Devitt claims that we have been creating dichotomies (such as form from content, writer from society, and product from process) that are unproductive. She believes that a new conception of genre can help collapse these dichotomies and, possibly, bring us to “a unified theory of writing” (573). The old conception understands genre as a set of categories with forms to fill. The new conception “shifts the focus from effects (formal features, text classifications) to sources of effects” (573). When we identify a genre, “we make assumptions not only about the form but also about the text’s purpose, its subject matter, its writer, and its expected reader…and [we] respond accordingly” (575). Genre, then, “entails purposes, participants, and themes, so understanding genre entail understanding a rhetorical and semiotic situation and social context” (576). Utilizing Bitzer, Devitt asserts that genres “develop…because they respond appropriately to situations that the writers encounter repeatedly” (576). So, a first writer responds fittingly, a similar situation occurs, the writer goes back to what has been done in the past. In this way, genres are social constructed. “Knowing the genre, therefore, means knowing such things as appropriate subject matter, level of detail, tone, and approach as well as the usual layout and organization” (577). At the same time, “genre not only response to but also constructs the recurring situation” (577). Put another way, when we choose the genre, we are choosing which situation to see (578). Genres, then, are dynamic, and because they are dynamic, writers can respond creatively to writing situations. They can choose to adhere to, violate, and combine existing genres. In summation, Devitt writes, “[G]enre is a dynamic response to and construction of recurring situations, one that changes historically and in different social groups, that adapts and grows as the social context changes… Genre is…a maker of meaning” (580).
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In this chapter, Green and Lee want to study “the specific relation between school writing and student learning, understood as both self-production and social formation” (207). They explain that “curriculum as a social practice [is] inescapably implicated in issues of difference and power. According to this formulation, curriculum work as the provision of appropriate training in subject-disciplinary knowledge has as part of its effect the projection and production of particular forms of student identity. This production is necessarily tied up with other major identity formations, such as genre, and connected to broader social dynamics” (207).
Green and Lee define identity work as “the logic and politics of identity, and hence the ways in which various curriculum identities are constructed and maintained…The writer takes up positions within the range of discourses marking the text’s production, with particular, though indeterminate, consequences for a notion of ‘self’” (208, 214) The authors acknowledge, however, that there is no one subject position, even within a single disciplinary subject. This means that writers are constantly working through the available subject positions, some of which are more accepted than others. For instance, they write, “To learn and succeed at Geography means learning how to take up an authoritative position within a particular scientific-rational discourse. It means to consent to (rather than resist) the performance, display, and resultant (re)production of official curriculum versions of geographical facts and interpretations and their associated forms of textuality. It also necessarily means to suppress whatever does not fit into that category” (220). They assert, then, that “all students must acquire a critical dimension to literacy, one which allows them to adopt various authoritative positions within a discourse or subject area field, yet not assume ‘identity’ with these positions” (221) The authors imply that men more naturally take up a scientific subject position in their writing while women more naturally take up relational (interpersonal) subject positions. Research methodology: “What we want to collect data for decides what data we collect” (209). Miller, Carolyn. “Genre as Social Action.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 70.2 (1984): 151-167.8/19/2015 Miller asserts that “genre study is valuable because…it emphasizes some social and historical aspects of rhetoric that other perspectives do not” (151). “To base a classification of discourse upon recurrent situation or, more specifically, upon exigence understood as social motive, is to base it upon the typical joint rhetorical actions available at a given point in history and culture” (158). In this piece, then, she works to define genre and its components as they relate to meaning-making and action.
"This leads to a focus on genres as socially defined strategies for doing, i.e., for achieving particular types of purposes in particular types of situations" (Coe and Freedman 43). Key Terms
This article is less about building genre theory and more about apply Miller’s genre theory to blogs. Thereby, it provides an example of how one might analyze a genre with Miller’s concepts. We are given, however, some theory about genre, kairos, and subjectivity.
