pp. 87–121.

43.

Scollon

(2004) Nexus Analysis: Discourse and the Emerging Internet. London; New York: Routledge.

44.

Smart

(1998) Mapping conceptual worlds: Using interpretive ethnography to explore knowledge-making in a professional community. Journal of Business Communication 35(1): 111–127.

45.

Swales

(1990) Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

46.

Swales

(1998) Other Floors, Other Voices: A Textography of a Small University Building. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

47.

Swales

(2004) Research Genres: Exploration and Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

48.

Tachino

(2012) Theorizing uptake and knowledge mobilization: A case for intermediary genre. Written Communication 29(4): 455–476.

49.

Tardy

(2009) Building Genre Knowledge: Writing L2. Anderson, SC: Parlor Press.

50.

Todorow

(1990) Genres in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

51.

Van Dijk

(2010) Critical discourse studies: A sociocognitive approach. In: Wodak

Meyer

(eds) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: SAGE, pp. 62–86.

52.

Van Leeuwen

(2008) News genres. In: Wodak

Koller

(eds) Handbook of Communication in the Public Sphere. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 345–362.

53.

Wodak

Meyer

(2010) Critical discourse analysis: History, agenda, theory and methodology. In: Wodak

Meyer

(eds) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: SAGE, pp. 1–33.