Abstract:
The paper starts from the basic assumption that genres are socially linked, and shall
refer to those circumstances in which language changes due to historical, social and cultural
factors, maintaining the need for a structural perspective with sets of rules stressing the right genre
interpretations, yet focusing on language functional use in defining discourse in institutional
settings. Therefore, we shall discuss elements such as time, space or protagonists which
contribute to language change. The paper aims to explain how such controlling factors will connect
language-genre-discourse in institutional settings, delimiting specific genres by forcing language
change to (re)adapt to new contexts.