MGJabout



	Introduction to the MGJ research project
	A research project coordinated by Dr. Elizabeth Thomson English Language and Linguistics. School of English Literatures, Philosophy and Languages Faculty of Arts University of Wollonogng NSW, Australia, 2522
	In the field of functional linguistics, the term genre refers to text types that achieve a social purpose. In other words, language is viewed as a form of social behaviour; we use it to get things done in the social world. Different genres get different things done. For example, a nursery tale sets out not only to entertain children but also to teach them the values and practices of a culture; a service encounter sets out to transact the purchase of goods and services; a letter to the editor sets out to argue a point of view in the hope of persuading the reader and so on. The task of identifying and describing genres in Japanese is a completely new endeavour. However, it is based on the widely acclaimed work of Hasan (1985; 1996), Martin (1989; 1992) and Halliday & Martin (1993) and others who worked to map the genres of English in the 1980 and 90s. Their pioneering work, which is in informed by Systemic-Functional Linguistics (Halliday 1973; 1978; 1985) has contributed significantly to linguistics and serves as a model for similar descriptive work in other languages. Using Halliday, Hasan, Martin and others as our role model, we have embarked on the task of mapping genres in Japanese from a functional perspective. Whereas Japanese has been described in formal terms quite extensively, these formal descriptions have had little to say about the role of language in context, nor the social purposes for which it is used. This kind of understanding arises from a functional description, which is based on a functional theory of language. Interest in functional theories of language began to develop in Japan in the early 1990s when the Japanese Association of Functional Linguistics, of which Dr. Thomson is one of the founding members, was formed. Throughout the 90s and onwards, members of this group of linguists have embarked on the task of describing Japanese in functional terms.