Genre families and new communicative forms in science communication

Economic, social and cultural transformations and, in particular, the globalization of communicative exchanges facilitated by the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have undoubtedly made the genres used by discourse communities get engaged in more complex and diversified communicative practices, with the consequent impact on the field of linguistic research on genres. In this work I raise questions concerning how these changes have influenced linguistic research and how genre relations can be captured and systematized. I will argue that genres can be better understood in terms of "families" (Bergmann and Luckmann, 1995), oriented to the solution of social and individual tasks. I also propose that particular genres within a family play specific roles in the tasks or sub-tasks of a given field. For this purpose, I distinguish two well-differentiated families in science communication, (a) the research genres (production and validation of knowledge), and (b) the genres for communication of science to society (popularization of knowledge).