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15 CHAPTER 2 Theoretical Framework This chapter presents an integrated theoretical framework for this book. As I argued earlier, two strands of genre theories, ESP and the New Rhetoric, form the main backdrop for the thinking in this book. In this chapter, therefore, I will begin with a review of three genre schools (Hyon, 1996), discussing their varying interpretations of genre and re- cent theoretical developments, with a focus on the ESP and the New Rhetoric approaches. The notion of context is then discussed in terms of the different ways in which it is viewed in the ESP approach and the New Rhetoric approach. While section 2.1 focuses on genre scholarship and how we research writing in terms of genre, in section 2.2 I turn my attention to the theories that lead us to see the agency of individual writ- ers. Three notions, voice, identity, and positioning, which have provided useful scaffolding for the book, are introduced and discussed. 2.1 Research Writing in Terms of Genre 2.1.1 The Development of the Genre Concept The term genre comes from the Latin word genus. It is by giving its genus and its characteristics that we define a species. Likewise, it is our know- ledge of the genre to which a text belongs that helps us to better under- stand the text. Genre has thus long been used in the sphere of classification, and genre theories have been seen as ‘various attempts to develop tax- onomies or classificatory schemes or to set forth...