New article about embedded genre

 Sometimes, just sometimes, a piece you publish has a special meaning to you, and it's hard to explain why. My newest article is is such a piece. The title doesn't exactly exhale enthusiasm: "Genres Inside Genres. A Short Theory of Embedded Genre".

Why is it of special importance to me? Because publishing it is a bit of a leap of faith. I got the basic idea for the article well-nigh a decade ago, and I always thought that is was a good idea, but I didn't really know how to get it right. So, for several years I simply did not write it, and once I started writing it I think I fretted over every single sentence. It did not come easy. Several years ago I had a first, finished version. But publish it? Aaaaagh, isn't that a bit much? I left it in my drawer for years. I took a deep breath and showed it to Anthony Paré who is possibly the friendlies of all genre researchers - and genre researchers are one of the friendliest groups you'll ever meet. Alas, he is not just friendly. He is also sharper than a razor's edge, and without being in the least negative, he left it with major holes.

Several years of further fretting ensued.

Deep breath. I started teaching it and used it for conference papers. There it fell into the hands of first Anne Freadman, then  Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher—both masters of their trade. After several back-and-forths - and, you guessed it, a lot more fretting - it finally found a fairly usable form, and I submitted it to Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie where it fell into the hands of the great Kim M. Mitchell.  And after the usual bumpy ride through peer review. Here it is. And looking like an actual piece of research, too.

So why did I fret?

—Well, it's a piece of pure genre theory.

Why is that frightening?

First, it means that you don't have a data set. Usually you have a good clear test for whether you analyses are valid: If they are supported by the data, they are valid, if not: try again. Pure theory has examples, sure, but they can be cherry picked in so many ways, many of them unconscious. And they are there to illustrate not to validate the theory. Without a data set, you have both feet solidly planted in thin air. Several times along the way, I considered adding a data set, but I never could find one that didn't skewer the central argument. It was Pure Theory or it was nothing.

Second, there was very little done on the topic before me. It's in Bakhtin, who is a genius, albeit sometimes a problematic one, it's in Frow's introduction to genre studies, and he is very very good—and much better than me. But I didn't fully agree with either, and beyond that, there was very little to build on. Fret-worthy. So I had to try and build a theory from precious few building blocks. The more reason to fret about whether you've built it in any way right.

Third, being theory the range of data-sets to which it applies, is staggering. Some of these sets it will fit like a foot in a glove. Also, some of these data sets will reveal holes in the theory, and they will require you to reformulate the theory—sometimes fundamentally.

Did I fret about that? You bet I did!

But here it is. And it may not be much, and it may not be the best possible rendering (actually, it surely isn't). But it's there, and it's mine.

Obviously, I fret a bit about the fact, that I couldn't be prouder.

But not too much.

Threats, not-threats, genre, and the Strange Case of the Suspended Bretwalda

We always understand genres, Anne Freadman has usefully explained, as alike, but different from, other genres. Adding to this, a central feature of genre use is its dialogicity (from Mikhail Bakhtin, obviously): uses of genre arise as responses to, or uptakes of, previous genre use, and in turn try to secure what kind (genre) of response it will get; in almost all cases without ever being able to fully secure it beforehand. There's always the free action of the next agent to contend with.

The strange paths of academic life have led me to play a small part in the study of threats as carried out by Forensic Linguistics; and alongside good colleagues, Marie Bojsen-Møller, Tanya Karoli Christensen and Amy J. Devitt, I have even published a research article about threats and genre. 

Forensic Linguistics addresses criminal threats, a highly pertinent subject—which is, alas, of increasing importance. However, there's another side to threats which is not as important to Forensic Linguistics but interesting and relevant in other contexts. Many of these other kinds of threats are legal, and some of them are even useful—or fun. But I get ahead of myself.

Threats, research states (the references are in the article above), consist of three elements. 

