The parent apology

Over at The Best Genre Blog Around, Amy Devitt has picked up a topic she treated last year: the apology. This time around it is the horrid public apologies of United Airlines and Sean Spicer that have captured her attention. Taken together, her four different blog posts on this topic begin to look like a coherent statement, and like a genuine research take on the genre. 

I contributed to Devitt's discussion with a Twitter-storm on something I call the "parent apology" (it's taken up by her here), or, in Danish, "forældreundskyldningen". The present post is an elaboration on that set of tweets.

The apology

In her posts, Devitt repeatedly quotes psychologist Harriet Lerner's criteria for a good apology. Here in Devitt's summary:

I was fortunate last week to hear psychologist Harriet Lerner practice her sold-out TEDx talk on making good apologies. In Lerner's talk and a column in Psychology Today "You Call THAT an Apology," she explains what makes a good apology:

• sincere, genuine

• no "but"s (as in, "I'm sorry, but here's my excuse")

• specific about your own actions

• commitment not to repeat the offending action

Lerner points out, too, that the apologizer shouldn't expect forgiveness or a reciprocal apology. Nice if that  happens, but separate from the need to apologize or what an apology does.

The parent apology, a failed genre use

The basic idea is that the genre of the apology is sometimes, and notably between parents and children, used in a way which heals nothing, except, in some warped sense, the self-esteem of the apologizer, but actually hurts the person receiving what is supposedly an apology. As a father of four, I have given any number of these - it is a well placed family landmine, and you step on it all too easily. I take care to avoid it these day; and to apologize for real when I find myself having made a parent apology after all. The basic structure of the parent apology is "I am sorry, I yelled at you, but you ..."; and then a repetition, sometimes at length, of the child's wrongdoing.

Coming from Lerner's points, the presence of the "but" is readily apparent as a generic failure. The "but" here is indeed not just a "but", it is a "but you ..." The parent doing the apologizing does not just refer to exonerating circumstances for his or her mistake, but is actively putting the blame for the mistake on the child. The "but" deflects the guilt, the "but you" deflects it on the person apologized to. 

Getting back on top

So, a failed apology and a spot of victim blaiming on top of that. A classic failure of genre use. However, it does not even stop there. In fact, it gets worse. I´ve discussed the parent apology a number of times with my son David, and when I ask him what the parent's purpose is in using the genre he declares it to be "to get back on top".

As is well known in genre research, a genre attributes distinct, and sometimes highly assymetrical, roles to its participants. In the case of the apology, the apologizer consiously places herself beneath the judgement of the apologee, and through this recognition of the value of the receiver tries to bridge the rift between them having arisen from the transgression. 

However, the social situation as well as the relationship between the parties involved also plays a major role. If these roles are in themselves strongly assymetrical they may affect how the genre plays out. 

In case of the parent apology, the assymetry is obvious as one party (the parent) is decisively socially surperior to the other (the child). This is exploited in the parent apology. The parent, having made a mistake or otherwise done something bad, is in need of redemption, and addresses this exigence through the social action known as apologizing. However, the social assymetry allows him or her to place the blame for the transgression squarely on the child. Thus, the parent can commend  himself in for having made the apology, feel relieved of the blame, which has been comfortably left on the child, and move back "on top" of the hierarchy  between the two.

The child's perspective

From the point of view of the child, however, things are less simple. The child may not be able to see through the predicament, but this is a dubious blessing, as I am quite sure, the child feels it anyway. The child is supposed to feel good for having received an apology (this assumption is itself a transgression of the rule that "the apologizer shouldn't expect forgiveness or a reciprocal apology"). But at the same time, the child in receiving the apology is told to feel guilty about something else and is also saddeled with the responsibility for the bad behavior of the parent.

So, to me, the parent apology is obviously not an actual apology, but it is also particularly cruel uptake of the genre. It takes what should have been an act of healing and an act of redemption and turn it into a subtle form for abuse.

