Genres and Genre Chains: Post-Process Perspectives on Heritage Language Writing in a South Texas Setting (Report‪)‬

ABSTRACT. The present paper seeks to identify how discursive strategies of cohesion transfer across genres and across languages in heritage language writing. I focus on the lexical cohesion strategies of repetition, synonymy, and superordination in English and Spanish composition of heritage language writers. In analyzing these compositions, I employ the concept of GENRE CHAINS--the linking of genres within and across texts--in order to determine how heritage language writers transfer discursive patterns of cohesion across genres and across languages. I argue that the technique of genre chaining in the heritage language classroom allows students to draw on the hybridity and multiplicity of literacy practices they developed in the context of a multilingual and multicultural heritage language community. Finally, I draw some pedagogical conclusions from this research arguing for a multidimensional approach for the transfer of literacy skills in heritage language writing instruction that foregrounds genre knowledge--both academic and non-academic--as a key to the development of academic discourse. INTRODUCTION. Writing instruction has been a foundational area of concern among heritage language educators at the college level over the past forty years. Kono and McGinnis recently noted that 'for most college and university programs with significant heritage populations, the key has been the development of "tracks" to meet the specific needs of heritage learners, IN PARTICULAR THEIR NEED FOR DEVELOPING GREATER LITERACY SKILLS' (2001:200, emphasis added). Notwithstanding the uniform concern over writing instruction, there has been considerable divergence in its implementation. In the present paper, I will present a brief outline of the field of heritage language writing paying particular attention to the developments that marked the pathway to the POST-PROCESS orientation that currently dominates the field. I will then point out how the central notion of GENRE in post process pedagogies can be amplified in ways that specifically benefit heritage language writing instruction. In particular, I propose that genre-centered teaching should take into consideration the inherent hybridity and the recurrent generic disembedding that are the cornerstones of the multilingual and multicultural discursive practices that prevail in the heritage language community.