The field of genre studies entered applied linguistics in the early 1980s, blossomed in the 1990s, and looks set to flourish for many years to come. The rapidly growing interest has been due not only to the theoretical insights it offers into communication in academic, workplace, and other settings, but also to its relevance for major areas of language teaching, most obviously, but not only, languages for specific purposes.

One of the most distinguished genre scholars is Professor John Swales, of the University of Michigan. His 1990 book, Genre Analysis, is a benchmark in the field and remains one of the most widely respected and widely cited volumes in the Cambridge Applied Linguistics Series well over a decade since its appearance. Now, Research Genres: Explorations and Applications will assuredly appeal to an even wider audience of researchers, graduate students, and classroom practitioners in applied linguistics, and to scholars and practitioners in communication, rhetoric, and education, as a whole.

Professor Swales's new book focuses on research genres, in both the oral and written modes, at the graduate level in higher education, especially at U.S. universities. Issues discussed include the growing influence of English and globalization on today's research world; the potential for “non-native speakers” to be marginalized, as a result; the nature of genres; approaches to genre analysis; the impact of corpus linguistics, computers, and other technology on genres; and much more.