The Handbook of World Englishes, 2nd Edition

21Genres and Styles in World Englishes

VIJAY K. BHATIA

1 Introduction

Genre, register, style, text type, and a number of similar concepts seem to have been motivated by a common concern to highlight functional variation in the use of language; however, in spite of this shared concern, they are conceptualised, discussed, and used in applied and sociolinguistic literature somewhat differently. Each one of these concepts represents a particular way of identifying functional discourse on the basis of typically shared characteristics within that category; however, at the same time, each category is also used to identify variation across other members of the same category. News report as a genre, for instance, is identified on the basis of “generic integrity” (Bhatia 1993, 1994) which most news reports represent, but at the same time, news report as a genre can also be used to distinguish variation in language use by comparing it with other genres, such as editorials, film reviews, or letters to the editor, even if they are located in the same newspaper. The same is true of registers, text types, and styles. World Englishes, in a similar manner, indicate integrity within a particular variety as well as variation across varieties. Most speakers of Singaporean English, for instance, will have a number of common features that will identify and establish Singaporean English as a variety in its own right, but this variety, at the same time, will be different in a number of other ways ...