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Prototype Theory and Genre Analysis

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Analysing Structure in Academic Writing

Part of the book series: Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse ((PSDS))

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Abstract

This chapter reviews crucial concepts for this book, namely ‘family resemblance’ and ‘prototype’. This review chapter is organised with a view to provide a new generic structure analytical model that integrates approaches across disciplines, including cognitive sciences, psychology, and cognitive linguistics. The chapter outlines the insights and wealth of research across these disciplines that have the potential to offer a consistent cognitive-based understanding of the research of academic genre studies, which form a crucial foundation for this book to propose a new model.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See the stories of a lie in Coleman and Kay (1981, p. 31).

  2. 2.

    It needs to be noted that Rosch and her colleagues were against the assumption that frequency of occurrence independently relates to the centrality of category membership (e.g., Rosch 1973a, 1975b). Taylor (2003, p. 56) also writes, ‘The impression of a higher frequency of occurrence of prototypical members may well be a symptom of prototypicality, not its cause’.

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  1. School of the Arts and Media, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Tomoko Sawaki

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  1. Tomoko Sawaki
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Sawaki, T. (2016). Prototype Theory and Genre Analysis. In: Analysing Structure in Academic Writing. Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54239-7_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54239-7_2

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