• Futurity
• Sender's responsibility
• Recipient's harm

As in "I (sender) shall (futurity) do (responsibility) this bad thing (harm) to you (recipient)". The purpose of the threat is intimidation. There may be other purposes, but this one is overriding. A threat is usually made illegal by the character of the harm it threatens to cause. If someone threatens you with public rebuke, it may be unpleasant, but it's not usually illegal; if they threaten you with a beating, it's illegal, because the beating is.

As a genre researcher originating from the field of literature I've been interested in how rhetorical genres are recontextualized and used as elements in fictions. This goes for threats too. Fictive threats confirm to other threat except for one thing: They don't exist; or rather they exist as parts of a fiction and as such the proposed harm is also fictive. Thus, they don't really intimidate anyone outside the fiction, or at least they are not meant to, and reporting them to various authorities is a failure of genre. Let us call them not-threats for the sake of the distinction and recalling Freadman's distinct idea of the not-statement which, to be meaningful, must imply a similarity as well as a difference. Thus, it is meaningful to say that a refrigerator is not a deep freezer, but it is almost never meaningful to say that it is not a rhinoceros—true as the statement may be, it conveys very little information. 

One more (well-known) piece of information about threats: They are prevalent on social media; very often as part of a pattern of abuse and harassment, and thus usually reportable per Terms & Services on the various SoMe platforms. Also making threats will usually get you kicked off the site—unless, of course, you happen to be a patently useless American president—because then you need to actually attempt (AND fail) to overthrow Western democracy in order to get shut down.

All of this brings me to Blate. This is his portrait.

A really good-looking helmet, would you not say? And also an account on twitter—or a series of accounts as you shall see.

I don't actually know who the operator of the accounts is, and it really doesn't matter. Blate, in his various instantiations, is a person on twitter pretending to be not a secret agent but a Bretwalda, that is an old Saxon king from around the 8th century. Aside from some sharp, but fairly centrist, political commentary, Blate engages in behavior fitting of a fairly badly informed and definitely not very civilized Saxon lord. He fights Danes, in fact many of my interactions with him are about precisely this. Sometimes he resists Danish occupation of English territory, The Danelaw, or anachronistically shells Copenhagen (as in 1807). He also lumps Swedes, Norwegians and Finns as "Danes" while he is at it and calls his (equally fictive) housecarls "TO THE SHIELDWALL" when he sees a "Danish" flag; even if it's white with a light blue cross. Also, he has a long standing battle with another twitter account concerning the right order of jam and cream on a scone. They are approaching 500 almost consecutive days of battle as I write this. The nickname "Blate", btw, is derived from one of his earlier forms where his twitter handle was @BlatantLie. 

Not recognizing him as a role-playing account is a failure of genre. 

Enter threats. Or rather not-threats. Befitting a warfaring, somewhat uncivilized, Bretwalda he frequently threatens to behead people. Now, given that he is a fictive character acting as Saxon lord, this is hardly very intimidating. And his twitter-correspondents all expect to be challenged to a duel to the death by axe or by scone. Formally speaking, the statements fit the threat as genre; as in "I Bretwalda (sender) shall (futurity) do (responsibility) the beheading thing by scone or battle-axe (harm) to you (recipient)". However, the point isn't intimidation (or rather: the intimidation is fictive), so all his correspondents invite his threats on purpose and take them up as lovely occasions for witticism. These are not-threats. Taking them as threats is a failure of genre.

And yet, SoMe being what it is, sometimes it happens. Somebody, possibly many people, stop by and report the not-threats as threats to twitter. The uptake transforms the not-threat to a threat, even though no one was ever threatened, much less intimidated. And the Bretwalda, just being an long-dead Saxon lord and not a criminal American president, gets suspended. This, of course, is a failure of Twitter's safety team in interpreting the full communicative action and context, the full genre use, of the not-threats, but given just how many reports they have to handle I can see how it happens. 

And Blate comes back. Always with his beautiful helmet and his quirky demeanor to do battle against the Danes and for jam before cream on a scone. Until the next time someone fails to recognize the distinction and interplay between two genres that are alike yet so so different. The threat and the not-threat.

