Momentum of Form

Anis Bawarshi and Mary Jo Reiff: Genre: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy, Chapter 9

Carolyn Miller and Dawn Shepherd: “Questions for genre theory from the blogosphere”

Soon after the first day of this class, before I was considering almost everything in terms of genre, some coworkers and I went on a field trip to The Greenville News, to find out how they’re adapting to the digital world. Just last week, the newspaper in my former hometown announced that it would cease daily print publication. I have never had a daily newspaper subscription, though my parents always have and I still flip straight to the (ever shrinking) funny pages if I’m at their house for breakfast.

Both of today’s readings take care to mention the differences between genre and media. The news article is the genre, the newspaper is the medium. Like many people, I’m interested in the news and I tend to get it in bits and pieces online or on the radio. I honestly don’t care how I hear about world events, as long as I’m not completely in the dark. I am interested in the content, not the format. Given that news format has changed over human history and that the daily newspaper is a relatively recent innovation, it’s not surprising that online news is edging the paper version out.

Miller and Shepherd offer several compelling arguments in favor of the public affairs blog, my favorite of which is that electronic media “reprise several qualities of oral cultures, including simultaneity of action and reaction, widespread access, and emphasis on feeling over analysis, and a weakening of centralized authority” (282). Bawarshi and Reiff say something similar when they write that researchers are interested in “how digital contexts for communication alter access to genres, reconfigure constraints (including time constraints), and bring about new forms of collaboration” (161). Put that way, it’s almost surprising that any print publication dependent on timeliness still survives.

Politics and disasters helped foment public affairs blogs, as did “dissatisfaction with the mainstream media” (M&S 275). While readers of The Times Picayune are bemoaning the impending loss of their daily print paper, I can’t help but think that it was that same paper’s ability to blog that helped earn it a Pulitzer for its Hurricane Katrina coverage. I was only one of the many who practically lived on that blog during the time when no other news media could get in or out of the city. The Greenville News isn’t ceasing the daily print run yet, but it’s shrinking and they are focusing their reporting resources on unique, local news. Everything else comes from USA Today.

It seems that the genres aren’t changing as quickly as the media, but that, as Bawarshi and Reiff write, “new media may be triggering the modification of existing genres” (167). While we didn’t read Miller and Shepherd’s blog study, Bawarshi and Reiff mention their claim that “the blog is a complex rhetorical hybrid with genetic imprints from prior genres” (164). Miller and Shepherd also remark that “genre change problematizes precisely what makes genre generic” (264). In other words, if genre is recurrent, typified and relatively stable (or “stabilized-enough” or “stabilized-for-now”), how does that reconcile with seemingly rapid change? The antecedents seem to be part of the answer, though I suspect that the proliferation of technology also helps. When something hits quickly and spreads like wildfire, it doesn’t have to have a long shelf life to have an impact.

P.S. I haven't forgotten Schryer and Spoel - they'll be addressed in the next day or so. Hopefully tomorrow.

Power and Status

Anis Bawarshi and Mary Jo Reiff: Genre: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy, Chapter 6

Not for the first time in this class, I’m reminded of the cultural analysis we did in Workplace. Stories, language, documents, organizational structure, adaptation and change - it all fits in with genre and activity theory. Cultural analysis was why I thought we should ask Dr. R. for stories and organizational background as part of our information gathering. All Bawarshi and Reiff had to do to drive the similarities home was drop in a little Bourdieu and some cultural capital.

I had never thought of genres carrying any cultural capital, but of course they do. In a multiple-person activity system, the person who creates a spreadsheet and a workflow is probably of a different status than the person who enters provided data into the spreadsheet. But the data entry clerk may modify the workflow, if not the actual spreadsheet, in order to conform it to their personal needs.

Bawarshi and Reiff refer to status several times throughout this chapter so I’ve decided to focus on that. First, there is a discussion of Catherine Schryer’s research on differences between two veterinary school genres which notes that “these differences... are associated with status and power within the discipline, and as such they position their users [researchers or clinicians] at different levels of hierarchy within veterinary medicine” (81). The division of labor in an activity system also contributes to hierarchy/status (97). Finally, though it might be a bit of a stretch, Bawarshi and Reiff refer to Thomas Edison’s ultimate marketing job of using newspapers to establish himself as a celebrity, demonstrate the need for electric light, and lend credence to his work. If Edison and his colleagues hadn’t “made incandescent light and central power... a social and discursive reality” (101), in part by establishing their expert status through text, then the outcome might have been very different or at least less dramatic.