Stepping on the landmine

Described like this, the situation sounds bleak, but I think most parents have done this from time to time. It happens, I think, for several reasons. First of all, apologizing is hard, it takes an active effort, and you have to accept putting yourself under the judgement of the apologee, this is in certain ways distinctly unpleasant, so the parent apology seductively offers an alternative which is way easier – for the parent, that is. Also, it is basically very easy to do. Given the socially superior position of the parent, he or she can choose this approach with little resistance and very little damage (or at least very little apparent damage) done to himself or herself. Finally, on a slightly more positive note, the impetus to help the child improve is fundamental to parenting, and thus what follows after the "but you" could basically be seen as a part of this attempt to help the child improve. No matter how failed or broken the attempt is in this case.

Avoiding the landmine

So, how do you avoid this? Well, you should probably take the advise, David offered when I asked him: Only apologize, if you actually want to apologize, do not conflate the apology and the scolding. A clean scolding is much better than one which is confusingly embedded in an apology. This, at least, allows the child to understand and react to the parent's actual social action. Of course, one might add, the scolding itself is probably a genre that should be used with great caution by parents; but that is a topic for another time.

Until then, remember the devious nature of the "but" in the apology, and remember the particular dangers of the "but you ...". So: Parents, don´t try this at home.

Auto Direct Messages on Twitter. A rant.

There is something inherently contradictory about the auto-generated welcome messages sent out to new followers by some Twitter-accounts. 

A typical one may go like this:

Thanks for following me! I am an educator, a consultant and an activist. I am also the founder of the Democracy School, a theater director and an artist. I speak English and German.

 

And then a link to a homepage.

Being annoyed, but also somewhat curious, I have tried several times to reply approximately like this:

Aaaaah then tell a genre researcher this. Custom messages to new followers annoy me horribly, I have even unfollowed people on that account. I like your twitter-account and I am not going to unfollow over this. But as a researcher I do wonder: What is the social or communicative purpose of the custom message, and what does it achieve. Would you enlighten me with your reflections on this.

 

2. apr.Sendt

As a reply to this inquiry, I get nothing. Zilch, nada, rien, an utter and complete blank.

I think the worst auto-welcome, I ever got, was this one from a reasonably established comedian:

FYI I'm pretty Shameless. If you haven't used Uber yet, we both get a $20 credit if you use code [...] or download Uber from here

 

And then some Uber-code. 

Well, did I follow you to assist with your Uber-bill? I don´t think so. I am quite a staunch supporter of the orderly Danish work market, and thus highly skeptical of a thing like Uber. My reply:

Thanks for the offer. In Denmark, however, Uber's activities are - rightfully I believe - seen as a right wing attack on the worker's rights safeguards protecting the salary and working conditions of ordinary citizens in Denmark. So, I am not taking you up on your offer. I hope for your understanding, and I can see how things might look different from an American perspective with so many fewer safeguards in place.

 

15. nov. 2016Sendt

This, too, went unanswered. I cannot imagine why.

Here is a genre use I simply don´t get. Or at least I don´t get the handling of it. 

I get it, if an account holder is too big or too important to reply to direct messsages. That's fair. I follow J.K. Rowlings on Twitter, but I don´t expect her to reply to a direct message from me. However, she doesn´t send out direct messages either. 

What offends me is, I think, a violation of the basic norms of the letter as a genre. The direct messages-function in Twitter is clearly personal; it is hidden from view, allows for much more extended communications than the 140-character long public tweets, and letters requires active effort to send to people. (Even if that effort is establishing an auto-message.) It is a variation on a mailbox or a chat-function. As such, it invites personal interchange. 

Now, as other genres the letter attributes certain roles to the participants. If you initiate a communication by sending a letter, you are inviting a certain uptake: a reply. And you are, in turn, expected to read it and answer back, should the situation, or your co-correspondent, so require. As the original sender you are, thus, in one sense an applicant asking for the receiver to participate in an exchange. 

So, the violation is that the sender of the direct message ignores the uptake, s/he has invited, and treats the communication as a one-way street. This implies a quite different hierachy: 

The sender is an interesting person, thus allowed to send messages to strangers with only the flimsiest invitation (a click to follow on Twitter). The receiver, however, is nothing of the sort. S/he is so insignificant that even given the obvious invitation to reply inherent in the letter, taking up this invitation in an actual reply does not merit the attention of the sender who, thus, diminshes the receiver to the point of complete insignificance. 

This convoluted hierachy is actually accentuated by the genre's norms, as the supposed equality of communication in the letter, highlights the lack of equality in the actual use of the genre. 

