Schryer and Spoel introduce the terms ‘regulated’ and
‘regularized’ to our lexicon. Since regulated resources are the ones that are
explicitly learned, recognized and/or required, I’ve been thinking of them as
the formal, traditional genres, the ones that are defined so that they fit into
categories. The regularized resources seem more closely related to Rhetorical
Genre Studies because they are learned in context (situated cognition) and
arise from tacit understanding rather than explicit direction. What I thought
was particularly interesting is that Schryer and Spoel use these terms to refer
to different uses of the same resource.
Like Carol Berkenkotter, they discuss the influence certain
genres have on the formation of a professional identity. Berkenkotter focuses
more on the way a manual influences the diagnostic vocabulary of a profession
by serving almost as a translation tool. Schryer and Spoel look at two
different resources and examine the influence they have on the professional
behavior of doctors and midwives.
The case presentations Schryer discusses are formal tools
medical students use to relate case histories to their faculty mentors. The
structure and order of a case presentation is specific, but during the course
of their presentations, students are guided in their use of language and even
in the emphasis given to certain aspects of the presentation. Over time,
students learn a professional language and move from seeing “any form of
uncertainty as a personal deficit” to using “modal auxiliaries, such as can, could,
may, might, must, shall, should, will, and would and adverbs, such as perhaps, maybe, and likely [that]
‘safely introduce levels of assuredness into the case presentation’” (264).
When I worked for a whitewater rafting company, part of what
I learned and later taught was how to use degrees of promise. The absolutes
came with definite language and had to do with the ordering of events: first
you’ll do this, then this, than that. Anything that was possible, however
unlikely, had to be tempered with an allowance for risk and usually had to do
with assuaging fear or discussing the possibility of injury or death. The words “you won’t get hurt” coming
from anyone’s mouth was an invitation for every senior employee within earshot
to descend and perform damage control. While the use of language was explicit
in some manuals and in the release forms, the comfortable use of it came with
time and indoctrination.
Spoel’s research had more to do with the ways the emerging
healthcare community of midwives used the regulated genre of a policy binder to
establish their position within the established medical profession. The
midwives’ practice of informed choice is a communicative means of placing the
decision-making power in the hands of the patient. However, the policy binder
“stresses the midwife’s responsibility to other health professionals (not to
the woman) so that they can together ‘plan’ the woman’s care”.
Furthermore, since informed choice “appears within the
[College of Midwives of Ontario]’s regulations as a diverse and inconsistently
articulated practice”, there are challenges to knowing how to interpret the policies.
Because some of the regulated policy is open to interpretation, midwives have
an opportunity to regularize the genre of the policy manual through discussion
of “the definition of information and
decision making and the place of
advice and explicit influence in the caregiving relationship” (269).
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