To continue on the theme of status and cultural capital, Bawarshi and Reiff note that “meta-genres [the guidebooks, manuals and/or discourse that explain the rules and language of a discipline] help teach and stabilize uptakes, and knowledge of meta-genres can signal insider and outsider status” (94). Again, not something I would have thought of when thinking of genre, but a meta-genre, or at least the knowledge contained in a meta-genre, would demarcate between those-who-know and those-who-don’t. Power and status can come from this kind of insider knowledge and also, as they say, serve as a signal to others.

In conclusion, the authors write that “genres are part of how individuals participate in complex relations with one another in order to get things done, and how newcomers learn to construct themselves and participate effectively within activity systems” (104). It follows that part of the “effective participation” involves figuring out their status within the system as well as identifying the status of others within the system.

Small Change

Malcolm Gladwell: "Small Change"
  
I wanted to talk to my mother before I commented on this article. After a bit of cell phone cat-and-mouse, I got in touch with her on Monday. I wanted to know when she went to Biloxi as a college student, who she went with and how she found out about the program she joined. Before I spoke to her, I was reasonably certain she wasn’t part of the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of 1964, since I’d never heard of it before reading Gladwell’s essay.

Mom graduated from Elmhurst College in Illinois in 1963 and went to Biloxi on a mission trip that summer. She credits both the college and the trip with changing her worldview, which was that of a fairly sheltered young woman from a blue-collar family in St. Louis. She chose the trip not because her close friends were going, but because “she wanted to serve” and because Biloxi was close to New Orleans and she was going to be in a wedding there in August. Basically, she was young and idealistic and had a ride as far as New Orleans and $50. She mostly tutored the children of poor white shrimpers, though she went once a week with the church to work with black children.

The mission director was an integrationist, sometimes to the point of forgetting his “real” mission with the shrimpers. He was willing to take chances and sometimes bricks were thrown at the mission. Through him, my mom met a black physician who was involved with the NAACP and went on bus trip to the Gulfport beach with a group of black children; they were met by the police and had to return home, even though they had sought permission beforehand. The Biloxi beach was, of course, whites only.

I wanted to know if my mom had strong ties to the civil rights movement and if she considered herself a risk-taker. The answer was no on both counts, but she came away from the experience with a different point of view and a better understanding of people. She said she wouldn’t have left the mission, even if she was uncomfortable sometimes, because she felt strongly that she was doing good and also that she “didn’t know enough to be scared.” The church was her tie; she heard about the trip through her college which was part of the United Church of Christ network.

As much as I agree with Gladwell on many of his points (I very much share his opinion of the Shirky example which I thought was appalling when I read it the first time), I don’t agree that social media defines activism any more than I think risk-taking defines activism. People have different comfort levels, different breaking points, and different relationships to various movements. I suppose part of what Gladwell objects to is the credit given to social media, the idea that “without Twitter the people of Iran would not have felt empowered and confident to stand up for freedom and democracy.”

He also criticizes campaigns that are considered successful because they don’t ask too much of participants. It’s true that there are a lot of them and that some are a bit ridiculous. But I also think that knowledge and awareness lend a lot of strength to a movement; the more people know and understand the less likely they are to criticize and maybe, just maybe some of those people will join in a more meaningful way. Social networks can communicate over distance and to a large number of people and do it quickly. If risk-taking isn’t necessary to convey a point, do the means matter? Small change is still change.

Only Girls Wear Princess Costumes

Anis Bawarshi and Mary Jo Reiff: Genre: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy, Chapters 1 and 5

Time to add more terminology to the mix. First, though, Bawarshi and Reiff provide a clear overview of genre and genre theory, noting that, in information-based economies, genre “helps us understand and prepare students for the increasingly specialized communicative needs of disciplines, professions, and everyday life” (5). As one of those students, I am beginning to agree, as I am paying much more attention to the various communication methods in my life, from the hardware to the message format. 

