Genre as linguistic coding of social occasions and the translation of their textual/intertextual potential with reference to English and Arabic

Abstract

The current research deals with the notion of genre and introduces the notion of genrelet as a special kind of genre which operates under structural and language constraints,, and which involves more specific textual, participatory and social roles of participants than a genre does. It is argued that there exists a highly motivated kind of genre via intertextuality where the language user hijacks some generic elements from one genre and infiltrates them *into another different genre in an attempt to achieve a subtle argument and to relay an attitude. This intertextual operation involves the three dimensions of context (register, pragmatics, semiotics) and entails changes inflicted on the original social occasion, the attitude of the original text producer, the position of the sign, the function of the original genre, and the textual, participatory and/or social roles of the original participants. The research attempts to handle the issue from an English/Arabic translation point of view since the intertextual operation is considered one of the most problematic cases a translator would face.