universidade federal de santa catarina pós-graduação em letras ...

37possible to make predictions about the structure of any text appropriate to a givencontext, i.e., any text that can be regarded as a ‘potential’ exemplar of that specificgenre. The CC determines a class of situations and genre is the language doing the jobappropriate to that class of social happenings.Thus the contextual variables of Field, Tenor and Mode correlate with the optionaland obligatory textual elements of the genre. The Generic Structure Potential (GSP) isthe verbal expression of a CC and as such, depends on the possible combinations of thevalues associated with Field, Tenor, and Mode. For illustrative purposes, Hasan definesthe GSP of a ‘service encounter' (customer buying fruit from a vendor) based on the CCshown in Figure 2.2._______________________________________________________________________Field - social activity involved: economic transaction: purchase of retail goods;perishable foodTenor- agents of transaction: hierarchic: customer superordinate and vendorsubordinate; social distance: near maximumMode - language role: ancillary; channel: phonic; medium: spoken with visual contact_______________________________________________________________________Figure 2-2 Contextual Configuration of Service Encounters (Hasan, 1985:59)Contextual elements correspond to certain textual elements which in turn can beobligatory or optional. Obligatory elements are the essential components to anycomplete text embedded in a given CC. They appear in a specific order and theiroccurrence is predicted by contextual elements that are defining for the genre.