Genre in the Climate Debate - longer presentation

In the previous post I worked through a presentation of the upcoming De Gruyter-anthology on Genre in the Climate Debate which I have co-edited with Christel Sunesen. With help from good friends over at Twitter, it came out fairly ok. I also need to write a longer presentation. Below is my first full draft. Comments welcome. 

Benefits

•  The volume establishes a dynamic interplay between two high-level research fields: humanistic climate studies and genre research
• The volume offer an understanding of the way the structural and ideological issues in the debate over anthropogenic climate change are determined by the genres in play in the debate.
•  The volume continues key developments in contemporary genre research, in particular the use of genre in political campaigning and the uptake of genre information and action across genre systems.

Aims and Scope

The greatest conundrum concerning anthropogenic climate change may prove to be in the humanities and the social sciences. How is it even possible that highly exigent information for which overwhelming evidence exists does not make an immediate and strong impact on ideologies, policies, and life practices across the globe? This volume offers an intriguing and enlightening new approach to the the climate debate by taking it as a question of genre. Genres are the cultural categories that structure human understanding and communication, and genre research therefore offers a central key to unlocking the conundrum. From a genre perspective, if there is one thing the climate debate demonstrates, it is the inertia inherent in genre use. Patterns of understanding and interpretation once established seem to carry on even when they have long outlived their usefulness.

However, it is also evident that uses of genre can work to change this inertia.Genres play a vital role in human interaction, as we use them to learn, express ourselves, and to act. How individual actors utilize or manipulates genres determines to what extent knowledge of climate change spreads from the scientific community to the public, how it is debated, and to what extent it leads to positive action. 

 Authors

Amy Devitt, Charles Bazerman, Josh Kuntzman, Graham Smart, Matthew Falconer, Sune Auken, Mette Møller, Esben Bjerggaard Nielsen, Felix Paulsen, Mary Jo Reiff, Anis Bawarshi, Ashley Rose Melenbacher, Brad Melenbacher.

Three curious genre features of the American TV-series

 Genres are strongly habitual. As we learn to understand or perform a genre, we also learn to accept any number of conventions as normal that may or may not be rational or true. These things become naturalized to the user to such a degree that he or she can move through the genre repeatedly without ever stopping to reflect on their genre-bound conventionality. Here are three such conventions from a genre my long life as a father of small children has given me amble opportunity to experience: the American TV-series of sufficiently unchallenging character to be consumable when very tired.

The “as you know” conversation

Being about interesting people, and not just ordinary dofuses like you and me, the American TV-series frequently moves in environments permeated by experts. Given that the field in question will be a driving force in the plot of individual episodes and longer story arches, some minimal knowledge of the field is required. However, since the viewer, being in fact an ordinay dofus like you and me, cannot be expected to actually understand the field or fields of expertise involved, there is the “as you know”-conversation.

In this genre of conversation, two experts with a deep, shared, field-specific knowledge will engage in an exchange of 101-level knowledge about it. This conversation will be initiated by one of them saying, “as you know …”, or a variation thereof, to her colleague. The other person will then be nodding with encouragement and otherwise look interested in the extended explanation of stuff she knows already, and might even pitch in with a few pieces of entry-level information herself.

Curious addition: House MD omitted the "as you know" conversation from its genre register. By consequence, it's diagnostic discussions are fast-paced, energetic, agonistic, and well-nigh impossible to follow for a lay person. I love them to death, of course.

The strangely – and badly – kept secret

Contrasting genre interpretation.

In a Russian novel, if a character has personal information or even conjecture that should obviously be kept from her significant other, she will immediately storm into a dinner party where her significant other is present and shout it in his face, adding, “you are a bad person Ivan Ivanovitj, a bad and LOW person. You disgust me!” The ensuing chaos from the untimely reveal will then take up the rest of the novel.

