A text and its commentaries: Toward a reception history of “Genre in three traditions” (Hyon, 1996)

Reception histories are retrospectives; they look back at publications and ask who has cited them, how often, when, where and why. This paper takes an influential 1996 paper on genre analysis and examines how it has played out intertextually over the 15 years or so since its publication. The main sources used have been Google Scholar and the Web of Science. The quantitative results show that it has been primarily, but not exclusively, cited in ESP publications. The more qualitative aspect of this investigation reveals that its value for most later commentators lies in its review-article potential to act as an interpretive frame for subsequent work. The paper ends with a discussion of whether today we should accept just “three traditions” for genre analysis and its pedagogical applications or look further afield.