Genre, Kairos, and Ancestral Genres “When a type of discourse or communicative action acquires a common name within a given context or community, that’s a good sign that it’s functioning as a genre…‘Genres are an intellectual scaffold on which community-based knowledge is constructed' ([Berkenkotter and Huckin]).” “[W]e must see genre in relation to kairos, or socially perceived space-times…Kairos describes both the sense in which discourse is understood as fitting and timely – the way it observes both propriety and decorum – and the way in which it can seize on the unique opportunity of a fleeting moment to create new rhetorical situations.” “We should not define a genre by its failed examples, even if they are a majority, but at the same time we must be open to the possibility that there may be multiple forms of success.” “One important way to study the rhetorical innovation of a new genre, Jamieson argued, is to look for the ‘chromosomal imprint of ancestral genres…These ancestral genres should be considered part of the rhetorical situation to which the rhetor responds, constraining the perception and definition of the situation and its decorum for both the rhetor and the audience. And, within limits, by their incorporation into a response to a novel situation, ancestral genres help define the potentialities of the new genre: the subject-positions of the rhetor and audience(s), the nature of the recurrent exigence, the decorum (or ‘fittingness’ in Bitzer’s terms) of response.” Subjectivity “Subjectivity is not a transhistorical phenomenon, and its expression has no universal methods or conventions; rather, they are products of a time and place, formed in interaction with a kairos [Vivian]…[T]he self is a result of ‘operations’ by a subject ‘so as to transform [itself] in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality [Foucault] …Character is manifested in choice [Aristotle].” Ecology There are also a few connections to ecology in the vocabulary Miller and Shepherd use.
Blogs as Genre
Freedman writes an article about whether we can explicitly teach genre to student, ultimately deciding that (for the most part) the answer is no. Williams and Colomb and Fahnestock respond to Freedman’s article, poking hole in her methodology, her sources, her definitions, and her examples; these authors argue that teacher can – and should – teach genre explicitly. Freedman comes back to respond to Fahnestock and Williams and Colomb, maintaining that Fahnestock’s examples are of using rather then learning/teaching genre and that Williams and Colomb’s understanding of teaching genre falls fairly nicely into Freedman’s Restricted Hypothesis.
Freedman, Aviva. “Show and Tell? The Role of Explicit Teaching in the Learning of New Genres.” Research in the Teaching of English 27.3 (1993): 222-51. Freedman asks, “What role, if any, can or should the explicit teaching of genre features play in learning new genres?” (224 emphasis in original). In discussing the recent research about genre, Freedman writes, “The notion of genre has in recent years been reconceived so that the recurring textual regularities which characterize genres are themselves seen as secondary to, and a consequence of, the action that is being performed through the texts in response to recurring socio-cultural context”(225). In response to her research question, Freedman offers to hypotheses:
Freedman uses some of her own research as well as research about first- and second-language acquisition to support her hypotheses. She ends by calling for more research about teaching genre and about whether genre should be taught implicitly or explicitly. Williams, Joesph M. and Gregory G. Colomb. “The Case for Explicit Teaching: Why What You Don’t Know Won’t Help You.” Research in the Teaching of English 27.3 (1993): 252-64. Williams and Colomb refute Freedman’s argument in a variety of ways. First, they say that her hypotheses are not framed productively. Because the Strong Hypothesis is absolute, it can be disproven “by a single uncontested counter-example” (252). Even the Restricted Hypothesis is problematic because, though it is hedged, “The hedges are undefined” (253). Second, the scope of Freedman’s hypothesis is problematic. All of her examples address specific genres, yet, to be useful, her hypotheses need to address a more general academic writing. They continue, “So before we consider the substance of Freedman’s argument, we must take the liberty of reframing her question to make it not categorical, but prudential, not specific, but general…”Is the benefit of explicit teaching of salient features work the cost?” (253). The authors continue to weaken Freedman’s argument by showing how her claims are built on “shaky” and/or unreliable assumptions and sources. They move to show how research in the field already supports explicit teaching of genre and offer their own research study to further prove their point. They end with these two notes for the support of explicit teaching:
Fahnestock, Jeanne. “Genre and Rhetorical Craft.” Research in the Teaching of English 27.3 (1993): 265-71. Fahnestock argues against Freedman by pointing out that: (1) Freedman uses a variety of definitions of genre; these definitions shift the possibility and the benefit (or not) of explicitly teaching genre, and (2) Freedman ignores the fact that genres have been taught explicitly since classical rhetoric. In support of explicitly teaching, Fahnestock suggests that
