The presents book departs from an observation made by a group of scholars at Aarhus University:
On the one hand the concept of genre is present in and pivotal for a number of different
disciplines studying texts such as literary studies analytical text linguistics and the
investigation of text production in professional settings. On the other hand and interestingly
each of these disciplines tends to have developed its own theoretical tools and basic
assumptions without taking into account the results and insights achieved in the neighbouring
fields. The present work is intended to overcome this state of affairs. It is based upon a
series of seminars involving scholars from the mentioned fields. Questions that emerged from
the interdisciplinary discussions of the group and that are treated across the different
contributions include the following: What is the relation between genre text production and
situation? To what extent is the situation or the function the overarching factor in
characterising and distinguishing genres? How do genres develop and acquire new textual
characteristics? How does the specificity of the represented genres surface in text and
context? The result is an inquiry into problems with relevance across disciplines where
contributions from each field intend to also reflect aspects traditionally treated in the other
fields.
