Genre and reference chains
Résumé
Many studies have shown that the choice of referential expressions is not only governed by grammatical or cognitive rules but also builds a form of convention that differs from one genre to the next. This paper looks into the relationship between text genre and reference chains, which has been only partially investigated, in order to explain this variation with parameters like the writing strategy or the discursive perspective. Based on a corpus of 80 literary reviews published in French and German newspapers, the study calls for a local approach because only this level of analysis shows how the writing strategy involves referents in processes that have an influence on some characteristics of the chains. The local approach also points out that full homogeneity within a genre is never achieved and how editorial or cultural habits can question conventions.