Freedman, Aviva. “Situating Genre: A Rejoinder.” Research in the Teaching of English 27.3 (1993): 272-81. Freedman addresses first the three questions posed by Fahenstock; “How is genre defined/ How should we interpret the history of explicit instruction of genre within the rhetorical tradition? And how does on best learn a craft?” (272). She ultimately argues that Fahenstock’s examples show (a) someone using, not learning, genre (273) or (b) someone teaching particular feature of a genre (like the organization), which the Restricted Hypothesis allows. Then, after criticizing Williams and Colomb for ignoring relevant literature and relying on teacher intuition too heavily, Freedman argues that Williams and Colomb understanding of teaching genre falls under the Restricted Hypothesis. Freedman also expands on her definition of genre: “[G]enre is best understood pragmatically: as social act, or as typified rhetorical response within recurrent (socially-constructed) situations” (272). She stresses that she does, in fact, think form is important (Fahenstock suggested that Freedman does not): “Textual regularities continue to function as critical indicators of genre.” (272). She also asserts that context is more and is other than physical (or disciplinary setting) the social motive that animates genre is experienced in response to recurrent socially-constructed situations that can be defined along a range of social, cultural, political, ideological, and discursive context to which rhetors respond in their writing, and, as such shape and enable the writing; it is in this way that form is generative…As social actions governed by social motives within recurrent socially-constructed contexts, genres can only be learned when that social motive is experienced by the rhetoric; and that experiencing can only take place within the relevant context” (273). In thinking about the conversation around paradigms, Berkenkotter states, “Not only are many researchers arguing vehemently about the benefits versus liabilities of various kinds of research design (experimental and quasi-experimental, case study and participant observation, or ethnographic), but they are also interrogating the usefulness of the four-part genre of the experimental article with its Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion [IMRAD] sections for reporting studies with a qualitative, naturalistic [or constructive] design” (294).
“Understanding a disciplines epistemology, its methodology, and its discursive practices is a difficult, complex task which requires both an historical perspectives and the tools of rhetorical and linguistic analysis” (295). The textual practice of a disciplinary community, whether in the sciences or the humanities, are usually highly conventionalized…These conventionalized linguistic practices serve a number of functions: They are the means through which members of a field communicate with on another through professional forums such as conference and journals; they are also the means through which professional writers position their studies within the intertext of that particular field through the use of citations” (297). “[P]eer reviewers (as well as one’s other colleagues) depend both on genre knowledge to assess the credibility of new knowledge claims and on their shared epistemological presuppositions to determine what constitutes a warranted claims…The warrants for knowledge claims that such concepts provide are embedded in the conventions of the research report. These conventions have evolved over time and are intimately connected with the processes through which disciplinary knowledge becomes institutionalized through the development of the common discursive practices and literary forms” (300). Because, historically, we have looked for certain conventions to validate a new knowledge claim, we cannot easily shift to a new paradigm. A new paradigm would need to shift the ways in which we make knowledge, which would require us to adopt new conventions. TL;RD: “[A] field’s methodological assumptions are embedded in its textual practices” (298). In the introduction to their book, Bazerman and Russell explain that the authors of the chapters in this collection use Activity Theory as a means of analyzing and understanding writing activity. Specifically, this collection “grows out of th[e] tradition… of bringing writing together with activity…through the study of genre as mediating socially organized activities” (2). The editors argue, “To advance in productive ways, practical or theoretical, writing research needs to move beyond texts as ends in themselves…The activity approaches to understanding writing presented in this volume give us ways to examine more closely how people do the work of the world and form the relations that give rise to the sense of selves and societies through writing, reading, and circulating texts. These essays provide major contributions to both writing research and activity theory as well as to recently emerged but now robust tradition that brings the two together” (4).
