This chapter proposes a generic structure model for academic writing which integrates structuralism and the prototype theory. The definition of genre as a prototype entity is presented and this forms a consistent understanding and analytical approach for genre, generic structure, and generic structure components. The model is essentially binary―a structuralist description using the Semiotic Square that Greimas proposed. This enables the generic structure model to sort out potentially infinitely diverse instances of genre, since this is an approach that does not suppose the content of structure to be concrete but abstract. It is pointed out that what is referred to as exigence in New Rhetoric and Move 1 and Move 2 in Swales's CARS model can be placed under an overarching component equivalent to lack-ICM.