This is obviously failed communication, and a poor use of the genre. All it communicates is condencension: I am interesting, you are not. By consequence, instead of making a favorable impression, this is what you actually get:

However:

I did get one automated welcome message that I liked. A parody account, @QueenCerseiReal, mixing current US politics with a Game of Thrones-world, sent me an auto welcome in character:

Thank you for working with me to Make Westeros Great Again! Retweet and share to help boost the signal and drown out the lying maesters with their FAKE NEWS. #MWGA

 

To me that was part of the act, and for once I perceived it as a nice way to greet me. Thus, I did not dishonor it by returning my somewhat insolent inquiry. What's more, when the person behind the account, whom I still don´t know, found me ranting on Twitter over the messages s/he inquired personally in a direct message whether the auto message had been out of line.

I denied this, but I also took the renewed letter as an invitation to ask about the use of the automated messages and got a very thoughtful reply. Here in a series of direct messages with my short replies omitted:

These aren't technical terms but I think of it as hard and soft engagement - hard engagement in that it's one more click from your account to mine, meaning my stuff is theoretically more likely to show up in your feed because you opened the message and, possibly, responded.

 

So my tweets might be more likely to show up in the "while you were out" etc.

 

Soft engagement in that it's a direct appeal, in character and on message, so if you found me through a recommendation you're more likely to take an actual look at my profile/posting history

 

So with my podcast auto DM, there is a direct call to action - "here is a podcast, here is how to find it"

 

With this it's "in case you followed this when you were drunk, here is a reminder that it exists"

 

Unsurprisingly, the person who answers, even initiates further communication, is also the person who proves capable of reflection. And, as mentioned, this was a parody account, not even somebody marketing themselves.

Thus, the genre had an actual role to play. It just took a role player to know how to play the game of genre well enough to get an actual communication and leave a good impression.

The post was inspired by this article, as well as some twitter exchanges - and a lot of annoyance.

When does a high-impact study make its impact?

The epithome of a high-impact article in my field is Carolyn Miller's "Genre as Social Action" from 1984. It is to a wide extent the center piece of genre research. It is so influential that you cannot simply insert it into an article as "Miller (1984)". You have to call it something along the line of "Miller's groundbreaking/trailblazing/influential/seminal 1984-study". 

You don't write that just to pay homage (though homage is indeed due), but more to demonstrate that you know the field well enough to be aware that this is the study you have to pay homage to. It's sort of a rite of passage. 

Moreover, with too many texts to read and too little time to read them, it is also an excellent shibboleth to protect your time. If a text on genre does not have Miller on its bibliography, it is well-nigh certain that it's not worth your time to read. Miller may be replaced by a solid line-up of other central genre researchers, Freadman, Devitt, Bakhtin, Bazerman, Schryer, and others (see, for instance, this list), but still, there is a kind of vacuum present in a genre research-article that does not somehow quote Miller. 

So, the article is as influential as such things ever get. However, the article's impact wasn't immediate. It would require a thorough bibliometric tracking to trace its full reception history, but insofar as I have been able to determine, "Genre as Social Action" did not conquer the center stage until after the publication of another crucial work, Aviva Freedman and Peter Medway's anthology Genre and the New Rhetoric. It did have quite a lot of happy readers before that, but Freedman and Medway's anthology seems to mark the turning point after which Miller's study had become so crucial it could no longer be simply "Miller (1984)".

So, the question presents itself: When do you know that a study is high-impact? If you measure a study's impact as something taking place within a certain window, how do you know that you actually have the right window? If high-impact is what you are looking for, then to a certain extent you cannot even know when a study is taken up and suddenly gets hurled towards the academic stardom of the "trailblazing" study?

This is particularly relevant since funding bodies, promotion commitees etc will look to promote researcher's who can make an impact, but often this means that anything older than, say five, years, is counted less because it does not reflect the current stature of the researcher, and its impact is already in the past. 

But don´t trust the administrators. (Quoth the administrator). Research itself seems to be a much more patient endeavor, and in particular within the Humanities the possibility always remains that somewhere a long time ago, somebody wrote just that article that will blaze your trail, break your ground, or be your seminal influence. 

Oh, and if you are interested in narratives, I did a slightly backwards, literary homage to Miller here. 

