John Swales, Citizen Scientist: a Genre Analysis of Shorter Written Communications by Avocational Naturalists

In addition to his seminal work in discourse and genre analysis, John Swales was also a highly active and knowledgeable birder and butterflier. This study first traces his citizen science activities in Michigan and then proposes a genre analysis of the hitherto unexplored genres of written communications by avocational naturalists. The texts, by Swales and other citizen scientists, were published in the journal Michigan Birds and Natural History. The genres covered are short articles, counts, surveys and reports. While the citizen scientists’ articles show several similarities with research articles authored by professional academics, they display a different communicative purpose and much greater generic variation. The epistemological purpose of the other three genres results, in contrast, in a highly conventionalised genre format. Based on the analyses, some conclusions are drawn about the types of contributions made by citizen scientists to scientific knowledge in the field of biodiversity.