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 20th
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.
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