“The chapters in this volume look at human activity and writing from three different perspectives: The role of writing in producing work and the economy; the role of writing in creating, maintaining, and transforming socially located selves and communities; and the role of writing formal education” (2). Utilizing interpretive ethnographic methodologies, Smart analyzes the genres sets within the Back of Canada in an effort to discover how technology-mediated discourse genres are used as organizes change. He states that “changes in work, activity, discourse genres, and technologies appear to occur dialectally, in complex patterns of causality” (34). He offers the following five claims “as a heuristic resource for researchers wishing to examine genre sets employed in other professional organizations to accomplish intellectual and discursive work” (54).
Key Terms/Concepts
Three key characteristics of organization activity systems:
In this chapter, Schryer and her co-authors analyze medical case presentations as a genre and as a site for identity-making and agency negotiation. After analyzing the presentations, they came to the following conclusions (direct questions from page 91):
Key Terms
Spinuzzi is interested in “how textual artifacts co-mediate work” and uses genre ecologies as a theoretical frame (97).
Key Terms
Other Concepts
Critical reflection: Second, once articulated, frameworks can be examined and incrementally improved by various researchers. They become objects of study themselves…and therefore can be studied more critically. Consequently, later researchers might improve on the reliability, validity, and analytical power of existing frameworks. Scalability: Third, since analytical frameworks are developed to offer a systematic analysis, they tend to be scalable. For instance, work models can be applied to very small numbers of artifacts … or very large numbers” (98). In this chapter, Wallace “shows both how traditional textual genres can survive unchanged into new circumstances, thereby misleading their readers, and how genres can change or rupture under pressure of new conditions and expectations. It will be demonstrated that the staged production of policy creates a differentiation of audiences that limits participation; and that viewing the texts in interaction allows analysts to refine their perceptions of the rhetorical purposes of each” (159).
Wallace discusses genre systems: It is true that, to some extent, each type of text is a response to the one(s) preceding it and an anticipation of the one(s) to follow, and therefore partakes in exemplary fashion of the dialogic framework as theorized by Bakhtin. Each text is in some sense an utterance in a dialogue, which conceivably allows for the dialogue’s beneficial development. On the other hand, each genre lends itself to being oriented towards a particular audience, which does not entirely coincide with the audiences of the other genres. This differentiated audience is a large part of what defines the texts as separate genres, but in terms of participation in an ongoing dialogue, genre division can be used, as my analysis has demonstrated in this case, to effect a degree of interruption, distortion, and exclusion (176). “In contrast to the traditional view of policymaking, which assumes a rational process of problem identification and solution evaluation, much actual policy turns out to be solution-led. In other words, predetermined policy measures are imposed as “solutions” to retrospectively presented ‘problems’…[B] y framing the policy process as a conventional problem-focused one, works to conceal the fact that the government has already made up its mind” (159; 175). Key Terms
“Dissensus, resistance, conflicts, and deep contradictions are constantly produced in activity systems” (Russell qtd. on 280). Powell “propose[s] to learn about a writer’s - that is, a participant’s - identity by examining that writer’s self-representation. By learning about a writer’s identity as she represents herself in the various genres of the activity system, we can in turn determine ways the institution’s identity drives, or is driven by, the writer’s identity. Through a systematic analysis of self-representation, I suggest that the complexities of participant identity and consequently activity systems can be better understood. That is, my method of examining self representation offers us a way to examine participant identity within activity systems” (281). Powell argues that students represent their selves in three possible ways: (1) a student may “reproduce the discourse of the class” (299); (2) a student may resist the discourse in unproductive ways, leading to no change in the student or the activity system in which the student is involves; (3) a student may engage in knowledgeable resistance, “a