Genre analysis in bakhtinian theory: some theoretical and methodological issues

Abstract

After the 1990s one witnessed a significant increase in the number of research works on genres in the field of Applied Linguistics, which were favored by the consolidation of the change in the subject matter of the teaching and learning of languages, both native and foreign. In Brazil, as in other countries, Bakhtinian theoretical conceptions have gained relevance and been increasingly cited in a number of such research publications. However, many times presenting diverse effects of appropriation and interpretation. Here some theoretical and methodological issues in the genre analysis are discussed under the Bakhtinian perspective. The concept of genre and its relation to other central concepts, as ideology, enunciation, text, discourse, and language are approached. In the methodological issues the relation between the researcher and the data, the methodological “order” in the study of genres, and the use of previous analytical categories in the study of a specific genre are discussed.