What is the subject of genre linguistics and how complex is this field of study? Which objective criteria must ensure the handling of the notion of gender? What is the complexity of the relationship between a text and "its" genre? What is the relevance of the « sub-genre » concept? Which main topic of study remain neglected by genre linguistics? To answer these questions, which testify to a discipline in crisis, this article not only reaffirms the immutable link between history, culture and discursive genres, but also intends to rethink gender linguistics from a variational point of view - as it is clearly requested by the ethnological study of communicative phenomena. To this purpose, we introduce here the concept of generic variety and some methodological distinctions allowing the implementation of a variational approach to genres in linguistics.