Abstract

The elusive concepts underlying the term genre offer different alternative conceptions. This may confuse the novice, but also the expert. This article addressed a discussion on the contemporary conceptions of discourse genre. Also, a particular cognitive perspective was focused, but with special emphasis on findings from empirical data. The research was based on the description of the largest available on-line corpus (59 million words) of written specialized Spanish texts on four disciplines: Psychology, Social Work, Industrial Chemistry, and Construction Engineering. The corpus was collected in one Chilean university and in the corresponding professional backgrounds, and it showed that the access to disciplinary knowledge is build upon, on the one hand, a varying repertoire of nine written academic genres, and on the other, a richer group of twenty eight professional genres. Interesting variations between the four disciplines under study were identified. Psycholinguistic and educational implications were advanced in relation to knowledge acquisition, discourse genres and reading comprehension.