Many of my choices aren’t really choices at all, but are dictated by what’s expected in a particular situation, from brief text messages proposing a meeting time to polite emails that don’t lay any blame but suggest that someone wasn’t paying attention when they dumped armloads of plastic wrap in the paper recycling and would they please rectify the situation? In the case of the latter, I would have been less polite if I had been the supervisor and more direct if I had any idea who had been careless or lazy. Also, I might have gotten results. At any rate, Bawarshi and Reiff phrase it well when they say that the developing view of genre “recognizes genres as both organizing and generating kinds of texts and social actions, in complex, dynamic relation to one another” (4).

In chapter 5, Bawarshi and Reiff examine the background of the Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) approach to genre, the sociological approach we have been thrashing through with the help of Bazerman, Berkenkotter, Devitt, et al. Our other readings have referenced Carolyn Miller and, to a lesser extent, Kenneth Burke and Lloyd Bitzer; Bawarshi and Reiff explain why.

From Burke we get the ‘new’ rhetoric, which is much more dynamic and collaborative than the ‘old’ rhetoric with its stress upon deliberate design and persuasive speech. Bitzer brings the rhetorical situation/context into the foreground by defining it as the “distinguishing characteristic of rhetorical discourse” (63) and by his acknowledgement of recurring situations the induce recurrent responses. Bawarshi and Reiff notes that “recurring situations give rise to rhetorical forms (such as genres)… [which can] come to have a power of their own in shaping how individuals recognize and respond to like situations” (64).

Ten years later, Campbell and Jamieson begin exploring genre as something reactive, a “’fusion’ or ‘constellation’ of substantive and stylistic forms that emerge in response to [emphasis mine] a recurring situation” (65). Carolyn Miller takes all of this and adds in sociologist Alfred Schutz’s ideas of typifications, or “modes of how ‘someone’ traditionally behaves or is expected to behave in certain situations” (68), in order to come up with the “understanding of genres as socially derived, intersubjective, rhetorical typifications that help us recognize and act within recurrent situations” (69).

Bawarshi and Reiff also bring the early 20^th century of phenomenology into the mix. Since I have trouble separating the word ‘phenomenon’ from things like phosphorescence and the Aurora borealis, I had to visit Wikipedia for a reminder that there are social phenomena as well as atmospheric phenomena. In this case, phenomenology has to do with intentionality, “an act of making something available to our consciousness” (66). In RGS, “genres bring texts and situations to our consciousness”. How we perceive things has to do with how we “make sense of our lives and social activities within the life-world” (67), i.e. our everyday world. Our social knowledge, contends Miller (followed by Bazerman and Devitt), is what makes it possible to recognize a situation and adapt our generic responses accordingly.   

Documentation Analysis and Social Tagging

Dorothy Winsor: “Genre and Activity Systems: The Role of Documentation…”

By examining the genre of written documentation in the context of engineering firm activity systems, Winsor explores issues of documentary reality and related issues of power and agency. The four men she followed “were in positions where they had to represent multiple and sometimes conflicting interest to one another and keep those interests connected into a smoothly functioning system” (211). As a result, the documentation they maintained served two primary purposes: protecting themselves and prompting others to take action.

As entry-level employees, the study participants occasionally documented their actions as a way to “shape others’ perceptions of their own actions” (210). According to Winsor, they “used documentation to exercise agency in shaping the activity systems in which they participated” (208), or to show that they are responsible contributors to the network of which they are a part.

The employees were more likely to use documentation to “shape the actions of others” (210), which sounds rather sinister at first. However, Winsor explains that because these are entry-level employees, they are low on the totem pole. Collaborative documentation serves to regulate “future actions by mutual consent, giving that mutual consent a more durable and, hence, stronger form” (212), while memos describing discussions and proposed actions help to shift some of the burden of responsibility, again by providing a durable record of individual responsibilities. Memos, too, could be copied to supervisors as a means of strengthening their messages.