Rhetorical genre studies for literary PhDs

A very learned friend just now asked me a pertient question of cross-disciplinary research communication. She asked:

If you were giving a reading on our rhetorical view of genres for literary doctoral students, what would you consider giving them?

That is indeed a very good question. There is no standard text and no standard curriculum to work from. So what would my curriculum look like. Leaving aside any of my own texts that might apply, this is my suggestion for a minimal reading list:

Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). The Problem of Speech Genres (V. W. McGee, Trans.). In C. Emerson & M. Holquist (Eds.), Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (pp. 60-102). Austin: University of Texas Press.

Bazerman, C. (2002). What Activty Systems Are Literary Genres Part of? Readerly/Writerly Texts, 10(1 & 2), 97-106.

Devitt, A. (2000). Integrating Rhetorical and Literary Theories of Genre. College English, 6, 698-718.

Devitt, A. (2009). Re-fusing form in genre study. In J. Giltrow & D. Stein (Eds.), Genres in the Internet (pp. 27–47). Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Freadman, A. (2002). Uptake. In R. Coe, L. Lingard, & T. Teslenko (Eds.), The Rhetoric and Ideology of Genre (pp. 39-53). Cresskill Hampton Press Inc.

Miller, C. (1984). Genre as Social Action. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70(2), 151-167.

Miller, C. (2017). "Where do Genres Come From". In C. Miller & A. R. Kelly (Eds.), Emerging Genres in New Media Environments (pp. 1-34). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Paré, A. (2002). Genre and Identity: Individuals, Institutions, and Ideology. In R. Coe, L. Lingard, & T. Teslenko (Eds.), The Rhetoric and Ideology of Genre (pp. 57-71). Cresskill: Hampton Press Inc.

The list is made specifically with literary PhDs in mind. There are three main considerations involved:

1. I want my students to read texts central to the RGS-tradition
2. I want to connect to knowledge they already have
3. I want them to find their reading relevant and to stay interested

So why these texts? Here are a few of the reasons for each.

Bakhtin's text is the only text in the batch with a claim to literary studies. And his name is known to literary scholars. So it's a good way to connect the two fields. There are, of course, reasons why this text has had a long history in RGS. It is immensely inspiring and full of starting points for discussions of central points in RGS; genre use, genre variance, interlocking of genre, the lingustic basis for genre etc etc. 

Bazerman would definitely be represented by another text if I were to just teach RGS, and not RGS to literary PhDs. He, or at least one of his peers, (Russel or Andersen come to mind), should be here to represent the sociologically oriented side of RGS. I choose this one for the literary PhDs, because it deals with literary subject matter, is a quick read, and will annoy them constructively.

Devitt is the RGS researcher who has engaged most prominently with literary studies. Again: other texts might be more viable if I were to just teach RGS, but for literary PhDs I choose these two. The first, because it brilliantly represents the potential for dialogue between literary studies and RGS. (And also displays an actual interest in literature.) The second, challenges some of the basic assumptions in RGS, in a progressive and constructive way. This will accomodate some of the more critical views that a literary PhD would be likely to hold in approaching RGS, and thus open up the conversation

Freadman is quite a headache. You can´t do contemporary RGS without her concept of "uptake". And to do RGS proper you´d want to have PhDs read "Anyone for Tennis?". But getting a grip on "uptake" is hard enough, without having to actually grasp that text. The 2002-article is, of course, less of a heavyweight in terms of influence and originality, but it is much more accessible.

Miller, yeah you have to do Miller. It's just not RGS without "Genre as Social Action". So, grap those recurrent situations for a rhetorically sound definition of humble de facto genre. Then, send a loving thought to Campbell and Jamieson, and go do some social action. The 2017 text is interesting, not just because it's excellent, but also because I have had several literary colleagues recommend it to me already, so has already struc a bell with some literary reseachers. Moreover, I personally like it because Miller returns a little bit to one of my own favorite books on genre, Alastair Fowler's ultra-literary Kinds of Literature which IMHO is long overdue for a renaissance.

Finally, Paré's text. It is one of a batch of texts that work with the dangers inherent in the ideological nature of genre; the way genres control how we think and how we can act, even if this does not reflect reality, or our own best interests. There are several other options on this point, but I like this one, not just because it is a pleasant read, but also because it is very very sharp. 

So that would be my bid. Other suggestions are welcome.