The theoretical and methodological basis of differentiating between genres of professional discourse

This article presents a new vision of differentiating between genres of professional discourse, based on the theoretical principles of critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 2003, 2005, 2006) and critical genre analysis (Bhatia 2004, 2008, 2010). Drawing evidence from a number of professional musical contexts (a jam session, a musical review and a live concert), this study explores the nature of professional discourse and suggests ways of understanding and characterizing its genres. This study encompasses language about music (e.g., musical journals, forums, books), language accompanying music (music-making or performance) and other semiotic elements (body language, images, music, sound) as ways of creating and communicating meaning. Professional genres are shown as configurations of text-internal and text-external features. The study describes the methodology of distinguishing between discursive genres in professional communication, which includes four main stages: (1) definition of the activity type; (2) definition of the social context of the given genre; (3) analysis of textual peculiarities; (4) development of the inner genre structure. The activity types help draw a general view of professional musical discourse representing the main four stages of 'life' of a musical product: 'creation of the musical product', 'completed musical product', 'distribution' and 'perception/evaluation of the musical product', as well as two additional stages, 'description/reflection' of musical products and 'records management'. The second stage comprises the analysis of text-internal resources, such as activity, communication technology, level of formality, situation type, place of communication, normative expectations, social roles, types of communication, and social relations. At this stage, 'qualitative social analysis' (Fairclough 2003), ethnographic interviews, analysis of academic literature and Internet resources seem efficient. In the analysis of professional discourse, the role of context should not be underestimated, for the specific text-external properties determine the textual features peculiar to different professional genres. The third stage comprises the analysis of text-internal resources, such as text type, text structure, style, correlation of specialized language lexemes, and nonverbal language use. A special focus is on the status of specialized language units (musical terms, professionalisms and jargonisms). It is verified with the help of dictionaries of specialized language lexemes and online musical dictionaries. Finally, the inner genre structure is developed in order to differentiate between the subgenres of professional discourse. The suggested methodology of professional discourse analysis is shown to provide answers to why and how professionals manipulate genre conventions in order to achieve specific complex tasks within special disciplines as well as to draw boundaries between genres and subgenres of professional discourse.

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