Creativity and accessibility in written professional discourse

Recent work on genre analysis suggests that professional genres and professional practices complement each other, in that they are co-constructed in specific contexts. However, in most language-based investigations of intelligibility, accessibility, and creativity in the use and interpretation of professional genres, the emphasis has always been on the use of linguistic resources, in particular the use of formal properties of language, with very little emphasis on text-external considerations, i.e. interdiscursivity and other socio-pragmatic factors. This paper seeks to widen the scope of such concerns with intelligibility, accessibility, interpretability, and creativity to the socio-pragmatic space within which professional genres invariably operate, and to consider critically how expert professionals exploit socio-pragmatic space to create new and hybrid forms across disciplinary, institutional, and cultural boundaries.