Genre analysis: Considering the initial reviews

• This essay examines the initial reviews of John Swales' Genre Analysis.
• The reviews are considered in light of discipline-specific expectations about readability and use-value.
• The reviews are considered in light of their prescience.

This essay examines the initial reviews of John Swales’ Genre Analysis (1990), in terms of the reactions of reviewers to that volume shortly after its appearance, the disciplinary values, as enacted by the reviewers in the historical moment of publication, and the disciplinary values and readability expectations which seem to inform the reviewers' observations.