productive way of negotiating discourse that provides for both learning and change” (295). [[The problem with this theory is that Powell suggests that reproducing the expected discourse is not a performance of self-representation. Instead, the student is “merely presenting a self that she think will be successful” (299). If the student is actively aware of the expected self and wants to appease the teacher by representing him/her self in this way, the student seems very much to be performing. Also, Powell – in naming a productive resistance as “knowledgeable” – implies that students are overtly aware that they are resisting a self-representation, which may not always be that case.]] Powell ultimately suggests that we should explicitly teach students genres and self-representations so they may have more agency over their rhetorical choices (301). She notes, “By explicit I do not mean the explication of textual features; rather, I mean the conscious, reflective discussion of the ways a critical self is composed within certain kinds of genres’ (302). Key Terms Genres: “mediate cultural and historical activities within systems and therefore the study of genre can reveal the ways in which writing within genres not only serves to stabilize an activity systems, but also the ways in which writing might resist and consequently change that system…[G]enres are used by participants to ‘carr[y] out’ the work of the system” (281). “Whenever conflict or tension arises within an activity system, genres serving as coping tools. Familiar genres provide, predictable…ways to frame an action, thereby making action the social ‘glue for mending the tension’” (283). Tools: “Within activity theory, the relationship between the subject and the object is mediated by a tool … In other words, people use tools (or resources) to help them accomplish certain goals. The tools mediate an activity in that they define how persons construct their participation within a particular activity. In this way, a tool’s meaning or function is only valid when put in context by a participant. Moreover, a tool is simultaneously enabling and limiting: It empowers the participant through its past use by other participants, but it also restricts participants in that the tool has already been defined in terms of its functionality and materiality. This does not mean, however, that either is mutually exclusive. The function of a tool exists on a continuum; the degree to which it is limiting/enabling depends on the context of the activity” (283). Self-representation: “[t]he performance of the rhetorical construction where self is continually shifting based on generic expectation and where discourses of power come in contact with discourses of identity” (284). Self-representation, for Powell, is a sub-tool of genre, which is itself a tool. In the activity system, then, self-representation looks like this: Powell argues that “the conscious representation of self within a genre is directly tied to the writer’s notion and awareness of that genre, the audience of the genre, and the way that the writer wishes to construct and represent her self within that genre. As writers attempt to enter into a particular discourse, they gradually learn to ‘perform’ the particular genre conventions of that discourse, imitating the conventions that are useful to them, and pushing the boundaries of those conventions that limit them… [Seeing] “self-representation as performance provides the subject with agency. Participants are not only acted upon; they are also actively engaging in discourse and negotiating it in various ways” (285). It is also important to recognize that students “own motivations, interests, and backgrounds affected those negotiations and the ways they proceeded through them. These factors were part of students’ senses of self before they entered college, and they intertwine with students’ responses to instructors, particular courses, and the institution itself” (282).
Keeter and Hunter “use activity theory to conceptualize [a writer’s] learning as an activity that balances between individual agency in meaning making and the social, historical and cultural contexts that influence how a single writer makes meaning” (308). They conclude that “teachers of writing need to help students conceptualize all writing activity as collective work…Our study shows the benefit of providing opportunities for teachers and students to explore how contrasting communities of practice define successful writing activity and how writing activity operates in the cultural and political sphere of each community…Academic communities of practice can encourage students to develop the self-reflexivity that will enable them to chart their own identity definition and to understand the power relations they engage in as they write” (327).