However, in an American TV-series, if a character has personal information that should obviously be revealed immediately to his significant other, he will for some unfathomable reason decide that it is imperative that the information is kept secret. I mean, why tell your significant other that you have applied for a job in another state, have discovered a child from a liaison 12 years ago, or has been diagnosed with a crippling degenerative disorder? The secret will then obviously not be kept but instead revealed at the worst possible moment. The ensuing chaos from the aberrant decision to keep it secret in the first place, will then take up several episodes in a story arch.

The P….-moment

If you are a seventeenth century person, the thing to be is “virtuous”. If you are a modern day researcher or research application, the thing to be is “excellent”. However, if you are a character in an American TV-series, the pinnacle of achievement is to make somebody “proud”. Thus, the P….-moment. The moment occurs at emotional high point of a series. It includes high-strung feelings, and declarations about making people proud. It is expressed in sentences like,

·        “I have always been proud of you”,

·        “All I ever wanted, was to make you proud”,

·        “You have made me so proud”,

·        “Your father would have been so proud of you, if he had seen you today”, or

·        Your uncle Ben would have been so proud of you, if he had seen you today”.

(Ok, that last one is Spider Man, obviously, but you get the idea.)

Apparently, making a significant other “proud” counts as the ultimate validation of a person’s being. It means that you are an excellent person in possession of all the necessary virtues to make your life and your contribution to the world meaningful. The P.…-moment activates that validation as a tension in the plot (the “all I ever wanted”, variety), or as its crowning moment and concluding release.

All these genre features are, of course, intimately connected to the plot. And—as you know—it has been known  at least since Aristotle that the plot is at the core of a narrative text. They are all there to enable the action of the plot, as drivers, informers, motivators, and if you see them as plot devices more than anything, and recognize the enormity of the task of establishing any dynamism in a plot structure that has to move through often more than 100-episodes, they will look much less absurd. At least in this case, there’s a method to the genre convention.

I still want to know about the P....-thing, though. Why proud? What is the cultural significance of the word? Why do American characters need to make people proud more than European characters do?

Understanding genre. New research article

My newest article on genre research is out now and available for download. The article tries to reach a new audience through a fairly new Chinese university journal: Journal of Zhejiang International Studies University. So it is adorned with Chinese which I cannot read at all, but adore intensely with my dull Westerner's eyes. Also, it contains what may be the anecdote of a lifetime for me. Read it and weep.

The abstract for the article reads like this:

The article serves as an introduction to the state-of-the-art in contemporary genre research. It aims to mediate between genre research and scholars working in with genre in other disciplines by laying out six basic tenets of genre research. The article thus describes 1) how genres are almost omnipresent in culture, 2) how they unite regulation and innovation; 3) how they combine to form larger patterns including other genres; 4) how genres are connected in time; 5) how interpretation through genre is tacit and rarely understood as generic interpretation; and finally 6) how our perception of genres tends to naturalize them, thus leading to the question whether teaching genre is a conservative measure whereby the teacher, knowingly or unknowingly, naturalizes existing ideologies and power structures to the students. Drawing on these insights, the second, and shorter, part of the article, exemplifies the role of genre in a concrete social exchange between the author and the West Copenhagen Police. It shows how the participants in the exchange draw on extensive genre competencies without having to reflect upon them. The article closes by presenting some of the consequential and wide-reaching perspectives involved in genre research.

I hope, you will enjoy reading the article. I worked a lot with it. It should be a fairly smooth read. Anyway, you can download it here and see for yourself.

Eminent women in genre research

For a pastor's wife such as myself, one of the great and enduring advantages of working in genre research is the pervasive influence of a number of excellent female scholars. Indeed, genre research is to a very large extent defined by this powerful line-up of eminent women. I have a deep admiration for scholars such as Carolyn Miller, Amy Devitt, Anne Freadman, Ashley Rose Melenbacher, Mary Jo Reiff, Catherine Schryer, Janet Gilthrow, Carol Berkenkotter, and many many more.

