The Three Waves of Globalization: Winds of Change in Professional, Institutional and Academic Genres

Globalization, often been described in terms of the spatio-temporal processes of change which underpin a transformation in the organization of human affairs by linking together and expanding human activities across regions and continents, is said to have started as long ago as the end of the 15th century. This first wave of globalization was subsequently followed by two more ones and further to the third wave of globalization, that began after 2000, the world has become smaller. In fact, technological innovations have sharply increased the availability of new modes and channels of communication, thus substantially improving the sharing of knowledge and information all around the world, and prompting both the emergence of new ‘globalizing genres’ and the implementation of a series of adaptations to the existing ones, in an attempt to guarantee the success and survival of different genres in an era which celebrates the need for a ‘global reach’. In order to investigate these ‘winds of change’ in generic studies, the present volume will combine a historical perspective with a detailed survey of different contemporary discourses and genres situated in an array of contexts of interaction. Accordingly, the empirically informed analysis will not only focus on the textual, intertextual and interdiscursive features, but also on the institutional, organizational, professional and socio-cultural settings, namely all those aspects which show how genres reflect changing disciplinary and professional cultures. As a consequence, and in line with the multi-faceted nature of genre, different reading paths can be identified in the present volume. On the one hand it is possible to make a distinction between professional, institutional and academic contexts. On the other hand, the concept of change will also be investigated by focusing on oral, written and web-mediated genres. All in all, throughout the volume, the different reading paths will aim at highlighting the influence of the three waves of globalization on genre evolution, thus contributing to providing evidence in favour of the homogenization or fragmentation hypothesis, namely as to whether new ‘global genres’ are outnumbering or are outnumbered by the proliferation of a myriad of new, customized genres.