Key Terms
Russell and Yanez explain, “The broad goal of this synthesis of activity theory (AT) and genre systems theory is to understand the ways writing mediates human activity, the ways people think through and act through writing…We suggest ways these theories can help teachers and students learn and critique existing discursive pathways (genres) – and create new ones – for expanding involvement with others” (331). They argue that there are contradictions in general education because (a) teachers have specialist knowledge and discourse and expect that their students will also and (b) the university systems sees writing as through the transmission model and through the genius model (332). This can make students feel alienated. “Viewing teaching learning through the lens of activity systems and the genre systems that mediate them may give teachers and students a sense of what goes into the making of, for example, historical argument, the why (motivation through potential use value) as well as what [motives] and how of writing academic history” (357). They combine activity and genre theory, stating that “each activity system of singing has its own genres, its own expectations and norms and rules, its own culture and historical traditions and ways of making sounds in the air with the voice” (337). “The issue of genres, as tools and rules, leads us to see the specialist/lay divide not in terms of a neat division or unassailable contradiction, but in terms of the circulation of discourse, how genres intertextually link activity systems. Activity systems are not hermetically sealed, neatly divided between specialist and generalist, but in complex textual (genre) systems, through which the specialist/generalist contradiction is created and maintained…The object and motive of the different activity systems have historically led people in each activity system to expect different things of the genre - thus there are different genre rules or norms” (348). Key Terms Activity Theory: “AT is a way of analyzing human activity over time, especially change – including that kind of change called learning…It is a heuristic…[S]hared tool models like AT view communication and learning as social in origin, and human activity as collective. In these models, we humans (subjects) act together with others humans and material tools to change something in our world, the object of our activity. The tools that we use, including writing, mediate our thinking and doing. One such tool, writing (and the action of writing) actively mediates—shapes—both our thinking and our action together, our activity” (335). “Shared tool models…see context as a weaving together of people and their tools in complex networks. The network is the context” (336). AT follows “several basic principles”:
“There are rules, both official rules and that kind of unofficial unwritten rules we call norms. Some of these rules or norms are expectations, conventions for using writing in the university and in the discipline of activity history – genre” (339).
In thinking about using AT as a methodological framework, the authors explain that “we could use this flexible triangular lens to zoom in and out to one students, to several or all the participants, or to the whole university, depending on the question we’re asking” (339). Dialectical Contradictions: “‘historically accumulating structural tensions within and between activity systems’…But contradictions also present a constant potential for change in people and tools (including writing) – for transforming – re-mediating – activity systems. Thus, there is always potential for learning, both individual and social, for becoming a changed person and changed people, with new identities, new possibilities – often opened up (or closed down) through writing in various genres” (341). Genre: “In North American genre theory (Freedman and Medway, 1994a, 1994b), genres are understood not merely as formal textual features, the what and how to write. Genres are also seen as expected ways of using words to get things done in certain recurring situations—the activity system, in AT terms. This brings into genre analysis questions of social motive and identity. The why and who of genre. And thus genres, as Bazerman (1994) has argued, form systems that follow and mediate the work pathways within and among activity systems” (351). “Genres and their systems help us make sense of what's happening. They allow us to do certain kinds of work that are otherwise impossible (imagine a hospital without medical records). But of course they can also be constraining (they are expectations, rules, norms, after all)…In genres (tools for coordinating actions) deep dialectical contradictions are instantiated and negotiated, and the political and personal struggles those contradictions give rise to. In this contestation, learning can also occur, as participants struggle with the constraints, and see new possibilities for transforming (re-mediating) their activities, themselves - and their genres, for genres are always only stabilized-for-now, as Catherine Schryer (1994) puts it” (352). “New-rhetorical genre theory has de-centered attention by disregarding universal measures of communicative effectiveness and focusing instead on local contexts for expression, and the regularities in situation, form, and content…which develop over accumulating instances. These regularities are visible in textual outcomes, but, more important for this discussion, they are apprehended in language-users’ intersubjective consciousness: speakers’ and listeners’ not only recognize typical situations but also recognize one another’s mutual awareness. If we look for self in this model of individuals’ participation in a system, we find it in speakers’ identification with the roles and motives available in the speech situation, and performance of these roles and experience of these motives. If we want to add agency to conceptions of self, we find it in the contingencies of situation: typifiable but also historical, contexts change—at least partly in response to individual instances of participation” (363).
“[W]e take linguistic consciousness (ideas about one’s speech in relation to others’ speech) into the realm of ideas about one’s self as renders or positioned in negotiation with the words of others, these negotiations involving contacts, citations, world-views, intentions” (268). |
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