Genre does not begin as a problem in Halliday’s model. It emerges naturally as a way of describing recurrent configurations of meaning within a culture. The difficulty arises only when genre is required to do explanatory work that the theory has already displaced elsewhere.
This post shows how genre becomes teleological — not by design, but by necessity — once context has been layered and instantiation has been reinterpreted as directional progression.
1. Genre before telos
In a Hallidayan frame, genres are abstractions over patterns of meaning-in-context. They are descriptive generalisations, not organising principles.
They do not:
precede texts,
determine outcomes,
or supply purposes to be fulfilled.
Genres summarise what has tended to happen, not what must happen.
2. The vacancy at the top of layered context
Once context has been stratified into planes, a structural problem appears.
If meaning is supposed to move:
from culture,
through situation,
into language,
then something must explain why that movement takes the shape it does.
Layered context requires a principle of organisation that:
sits above situation types,
governs their selection,
and stabilises expectations about textual outcomes.
That vacancy is where genre enters.
3. From abstraction to organiser
To occupy this position, genre must change its ontological role.
It can no longer be:
a retrospective generalisation,
or an analytical convenience.
It must become:
prospective,
directive,
and outcome-oriented.
Genre is thus transformed from pattern into programme.
4. Telos enters the theory
The moment genre is asked to organise movement, it acquires a telos.
Texts are now understood as:
moving toward completion,
fulfilling a social purpose,
realising a genre.
This is not metaphorical. The theory now requires that texts succeed or fail relative to an endpoint.
Telos has entered the architecture.
5. Why stages become inevitable
A teleological genre cannot remain abstract. If a text is oriented toward an endpoint, then:
progress must be trackable,
movement must be segmentable,
and success must be observable.
Stages supply this observability.
What had been a fluid pattern of unfolding meanings is discretised into ordered steps. Temporal sequence is mistaken for structural necessity.
6. Genre as a norm-generating device
Once staged, genre becomes evaluative by default.
Texts can now be judged according to:
whether stages are present,
whether they occur in the right order,
and whether they perform their expected function.
Variation ceases to be a matter of construal. It becomes deviation from the genre path.
7. The theoretical reversal
At this point, the direction of explanation has fully inverted:
texts no longer instantiate systems,
systems now explain texts.
Genre has become a causal force rather than an analytical abstraction. Meaning is no longer something that happens; it is something that is supposed to happen.
8. Looking ahead
Once genre is teleological, pedagogy cannot remain neutral.
If texts are meant to go somewhere, then students must be taught how to get there. Teaching becomes the management of movement, and assessment becomes the measurement of progress.
The next post traces how this logic crystallises in the pedagogy of staging — where genre theory leaves description behind and becomes a technology of instruction.
That is where we turn next.
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