The term "defined" in the above paragraph marks the role of these researchers precisely. In my first draft of this blog post I wrote that the field was "dominated" by them, but on reflection it struck me that the field was, in fact anything but dominated; it was indeed defined. The framework of existing genre research depends on the work of these researchers. It is unthinkable without them. The rest of us live and breathe in their intellectual world. Are men involved in this framework? Yes of course. Names? Sure: Swales, Bazerman, Paré, Bhatia, Medway, Bawarshi, Perkins, Smart. But that doesn't in the very least diminish the defining power of the work of the excellent scholars mentioned earlier. Also, it is worth noting that the defining power of excellent researchers is the gift that keeps on giving. If I have ever made, or will ever make, an actual contribution to genre research it will be because these scholars taught me and defined my thinking.

A few links to earlier posts on this blog to show how this is basically what I live and breathe as a genre researcher. Here first my acknowledgment (or if you will: hagiography) of the best genre blogger around. Unsurprisingly, that person is a woman, Amy Devitt. Then, my reflections on high impact studies. The text? Carolyn Miller's "Genre as Social Action" (1984). If you know the first thing about genre research you will know that there are no actual competitors for the position of "most influential genre study". The crown belongs to Miller. Final exhibit is a suggested reading list in "Rhetorical genre studies for literary PhDs". A selection of eigth excellent texts. Five are written by women.

So, is this me being a feminist? Nope. I aspire to be one (my blog-bio says that I am " Recovering mansplainer, wannabe feminist"), but that is besides the point. This is me being a genre researcher. And as a genre researcher I depend upon the work of women. The three studies I quote the most is one written by Carolyn Miller and two written by Anne Freadman. The researcher I quote the broadest is Amy Devitt. Because I work in a research field that is defined by these researchers. And lucky me—because their work opens up so many perspectives for me to pursue, and so many insights for me to enjoy.

This blog post was originally written as a twitter thread to mark the International Women's Day, 2018. The thread can be found here.

Landmark Essays on Rhetorical Genre Studies

Two of my scholarly heroes, Amy Devitt and Carolyn Miller have joined forces and edited a volume of core texts from the dominant movement in genre research called Rhetorical Genre Studies; with a few small excursions to other, but strongly related, approaches to genre.

The book, Landmark Essays on Rhetorical Genre Studies has been given the following presentation on the publisher's homepage:

Landmark Essays on Rhetorical Genre Studies gathers major works that have contributed to the recent rhetorical reconceptualization of genre. A lively and complex field developed over the past 30 years, rhetorical genre studies is central to many current research and teaching agendas. This collection, which is organized both thematically and chronologically, explores genre research across a range of disciplinary interests, but with a specific focus on rhetoric and composition. With introductions by the co-editors to frame and extend each section, this volume helps readers understand and contextualize both the foundations of the field and the central themes and insights that have emerged. It will be of particular interest to students and scholars working on topics related to composition, rhetoric, professional and technical writing, and applied linguistics.

The choice of texts is also present on the homepage. Here is the table of content as rendered on the publisher's homepage:

Acknowledgements

Introduction

 Section 1 Foundations

Aristotle, On Genre (On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, Book I, Ch. 3)

Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, "Form and Genre in Rhetorical Criticism: An Introduction" (1978)

Carolyn R. Miller, "Genre as Social Action" (1984)

M. M. Bakhtin, "The Problem of Speech Genres" (1986)

John M. Swales, "A Working Definition of Genre" (1990)

Amy J. Devitt, "Generalizing about Genre: New Conceptions of an Old Concept" (1993)

Section 2 Systems and Interactions

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, "Antecedent Genre as Rhetorical Constraint" (1975)

Charles Bazerman, "Systems of Genres and the Enactment of Social Intentions" (1994)

Anne Freadman, "Uptake" (2002)

Section 3 Culture, Ideology, Critique

Catherine F. Schryer, "Genre Time/Space: Chronotopic Strategies in the Experimental Article" (1999)

Anis S. Bawarshi, "The Genre Function" (2000)

Anthony Paré, "Genre and Identity: Individuals, Institutions, and Ideology" (2002)

Section 4 Teaching

Aviva Freedman, "Show and Tell? The Role of Explicit Teaching in the Learning of New Genres" (1993)

Sunny Hyon, "Genre in Three Traditions: Implications for ESL" (1996)

Elizabeth Wardle, "’Mutt Genres’ and the Goal of FYC: Can We Help Students Write the Genres of the University?" (2009)

Index

The ambition  expressed in the description is completely to the point, and the selection of texts is a full roster of neo-classics—except, of course, Aristotle whose is merely a classic without any "neo" added. 

