Relevant Canonical Genre Families

Abstract

The basis for a functional communication perspective for elicitation strategies is a selection of generalised high-value genres referred to as canonical genres. There are a number of families of genre but those that are of particular relevance to interviewing and interview protocols are the so-called factual and narrative genre families. The purpose of the chapter is to describe each of these in turn. Following the software engineering pattern movement, each genre that belongs to these families will be described using a common format: a name (capitalized as is convention for genres in SFL), a description, a genre element inventory or a table that provides the list of the genre elements codes, names and function, the corresponding genre digraph, and an authentic transcript marked up with genre stages. The transcripts used to exemplify these canonical genres, reveal a range of unusual features unpacked in more detail in the next chapter.