Defining the “Genre” Notion (Main Approaches, Issues and Prospects): Systematic Review

Abstract

The systematic review aims to demonstrate to the reader that the existing viewpoints on the “genre” notion cannot be considered universal and make recommendations on further conduction of research taking into account modern tendencies in the field of genre studies. The work details various developmental paths of the Russian and foreign genre studies. The present lack of a universal nomenclature system in this branch of linguistics, complicated by divergence between the Russian and foreign theories of speech genres, as well as a great number of “unresolved” issues make the topic relevant. Scientific novelty of the research lies in identifying shortcomings of approaches to considering the “genre” notion and in detecting the emerging trends in this field. The attained results have proved that it is essential to see the genre as a multifaceted category and make an attempt to combine the existing approaches in order to resolve fundamental issues of genre studies.