The documentation used by an activity system tends to conform to certain conventions which are determined either explicitly or tacitly by the system: politeness, the elimination of specific details that are not considered relevant or appropriate to the end result, a predefined format (or even a form to be filled in), and more. These attendant conventions ensure that a particular type of reality/documentation is produced. This action “carries with it the potential for both modifying and maintaining activity systems” (204).

Since we now have started interviewing and collecting texts for our activity system project, I find it interesting to note how many documents are shared and the particular purposes they serve. Much of our activity system is textual, consisting of manuscripts, galleys, readers’ reports, emails and spreadsheets. However, documentation of the type described by Winsor is minimal and introspective; participants in the system seem to document for themselves rather than for others.

Stefanie Panke and Birgit Gaiser: “With My Head Up in the Clouds”

My impressions of this article are fragmented.

1. Panke and Gaiser cite a study by K. Lee that found that “social presence enhances cooperative user behavior in a social tagging environment” (328). Several archives have experimented with social tagging as a way to collect metadata, especially on materials about which little is known and I recently read an article (perhaps if I’d tagged it in Delicious, I could cite it properly now) postulating that the reason tagging initiatives at individual institutions often don’t result in usable metadata is because the user range for most libraries and archives simply isn’t wide enough. The Lee study would seem to reinforce that idea.
2. “…Compartmentalized thinking in knowledge organization is neither necessary nor desirable” (321). Paper data demands compartmentalization, though indexes and cross-references attempt to drill tiny holes through some of the barriers. The explosion of digital data offers a lot of opportunity for access. I had never thought of tags as dynamic links, but the concept makes a lot of sense. Whether the reality makes sense is another thing, but I suspect we’re getting there.
3. Social taggers “developed personal rules for assigning tags to keep track of their vocabulary” (340). It’s possible that every time I see the word “rules” from here on out, I will think of Engestrom’s activity theory triangle.
4. Tags are not updated and tagged content is frequently not accessed after it is tagged indicating that tagging serves a particular purpose at a particular time (345). Every so often, I click on a previously forgotten tag in my Delicious list to find out what the heck I thought was so interesting. I am frequently disappointed. This makes me wonder if the ease of tagging is actually one of its flaws.

Bucking the System(s)

Clay Spinuzzi and Mark Zachry: “Genre Ecologies”

Lee Sherlock: “Genre, Activity, and Collaborative Work and Play in World of Warcraft”

These two articles give a good overview of “open” and “closed” systems, using the concept of a genre ecology. I thought the Spinuzzi and Zachry article was exceptionally clear and informative, especially since I took Usability Testing this past spring. Many of their examples had a familiar ring, thanks to the experiences of that class. Most notably, the idea that usability testing should test any system as a whole: I can’t tell you how many times the participants in our website test told us that they get certain information from co-workers, from Google or from dated written manuals because they didn’t know it was on the website, or didn’t have immediate web access, or thought the website took too long. Not to mention the number of times participants used the website in ways we didn’t anticipate and did so in a way that made it clear that this particular use was habitual from them.

Of course, we considered this and noted it in our final report, but I’m sure it was frustrating for our clients to learn that their users interacted with their product so creatively. Still it seems that is to be expected as “the longevity of [unofficial genres of documentation] and the relative stability of their role…suggest[s] that such spurious genres are as likely to become staples of an open documentation system as are the more traditional genres” (S&Z 176). If I had taken this class before Usability Testing, perhaps I would have been inclined to consider more of the genre ecology in our test design, though the ecology did present itself in our pre- and post-test interviews of participants when they told us about their roles within the activity system of their workplace, whether they worked at a desk or in the field, how regularly they use the internet, and so on.

I also appreciate the heuristic tools Spinuzzi and Zachry provide and it seems that these tools will help with both my genre analysis and with the activity system analysis Evan and I will be doing with Dr. Rivlin and The Upstart Crow. I had already considered using diagrams as a way of keeping track of documents and interactions, but hadn’t yet considered the degree to which such diagrams could play a role in determining the relationships between documents, people, and physical and virtual space. Applying categories of contingency, decentralization and stability to exploratory questions is also helpful in determining roles and relationships within the genre or activity system.

