Your thesis is a genre (and that’s good news)

Updated October 2026

The most useful thing I learned about writing

I spent my PhD studying genre. Specifically, seminar discussion as a genre – and why we assume a good discussion has to be a debate.

It was an obscure topic. But it gave me the most useful idea I teach doctoral writers: your thesis is a genre. Once you can see the genre, you can write it.

So what is genre?

You already know genre from films. Romcom or horror? You can tell within minutes, from the structure, the visuals and the language. Nobody hands you a rulebook. You’ve just seen enough of them.

Academic writing works the same way. In systemic functional linguistics (my home turf), genre is what Jim Martin calls a staged, goal-oriented social process (Martin & Rose, 2008). Bit of a mouthful. Put simply:

• Staged – it moves through steps readers recognise
• Goal-oriented – it’s trying to get something done
• Social – it’s written for real readers, with real expectations

A thesis has one big goal: to convince your examiners you’ve made an original contribution to knowledge. Everything in it is working towards that goal – the structure, the literature review, the way you hedge a claim.

The stages are there for a reason

Think about a thesis introduction. Most do roughly the same things, in roughly the same order. Show the area matters. Show what’s been done. Point to what hasn’t. Say how this study fills the gap. John Swales (1990) mapped this decades ago as “creating a research space”.

That pattern persists because it works. Readers expect it, so they can follow it.

When a chapter feels wrong but you can’t say why, look for a missing or misplaced stage. The gap is never stated. The contribution turns up on page 30. And your reader is left asking… so what?

Three questions about your context

Michael Halliday gives us three lenses for any piece of writing (Halliday & Hasan, 1985). Strictly, they’re register rather than genre – but they’re where genre shows up in your sentences.

Field: what’s it about? Your subject and its technical language. Are you using your discipline’s terms precisely? Have you defined the ones that matter?

Tenor: who’s it for? Your examiners are experts. You’re becoming one. Tenor is how you claim authority without overclaiming, and it’s where many doctoral writers struggle.

I know, because I got it wrong. When I started writing, I hedged everything. Might. Perhaps. It could be argued that.

Hedging matters. It’s how you show exactly how far your evidence goes. But you have to be hedging a claim. Hedge every sentence and there’s no claim left – just a cloud of maybes.

Compare:

These findings may perhaps suggest that it could be possible that…

These findings suggest that…

The second sentence is still hedged (“suggest”, not “prove”). But now there’s a claim your examiner can engage with.

Too tentative and you disappear. Too certain and you invite a fight in the viva. Aim for a claim your evidence can carry, stated clearly enough that someone could disagree with it.

Mode: how is it delivered? A thesis is written, dense and permanent. Your reader can’t stop you to ask what you meant. That’s why signposting matters so much.

Genre isn’t a template

This is the bit I care about most. A lab-based thesis looks nothing like a history thesis. Even within one field, there’s room to move.

Being genre-aware means noticing what writers in your field do, and asking why. Once you can see the pattern, you can choose when to follow it and when to stretch it.

It’s especially useful if English isn’t your first language. The genre conventions of academic writing are rarely taught explicitly. You’re expected to absorb them. Genre makes the invisible visible.

Try this

1. Find three theses from your department, passed in the last five years. Your library repository will have them.
2. Read just the introductions. Mark where each one establishes the field, identifies the gap and states its contribution.
3. Compare them. What do all three do? Where do they differ?
4. Look at your own draft. Which stages are there? Which are missing, buried or out of order?
5. Take it to supervision. Ask: “Is this how theses in our field usually do it?”

You don’t need to become a linguist. You just need to read like a writer.

References
Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1985). Language, context, and text: Aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective. Deakin University Press.
Martin, J. R., & Rose, D. (2008). Genre relations: Mapping culture. Equinox.
Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge University Press.