The only text here I don´t know beforehand is the very last one, but looking it up I find that it has a full  256 citations on Google Scholar which is fairly impressive, so I shall make myself acquainted with it at once. 

I notice in passing that the anthology has a four-item overlap with my list of RGS-studies for literary PhD students (Bakhtin, Miller, Freadman, Paré), and that no author present on my list is absent from Miller & Devitt's anthology. Obviously, I like the book for that. Personally, I would have switched Devitt's text for her 1991 article on the genre use of tax accountants because it corresponds so well with the 1994 text by Bazerman. But that's probably a personal preference, and the choice here is perfectly viable. Anyway, to each her own.

I don´t need to read the book to know that the choice of texts, the weight of the editors, and the scope of the volume makes this a well-nigh ideal reader of classic core texts in genre research. That it leaves off at 2009 is perfectly understandable. 

Of course, if you want to be completely up to speed in genre research you have to add later texts. But this is not the ambition of the present volume. And even if that had been the ambition it would be well-nigh impossible to pick the core text with so little distance in time and you would get an overlap with several of the important volumes of genre research that have been published since 2009. So, the cut-off is prudent.

In conclusion: if you want to know about genre research this is the book to buy. Incidentally, every text is itself a pleasure to read, so Landmark Essays on Rhetorical Genre Studies won´t even scare the academic bejesus out of you, just make you very much smarter very fast. Do not handle with caution. Dive in. Enjoy!

(Hey, reading this hagiography you'd think somebody paid me to write this. If only they would. But nobody paid me anything. The book is just going to be that good.)

Genres, a tentative definition

Genres are flexible and versatile cultural categories structuring human understanding and communication. On the one hand, they are strongly regulative, but on the other hand, they allow considerable freedom on the part of both the utterer and the recipient. Genres combine to form larger patterns through social and organizational structuring into genre sets, systems, hierarchies, and chains, and through creative uptakes on the part of individual genre users. 

Genre, Persuasion and Truth in Public Opinion

It is a commonplace in contemporary genre studies that genres are something akin to omnipresent in human culture, communication and cognition, and, thus, that we as social beings learn, think and act through genres. (More on the basic tenets of genre studies here). In research, this is usually attributed to Carolyn Miller's groundbreaking article "Genre as Social Action" (1984 - more about it here). So, given that, we must expect any large scale campaign to influence public opinion to be deeply dependent on genres. This includes any participation in a large scale debate like the UK-Brexit debate (on genre in the Brexit debate here).

However, it is worth noticing, that genre use is never automatic. There is always an individual element involved. Amy Devitt puts it this way: "genres [...] live and breathe through individual instances and interactions across and within genres". (2009, 39) So, coming from the stance of genre research we would expect to find many genres creatively used, when we search for influences on public opinon.

To this we have to add one more point: Genres are regulators too, They enable particular ways of presenting any given topic, and they allow for different variations and deviances from what would usually be considered normal communication. The vagueness of that last sentence calls into question, of course, whether such a thing as "normal" communication even exists; in particular, given that I have already said that all communication is involved with genre.

But I digress. To understand what is meant by the claim that genres allow for different variations in communication, look at the slogan in the picture below.

The slogan, encountered on the central shopping street in Copenhagen, "Strøget" is on the front of - you guessed it - an Emporio Armani shop. It juxtaposes two statments "Everyone has a different story" and "Everyone wears Emporio Armani". Interestingly, the two statements may look alike, but there is a quite crucial distinction. The first statement is obviously true, the second is obviously not true. Not everone wears Armani. If for no other reason then simply because that stuff is expensive. Even if it is the cheaper Armani brand. In fact, the point of the slogan is probably to highlight how Emporio Armani is a more price-accessible brand than Armani proper.