The final tool is probably more related to recommendations for a system, but will be helpful for any future responsibilities I might have in technical writing or workflow organization. Allowing for “user interfaces that include space (or spaces) that users can fill with their own ideas” (S&Z 179) is a suggestion that can apply to any number of systems and technologies, as Sherlock demonstrated with his discussion of the World of Warcraft AddOns and the WoWWiki, where users were allowed to participate outside of the single genre of the game.

What is becoming less clear is the terminology of activity theory and genre. Spinuzzi and Zachry describe genre ecologies as “dynamic and unpredictable clusters of communication artifacts and activities” which are “ruled by contingency, decentralization, and relative stability” (171), a definition that overlaps with David Russell’s assertion that the rules of an activity system are what “allow the system to be ‘stabilised-for-now’” (71). I don’t have a problem with this overlap, because I understand that genre theory and activity theory are interrelated. However, I am starting to envision a sort of genre and activity theory family tree. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of divorce, incest and intermarriage in this particular family tree. I don’t know if I’ll be able to document it, but I’m planning to try. I’ll share if I can figure something out.

The Messy Web of Teaching and Learning

Huiling Ding: “The Use of Cognitive and Social Apprenticeship to Teach a Disciplinary Genre”

David R. Russell: “Looking Beyond the Interface”

First, I just want to say that I’m completely blown away by the inner workings of the NIH grant process. I knew it was a complex and competitive, but I had no idea just how complex and competitive. Ding’s strategy for apprenticeships to initiate new grant writers to the process not only makes sense, it seems necessary.

So, when Russell writes that activity theory “understands learning not as the internalisation of discrete information or skills by individuals, but rather as expanding involvement over time – social as well as intellectual – with other people and the tools available in their culture” (65), he is providing a justification for apprenticeships as a teaching and learning model. He also presents an alternate model, the behaviourist or stimulus-response model, as a way of highlighting the strengths of Engeström’s multi-dimensional activity theory model, comprised of subject, object/outcome, tools, rules, community and division of labor.

By viewing teaching and learning as an activity system, both Ding and Russell are able to demonstrate that a simple watch-and-learn method is insufficient for many purposes. If the NIH grant-writing process described by Ding is any indication, the more complex and high-stakes the object/outcome, the more important it is to understand the entire activity system and all of its associated genre systems rather than just the genres or genre systems that appear to be the most pertinent. Of the advantages to teaching the entire genre system (or is it systems since the students are experiencing the genre system of the proposal writer and the genre system of the reviewers?), Ding writes that “it demystifies the grant-seeking processes by making every step visible, learnable, and accomplishable” (23). By understanding the context of the grant review process, students are able to improve the entire grant package

If I’m understanding the activity theory principles correctly, they can relate to genre characteristics in that they also include purpose, participants, context, theme and form. In addition, both the tool aspect and the outcome include one or more genres, while the remaining nodes provide context that can be helpful in understanding and describing the activity system. However, Russell reminds us that “context is not a container for a learner [participant, tool, etc], but rather a weaving together of the learner with other people and tools into a web or network of sociocultural interactions and meanings that are integral to the learning [object/outcome]” (68). In this model, nothing stands alone, so it is important to consider everything as a contributing factor.

While both articles pertained specifically to teaching and learning as activity systems, I suspect that some teaching and learning elements will surface in our review of the activity system of a publication.

As an unnecessary aside, stimulus-response reminded me of 7^th grade biology with Mrs. Johnson. Her chalkboard drawings of single-celled organisms captivated my best friend Ann, who finally found something she could draw and proceeded to do so with a vengeance. Unfortunately, I think I returned her amoeba cartoons to her several years ago, but I’ve recreated some paramecium art. Perhaps someone should explore the informal teaching/learning peer-sustained activity system that ensured that I remember that paramecia have cilia even though I have no practical application for that knowledge. 

Genre Systems in Professional Settings

Carol Berkenkotter: “Genre Systems at Work”

By addressing genre systems in a professional setting, Berkenkotter is able to bring together many levels of interaction as well as provide an introduction to activity systems. I hope that she is not oversimplifying when she writes that “contexts are activity systems” and quotes Yrjo Engestrom’s statement that “an activity system integrates the subject, the object, and the instruments... into a unified whole.... Production and communication are inseparable” (331). I interpreted this to mean that genre and genre systems are the instruments of an activity system and that the activity system is what establishes the genre systems.

