The review is a response to the publication of the monograph by M. A. Kanturov and T. I. Staksova “Productivity and variability of speech genres”. The authors represent the Russian speech-and -genre space as a complicated non-rigid system, the units of which are interconnected by the relations of derivation and variability. The relevance of the study is justified by the need to develop models that summarize numerous empirical observations on the structure and functioning of individual genres and groups of genres.