frequently asked questions; genre; discourse analysis; interaction

Methodologically grounded in genre analysis as represented by Swales or Bhatia, the paper aims to provide an insight into the continuum of genres on the web, focusing on the genre colony of university websites. Within the genre repertoire of university web pages, the present study selects the sub-genre of 'FAQ - frequently asked questions', investigating its position in the university website colony and on the scale spanning between the well-established and the emerging web genres. The corpus involves a set of university websites from three different countries - the United Kingdom, the U.S. and the Czech Republic, which opens a possibility for considering the cultural aspects of genres and examining their role in shaping newly adopted ones.