She uses genre systems as a means of reconciling the everyday practices (micro) of text and discourse with the social structure/discursive system (macro). In her study, the therapists’ notes which translate into medical reports which translate into billing statements comprise the genre system. The genre system resides within the activity system of psychotherapy and they cannot be separated, though they can evolve and be altered. She mentions some principles of genre systems to reinforce this:

• Genre and genre systems both guide interaction and are the results of that interaction (329). The workflow of notes, reports and bills offer the framework during the process and the documentation of the process when they are complete.
• Genre systems are intertextual (330). The notes beget the reports which beget the billing codes. In addition, the necessity of the billing codes requires a recognized diagnosis which is outlined in the report and which the therapist typically considers as they are consulting with the patient and taking notes.
• Genre systems help bring context out of the background. Instead of “following the actors” or “following the texts”, researchers must consider both and bring the players together with the “physical setting, the material practices, and socioeconomic structures...the history of [the profession’s] practices; the participants’ background knowledge; the interpersonal relations...the cotexts, and so forth” (330). In other words, researchers must consider the whole activity system.

Berkenkotter defines the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as a meta-genre which serves as a classification system, a common lexicon and as a central text that spawns subgenres in the form of explanatory texts. In addition, the DSM is both evolving in response to political and social factors (the DSM-5 is forthcoming) and serves as an object “around which the discourse of the profession is organized”.

The intertextuality of the genre system of notes, reports and billing is all dependent on the DSM, the power of which becomes clear when Berkenkotter notes that “the psychotherapist’s practice of making notes and reports...begins the work of drawing clients into the systems of reimbursement, health care, research and medical reasoning” and these notes in turn “may influence how the clients themselves may begin to recontextualize their own perceptions of themselves” (341). I found this idea both terrifying and reassuring; terrifying because it sounds like a trap for both therapists and clients, yet reassuring because there is something comforting about being able to classify and find the niche in which you fit. Genre and activity systems seem to be all about finding that niche, yet understanding that the niche may move, change or go away in response to needs and situations.

John B. Killoran: “Self-Published Web Resumes”

As I read this article, I kept wondering if the inclusion of LinkedIn profiles would have altered Killoran’s results in any way. Or, if the rise of LinkedIn might have had an effect on the decline of active self-published web resumes. I am also curious about the professions represented by his selection and whether that had any impact on the results. I’m in the education field. I’ve had a LinkedIn profile since March 2009 and I keep it updated. I don’t troll for connections and most of my connections are in my field or related to me. I’ve never been contacted about a job, but that wasn’t my primary intent in posting my profile. More it was so that if, after receiving my resume, a prospective employer chose to Google me, they would find something that indicated I wasn’t a troglodyte. However, my friend Nate, an “electrical and controls engineer” (i.e. robotics) and a project manager, periodically throws his resume up on Monster.com, just for the thrill of getting job solicitations.

As Killoran mentions, the resume has traditionally been situated in an established genre system of job ads, job applications and various response letters and that “a genre’s performance in a new medium may be due in part to whether the genre is situated within a viable genre system” (427). The success rate of the web resume in Killoran’s study seems to indicate that it may belong to a different genre system than the print resume. Posting a resume on one’s own website is initially labor-intensive and requires periodic maintenance. It is also stepping outside of the traditional genre system of applying for a job, which may make it less effective since the success of the traditional print resume depends on “its kairos - the timeliness of its response - and on the degree to which it ‘plays its partner,’ the job ad” (431). It makes sense that the web resume would be more effective for the self-employed than for the traditional  job-seeker since someone who depends on many clients rather than a single employer will want an authoritative and continuously updated repository to supplement any other advertising they might do.

Like Yates and Orlikowski, Killoran also explored the genre characteristics of purpose, participants, theme, context and form. He seems to attempt to isolate the characteristics, stating that “if some genres transplanted to a new medium are actually less successful [than in the previous medium] in accomplishing their purposes, where does that leave genre but without its defining characteristic and presumably determined instead by its medium, its technological container” (426). My question is whether the genre won’t simply become extinct if it fails in its purpose. It seems like it should, and that it would if it weren’t for the “durability” of internet artifacts.

