Brexit Genres

I am supposedly on Twitter to discuss genre research (my twitterhandle is indeed  @genreresearch). However, as a huge fan of the EU, I have been lured into spending quite a bit of time hanging around the #FBPE-crowd and discussing Brexit instead. 

Or is that indeed "instead"? A central finding of genre studies is that genre is well-nigh omnipresent in human culture, cognition, and communication. Thus, we think, react, and act in genre patterns, and we all have a surprising aptitude for understanding and using genre. Thus, if you participate in the Brexit debate it may never have entered your mind that you are constantly using and discussing genre. But you are.

Allow me to show you.

At the center of the Brexit debate (itself a genre) is a thing called a "referendum". That's a genre. Moreover, this particular referendum had as its particular character that it was an "advisory referendum". A variant genre or, if you will, subgenre to the referendum. Now, as you know, the fact that this was an "advisory referendum" meant that a number of safeguards connected to stonger referendums (for example a demand for a supermajority) were not present. Had such safeguards been in place, Brexit wouldn´t be on its way

However, and this is, as you still know very well, just not in those terms, the result of the advisory referendum result (another genre) was taken up, not as a narrow win (yet another genre), but as an expression (genre) of a metaphysical entity called The Will of The People. This nonewithstanding that there were critical problems connected to several crucial genres in connection with the advisory referendum. One being that one of the campaigns (genre) leading up to the referendum were dominated by lies (yet another genre). Another genre which should ideally have played a crucial role to both campaigns, the "expert testimony", was aggressively discounted beforehand, and never got to play its necessary part in enligtening the decision of the voters.

Then, of course, there was the hidden asymmetry of the "voting ballot" (yep that's a genre too) which displayed to completly unequal opportunities, one well-known and stable (remain) another almost wholly unknown and highly dramatic (leave) as if they were similar.

And this is just the beginning. The resulting "advise", taken up as a "decision", gave rise to "negotiations", and "debates", including (far too few) "parliamentary debates". Into this came "newspaper headlines" and "articles" leading to, among other things "death threats". Leading, of course, to the rise of a number of "SoMe interchanges" which helped form "hashtags" (yep, a genre). So basically y'all. While we are FBPE-ing, we are also acting in accordance with a set of genre expectations.

This post is a genre-reconfiguration. It was originally a Twitter thread. You can see the thread here. After the thread I have added a number of specimen of other, more special genres I have found in the Brexit debate. Check it out.