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Intercultural communication and communicative genres 129

In the last 20 years, studies within the Sociology of Knowledge as well as
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within Anthropological Linguistics have repeatedly addressed the issue of
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communicative genres and they provide a theoretical conceptualization which
links the notion of ‘genre’ to the theoretical model of Social Constructivism
(Berger and Luckmann 1966). Communicative genres, thus, represent a central
communicative means in the construction of social reality.
Empirical investigations of genres have demonstrated that this concept also
proves to be a useful analytical tool with respect to the description of communi-
cative patterns in everyday interactions as well as in intercultural communi-
cation. 5
Communicative genres can be defined as historically and culturally specific,
prepatterned and complex solutions to recurrent communicative problems
(Luckmann 1986). On the one hand, they guide interactants’ expectations about
what is to be said (and done) in the particular context. On the other hand, they
are the sediments of socially relevant communicative processes. Thus, com-
municative genres can be treated as historically and culturally specific conven-
tions and ideals according to which speakers compose talk or texts and recipi-
ents interpret it (Hanks 1987; Günthner 2000a). In choosing a particular genre,
a speaker makes use of culturally segmented solutions to communicative
problems, and at the same time – due to their prepatterning – genres not only
‘relieve’ the speaker, but also assist the recipients in limiting the interpretative
possibilities of utterances by relating them to the specific genre. Thus, the
knowledge that communicative processes with specific functions occurring in
certain social situations take on recurrent forms, not only guides the communi-
cative actions themselves but also their interpretations. An essential element of
genre-related knowledge is knowledge about the appropriate use of genres, i.e.
when to use or not to use a particular genre.
Members of a cultural group are usually familiar with the communicative
genres which are necessary for their particular life-world; e.g. they know how to
tell a joke, they recognize when someone else is telling a joke and also know in
which situations it is appropriate to tell what kinds of jokes (Günthner and
Knoblauch 1994, 1995). There are situations which require the use of a particu-
lar genre (e.g. in Caucasian Georgia, when someone dies, ‘lamentos’ are ex-
pected; Kotthoff 1999, 2002b). In other situations, e.g. if speakers intend to
criticize the misbehaviour of their co-participants, they might have a choice be-
tween various genres, such as complaints, reproaches, teasing, making fun of,
etc. The particular choice depends on various aspects, such as the social context,
the specific communicative situation, the relationship between the participants,
their habitus, the degree of the misbehaviour, etc.
In using a communicative genre, speakers construct an intertextual relation
between the situative ‘communicative text’ and a canonized pattern. In this re-
contextualization of a generic pattern, speakers might follow the canonized