Set, System, Repertoire

Amy J. Devitt: Writing Genres, pages 54-65

Charles Bazerman: "Speech Acts, Genres, and Activity Systems"

JoAnne Yates and Wanda Orlikowski: "Genre Systems: Structuring Interaction through Communicative Norms." 

While I read Devitt first, I got so bogged down in the seemingly subtle distinctions between genre sets, genre systems and genre repositories that it took all of the next two readings to help my head stop spinning. Meanwhile, I may be in danger of seeing genre systems everywhere. I certainly did when I went out to get a bite to eat tonight. The place I went has a counter, so I know to go to the counter to place my order. The server sees me and comes to take my order; she writes it down and brings the slip to the kitchen window. I get my drink and sit down and wait. Meanwhile the cook reads my order, assembles the food and notifies the server when it’s ready. When I’m ready to leave, I pay my tab by handing over a credit card, then signing the resulting receipt.

When the entire process is broken down, it is very easy to use Yates’ and Orlikowski’s six dimensions of communication to identify the participants (me, server, cook), the purpose (to get food to me so that I am happy), the content (verbal order, order slip, receipt), the form (which I am inclined to merge with content, though the expectation is that the server will make note of my order and convey the information to the cook and that I will tender a form of payment before I leave), the time (later than I would like) and the place (Nick’s, because I can get a Blenheim ginger ale there). In this case, I question the importance of time and place because they are not an essential aspect of the system, but the whole experience serves to confirm Bazerman’s contention that “considering the activity system in addition to the genre system puts a focus on what people are doing and how texts help people do it, rather than on texts as ends in themselves” (319).

In fact, I’m not sure I can separate genre systems from activity systems since the activity systems support and perpetuate the genre systems that are in turn contribute structure and expectations to the activity systems, similar to the circular relationship of situation and response to which I referred in yesterday’s post. Within the activity system of a restaurant, the genre systems of ordering, preparing and serving are used habitually as “an efficient and easy way for team members to coordinate their actions” (Yates 32). Also, there is very little room for misinterpretation in the speech acts as described by Bazerman (314-315). When I approach, the server assumes correctly that I’m interested in ordering. The locutionary act of ordering in this context matches the illocutionary act I intend the server to hear. Unless she is not very good at her job, the perlocutionary effect on her will be that she understands that I want a certain food.

Bazerman and Yates and Orlikowski are fairly clear on their definitions of genre sets and genre systems. The set belongs to an individual. In my example the server produces the ticket and the receipt to create a genre set, while the system encompasses the multiple genres of server, cook and patron and the texts and utterances we produce with our interactions within the system. Devitt thinks that these terms are a bit confining and prefers to use genre system to refer to established genre sets and to retain the term genre set to refer to loose or informal sets of genres (56-57). In her interpretation, a system is more governed by rules than a set.

To grow the terminology, she elaborates on the concept of a genre repertoire, a “set of genres that a group owns, acting through which a group achieves all of its purposes…”(57). The repertoire is the most overarching and the least confining because a repertoire provides a selection of genre sets from which participants can choose. While I agree that the addition of a repertoire allows more freedom, I think that making a distinction between formal and informal genre sets is more limiting instead of less because it further categorizes, possibly making it harder to draw connections between the structured genre of the legal system and the less formal genres of a volunteer book sale.    

A Habitat for Using Language

Amy J. Devitt: Writing Genres, pages 12-32

Anis Bawarshi: "The Genre Function" and "Greeting Cards and the Articulation of Desire"

David Russell’s grocery list seemed more like a sociological study than an examination of a genre, so I was a bit gratified when Anis Bawarshi explicitly mentioned sociology in relation to his discussion of the genre function and notes that “like social institutions, genres also provide the conditions that make textual activity possible” (GF 345). Thinking this way helps me understand genre more as a function or relationship and less as a classification system.

