Trosborg, Anna

Zethsen, Karen Korning

English

Tidsskrift.dk (Det Kongelige Bibliotek)

IntroductionAccording to Paltridge (1997: 1)1 the notion of genre has through theyears received attention in many and varied lines of research rangingfrom folklore studies and linguistic anthropology to rhetoric, discourseanalysis and of a more recent date applied linguistics. It is to this area ofapplied linguistics that this thematic volume ”Analysing Business Gen-res” is dedicated.Practical genre knowledge is essential to everyday life and is moreoften than not possessed without particular awareness. Within the areaof LSP many very specialised genres exist which are frequently onlyknown to persons belonging to a very particular discourse community.To the people who form part of the communication process of thesegenres, but who are not necessarily engineers, lawyers, economists,etc., knowledge of these genres at macro as well as micro levels is vital.So text writers, translators, teachers and linguists alike should be able tobenefit from the following seven articles discussing theoretical aspectsof genre theory as well as providing detailed analyses of specific LSPgenres.The first article ”Communicative Purpose as Genre Determinant” isby Inger Askehave and discusses the functional approach to genre ana-lysis and addresses the problem of categorising genres on the basis offunctional criteria. It questions the use of ”communicative purpose” asthe primary determinant of genre-membership arguing that ”The ab-sence of a clear consensus as to what communicative purpose is and…the fact that sets of purposes may be associated with a text makes it verydifficult to use the concept as a tool for categorising texts and for ana-lysing texts in general” (p.19)The second article ”Popular vs. Professional Aspects of EconomicsTexts in English is by Magnar Brekke and asks whether prior genreknowledge is a ”must” for LSP comprehension or ”… whether the ob-servable text-linguistic, pragmatic and semiotic features of a given text9Hermes, Journal of Linguistics no. 23 - 19991 Paltridge, B: “Genre, frames and writting in research settings”, John Benjamins,1997.provide sufficient basis for readers to work out the message and indeedthe genre for themselves.” (p.26) This question is tested empirically andthe results are discussed in the article.In article three ”Die Vertextung von Termini als Ausweis textuellerStrategien in technischen Textsorten” Peter Kastberg criticises thegenerally accepted criteria for a successful LSP text. These criteria fo-cus on the factual content of the text and do not properly consider pos-sible communicative or text-linguistic strategies – and thus the read-ability of the text. On the basis of examples Peter Kastberg shows howthe strategic considerations of the author in relation to the receiver arereflected in the author’s textualisation of terms depending on the genrein question.As the title suggests, the fourth article ”The Dogmas of TechnicalTranslation – Are They Still Valid?” by Karen Korning Zethsen discus-ses and questions the traditional view of technical texts and consequent-ly technical translation.Technical texts are typically considered to bestandardised, objective texts with purely informative purposes. Othercommunicative purposes are almost considered non-existent. The arti-cle suggests that most texts are multi-functional and that the com-municative purposes are often revealed through the expressivity of thetext. Crucial to the problems of the article is the fact that ”technicaltexts” are often misleadingly considered to be one genre.Article five ”Translation and Communication: A Case Study of Cul-ture and Communication in Danish and English Sales Brochures” byBirgitte Norlyk questions the ethnocentric approach to cross-culturalcommunication. An approach which, for example, makes companiesuse standardised sales material for all markets, expecting the messageto produce the same effect on all receivers, irrespective of culturalcontexts. The article includes a case study which compares the Englishlanguage version of a standardised sales brochure to a culturallyadapted brochure made especially for the British market.   Article six ”The Emergence of a New Genre: Advertising on the In-ternet (netvertising)” by Inmaculada Fortanet, Juan Carlos Palmer &Santiago Posteguillo sets out by discussing how the Internet influencesvarious genres and how it creates its own. In a case study the authorsexamine the recently emerged, but still not fully developed, genre of”netvertising”.10In the final article ”Non-verbale Kommunikation von Experten”Hartwig Kalverkämper discusses body language in business negotia-tions from antique rhetorics till today. Kalverkämper demonstratesbody language patterns in various genres and shows the importance ofsuccessful non-verbal communication.11

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