Discourse traditions, genres, and rhetoric
Résumé
This chapter aims to highlight the links between discourse traditions (DTs) and the concept of genre (“discursive genre”, “genre of speech”, etc.) on the one hand, and between DTs and the rhetorical tradition on the other hand. The first part of the chapter will detail in which way genres, as a sort of DT, are not only bound to historical change, but are subject to intercultural and intracultural variations. In order to situate genres among the diversity of DTs, we will also develop the problem of discursive norms. The second part of the chapter will first evoke the development of DTs peculiar to the discipline of rhetoric as distinct from grammar, then from linguistics. In particular, this part reminds us how rhetoric has been “grammarized”, and discusses the epistemological status of pragmatics. We will plead for a revival of the heritage of rhetoric, in particular a rhetorization of linguistics, and for the development of text semiotics, the modern alter ego of rhetoric.