I am less sure about the idea of the genre function as something that has an overarching role in language, but that may be because I’m resisting the idea that everything people read, write and say falls into predetermined patterns. Not that I can think of any exceptions at the moment, except perhaps in the case of people who are less bound by social constraints or norms whether habitually or episodically. But even with these people, we often display generic reactions to their behavior, from ignoring it (“don’t pay any attention to him, he’s crazy”) to tolerating it (sometimes with a pasted-on smile) to making allowances for it (“of course she’s angry, she just lost her job”). Does that mean that there are genres for inappropriate speech and behavior if it is recurring or at least recognizable? Or is genre a function only of the response in these cases?

Both Bawarshi and Amy Devitt emphasize that genre allows for easy and appropriate responses, though the response is circular and ongoing; Devitt notes that “people construct situations through genres, but they also construct genres through situations” (22). This circularity is an ongoing theme but makes sense. If, for example, a friend wants to discuss relationship troubles at work, the initiation and the response will (hopefully) be different than if the same topic is broached in a private home and will perhaps be different again if discussed in a crowded, noisy bar. At work, the discussion might be for informational purposes, in private it will take on the nature of a confidence and in a public but neutral place it might take the form of a diatribe.

Because aspects of the surroundings might temper or encourage a particular response, Devitt adds context of culture and context of genre to the notion of genre entailing purposes, participants and themes.  In her reaction to Russell’s grocery list, she notes that culture and genre play a large part in the establishment and use of a grocery list. First, shopping for food is a cultural norm, a recurring and appropriate activity. This culture values order and grocery lists are an established genre, adapted to purpose, participants and theme by Russell and his daughter.

Culture can play a huge part in the genre of driving directions. There is a formula to the request for directions, but the response is determined by the culture and the participants. In some areas, a concise turn-by-turn list with street names might ensue. When I lived in rural North Carolina, almost no one could resist throwing in building landmarks, especially churches. Still, there were road names included and directions could be jotted down in a list form if desired, so it came as a surprise to find that in South Carolina, where road signs are few and memories are long, directions are often a narrative with references to where something used to be or where someone used to live. 

Reading Response: May 16, 2012

David R. Russell: Rethinking genre and society: an activity theory analysis.

Since I don’t know much (anything) about activity theory, this article helped me understand it and relate it to genre. The first paragraph provided some words and concepts that I expect we will hear again soon: activity system, cultural motive, biological motive, object. It also introduced the concept of one activity system (the family) interacting with another activity system (the supermarket). The article also helped me consider genre as something that is operationalized because it works; in Russell’s case, a shopping list. If it doesn’t work, “then it does not become operationalized into a genre.” In hindsight, I should already know this because I frequently refer to the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT), a tool that museum curators and librarians use to establish terms for objects, from account books to armchairs to posters to videotapes. The terms from the AAT map to the Genre/Form field in a library catalog, but I had never given the language much thought. Now it is starting to make sense that a “membership list” can certainly be a genre and that it is the result of the actions of an activity system (though I’m not sure that’s the best way to state what I’m thinking).

Amy J. Devitt: Writing Genres, pages 1-12

“Genre has been redefined, then, from a classification created by critics to a classification that people make as they use symbols to get along in the world” (8). I probably last considered genre in a scholarly manner in 1992, when it was still largely the province of critics. The more current definitions seem a lot more interesting and a lot less constraining. And also a bit more egalitarian. If genres are determined by everyday usage, then they are open to everyone. It also makes any sort of classification highly subjective, as with Devitt’s example of a memorandum which could be classified as business correspondence, memoranda, internal correspondence or even (a bit of a stretch to my mind) as academic writing. As someone who appreciates consistency, this may take some getting used to. Archivists typically use the term “correspondence” to describe all manner of communication unless there is a significant quantity in which case correspondence might be broken down into memoranda, personal letters, business letters, email, etc. But… sometimes “letters” is used interchangeably with “correspondence”. Fortunately, most other people use the terms interchangeably as well. Problems only arise when they are used in the same alphabetical list so that someone might stop at correspondence, not realizing that there are also letters further down the list. The endless permutations of genre classification make me think that genre theorists have ensured themselves a certain amount of job security.