Performance of unprecedented genres. Interdiscursivity in the writing practices of a Swedish researcher

•Swedish computer science practices are heteroglossic, not hegemonically regimented.•Unprecedented genres are performed by constructing interdiscursive connectivity.•As an outcome of human practice, genres are quintessentially interdiscursive.•But interdiscursivity is not restricted to features such as language, mode or genre.•The repertoire comprises potential semiotic resources that are largely transposable.

This paper investigates the sociolinguistic repertoire and writing practices of a Swedish computer science researcher and his first-time performance of unprecedented genres. Since the use of written computerese Swedish has no historical anchorage in the social practices of his discipline, texts-to-text relationships cannot be drawn from as models of action. Lacking this option, the researcher construes type and token interdiscursive connectivity from iconic Swedish and English texts and from prior discursive events of using academic Swedish orally. The resources comprising an individual’s repertoire are, thus, significantly transposable across languages, modes and genres, when they are enacted in new discursive events.