Does the not-true claim then mean that Emporio Armani is lying in the slogan? Not by a long shot. The genre is "commercial slogan", and it is known that the truth felicity conditions of such a slogan are different than those of other genres. So you may blame the slogan if it causes you to make bad choices in couture purchases, if the stuff is overpriced, or if the product advertised is of bad quality. But claiming that the slogan lies by saying that everone wears Emporio Armani is silly.

Moving from this back to a parallel example from attempts to influence public opinion. A very obvious example of a genre used to influence public opnion is the election or referendum promise. Now, it is obvious that the election or referendum promise is social action: It is a form of persuasion. It is also obvious that it moves between norms and creativity/variation.

The promise is normative. It can only be effective, if the voters believe that it carries a certain weight. And it has to be formed in accordance with specific genre norms in order for the voters to even recognize it as a promise. At the same time the promise is creative. It has to be new, it has to inspire a feeling strong enough to make voters vote, and it has to distinguish the person or movement making the promise from the competition. If you successfully combine the two you get a rhetorically effective promise; one which acts in the situation, one which makes voters follow you.

However, the question remains: When can an election or referendum promise be said to be fraudulent; be said to be a lie or a manipulation? In particular, since in one sense they are all manipulations: they try to make us do what the utterer want. There is no free pass like the one, I just awarded the commercial slogan. If you say something you know to be false, in an election or referendum promise, you are indeed lying.

However, there are still complications. Let me stick to just one. Those of us who live in parliamentary systems based on proportional representation, rather than on first-past-the-post, know that minority governments or coalition governments are quite common. Single-party majority governments are hard to achieve. Thus, you must compromise, and some of the compromises WILL affect the promises you made during your election campaign. And - please note - this is not lying. This is a trade-off, and an intelligent electorate (oh does such a unicorn even exist?) will know that.

Why is it not lying? Because the electorate did not give the party the political strenght to follow its promise all the way through. Let me illustrate: An amazone captain tells her general "I will conquer this city if you give me 10.000 able bodied warriors". The general gives her 5.000, she attacks, but fails to conquer the city. But the general is not entitled to say: "You are a liar. You promised me to conquer the city."

Back to politics: This does not make the election or referendum promise void after the referendum. It merely sets the question: When can a politician or a political movement feasibly be said to have followed through on a campaign promise? Often, the answer must be case by case. But I think it could be feasibly said that an election promise is false/the promiser is lying if the promise contradicts established knowledge that was available to the promiser at the time the promise was made. Also, the promiser can prove false if the electorate gives her or him the political strength to fulfill the promise, nothing radical happens to block the promise, and the promise is still not acted coherently upon.

So, for instance, the infamous BrexitBus-promise (during the UK Brexit referendum campaign 2016 (see above) fails obviously on the first point. Not only was it known that the 350 million was far too high, it was also known at the time that the gain would be more than offset by losses on other counts. Thus, Emporio Armani may not have lied, but Boris Johnson sure did. The information was available and you had to be dumber than a bag of hammers, or seriously mislead, by false promises to buy into the assumptions underpinning the promise.

A promise which after-the-fact exposed a false promiser, was the recurrent claim before the election that "leave" did not imply that the UK would leave the Single Market. It is absolutely fair to say that you became what is known in the Brexit debate as a RemainerNow (a person who voted to leave the EU, but has since changed her mind) because UK-politicians failed this promise by working actively to take the country out of the single market and even claiming that this was the will of that aberrant metaphysical entity The Will of The People.

So, indeed, genre - as well as our interpretation and use of it - plays a crucial role in the shaping of public opinion. Though few reflect upon it, we are actually quite strong genre interpreters and genre users (read more here).
This post, like the preceeding one, is based on a twitter thread. Find the original thread here.

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.

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.

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.