Writing cultures and genres in european higher education

The article sets out with the question of how writing cultures in a multilingual setting of 50 countries and even more languages like Europe can be studied. Each country formed its own system of higher education and looks back to its own lines of teaching traditions. In spite of attempts to “harmonize” higher education through what is called the “Bologna Process”, communication on writing in Europe is still lacking a consistent terminology, especially on genre and writing practices. The article gives a short overview on genre theory and defines what “educational genres” are and how they develop. Examples are given on their relationships to writing practices and writing cultures. The contribution of contrastive and cross-cultural research to an understanding of national writing cultures is discussed and difficulties in interpreting contrastive studies are mentioned. Writing and genre use, it is argued, are framed by a large set of context conditions like classroom practices, curricular organization, institutional and disciplinary writing cultures as well as national and language-specific conditions so that it is difficult to interpret results from contrastive research. By outlining the writing cultures of France, Germany, Italy, and Romania, four examples are given of how national cultures may develop and which role genres play in shaping writing practices. The article concludes with some remarks on developmental trends of writing cultures