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.

Carolyn Miller, Anne Freadman, some responses, and the joy of theory

 Theory for theory's sake is usually the sole realm of pure blooded nerds within a given research field. Thus, much as I may go on about genre and much as I will insert a discussion of genre into well-nigh everything, I could not come up with sufficient students for a full-on genre theory course if my life depended on it. To make matters worse, there is at present no dedicated journal for genre research, so the field has an uneasy existence publication wise—having to recurrently insert itself into scholarly debates about other topics. It's doable, but it requires a fair bit of intellectual dexterity and all but excludes genre theory. Publication wise, Genre research thus exists mainly in individual articles and in topical anthologies. Many are excellent, but genre theory has a hard life fitting into these formats.

So, it's a rare and treasured moment when you get the chance to dive into genre theory with other researchers. The Canadian Journal for Studies in Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie graciously hosted a section of genre theory in its most recent issue (here), and I was even more graciously invited to participate. The occasion was an article by Anne Freadman (here) containing a response to Carolyn Miller's pioneering study "Genre as Social Action" (1984) (here). 

If you are in the know about genre research, you'll see at once that this is one of the most interesting meetings you could ever establish. Both researchers belong in the category, I once called "Eminent women in genre research" and for good reason. Miller's article is usually seen as at least one of the central starting points for contemporary genre research. In my own article I try to frame her influence like this:

Carolyn Miller’s (1984) “Genre as Social Action,” the primary topic—or target—of Anne Freadman’s brilliant and thought-provoking article, holds a special place in genre research. If I pick up an unknown piece of research on genre, the first thing I do is look for Miller’s article in the bibliography. If it is not there, the text in my hand will probably be of little value to my work for lack of orientation. (161)

 Anne Freadman on her side is a later influence, but it's not unfair to say that the last decade or so has seen a meteoric rise in her reception. If you read contemporary genre research her  seminal concept "Uptake" is everywhere. So, if we see this as battle, it is a Clash of the (Genre) Titans. The exchange is everything you could possibly hope for. Freadman lucid, friendly, unexpected (as you would, paradoxically, expect from her) and completely to the point. Miller on her side (here) is brief, clear, and very good at knowing when to hold and when to fold. 

This is all brilliant. I've known for quite a while that the exchange would come out, and I've been terribly excited to read the whole thing. But the Canadian Journal for Studies in Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie knew what they had and chose to go over and beyond, so they added three more articles—each a commentary on Freadman's original article. The two other commentators, Janet Githrow and Charles Bazerman, are both forces to be recognized  in genre research with a long line of brilliant publications to their name.  I'm not going to say very much about their contributions at this point as I'm only beginning to figure out what their place in the debate is. Suffice it to say that both contributions display the intellectual rigor  and breadth of vision, I've come to expect from the authors.  I will learn a lot from both, once I get my head fully around them (Gilthrow here, and Bazerman here as well as mine here). It is worth noting that we were only given Freadman's article, not Miller's response, and I think that was a prudent move because it took away the urge to adjudicate between the two.

Be that as it may. The whole section now reads not "just" like an exchange between two brilliant researchers, but as an exploration of the foundation and scope of genre research. There is food for thought for many a year ahead. I cannot congratulate  the Canadian Journal for Studies in Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie enough for this section. 

Sacred Eating as Genre. An appreciation

My esteemed colleague Dr Meredith J. C. Warren has published a fascinating book on a genre called "hierophagy". Here, for your enjoyment and (hopefully) your enlightenment is a post on the book and its use of genre. It is written from an interdisciplinary genre research perspective.

The reference in—sort of—APA 6th:

Warren, M. J. C. (2019). Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature (Vol. 14). Atlanta: SBL Press.

And the cover. Not too sexy, but you know this is how these things look:

Let me add, that I really like Dr. Warren a lot. She is both a brilliant scholar and a very nice and energetic human being. I am a better researcher and a better person for knowing her. So, do not expect anything particularly belligerent. Today, I am not in the business of harsh criticism, but in the business of being extremely interested and making remarks to a piece of very fine scholarship. In other words, this is as much fun as academia gets, and I am here to enjoy it, not stomp upon it. I like having academic fun. I am just that kind of guy.

What is "hierophagy"? The book defines it as "specialized, sacred eating" (1). The book chooses it's topic from "Ancient Mediterranean Literature" with a clear focus in the Bible but also with a number of texts from the surrounding historical landscape. The basic idea is that somebody in a text consumes some item of food with an otherworldly origin (note that, apparently a book can be food; at least it can be eaten in a sacred way). The hierophagic eating transforms the eater and establishes a connection between the eater and the otherworldly realm. Persephone consumes food from Hades and is bound to the realm; John eats a scroll and has divine visions.

So, what is the genre angle?

Well, the hierophagic meal is itself a genre. It's a recurrent form of action with a particular social purpose. If you will, a "situation based fusion of form and substance". At this point, obviously, the genre crowd hears the voice of Carolyn Miller reverberating in the background. So here she is—in the foreground—with Chuck Bazerman. Don´t they look just lovely?

But I digress.

 The book is not a full-on piece of genre research; we'll get back to that, but it does rest on two moves already made in genre research, and it does so very well.

The first is, as hinted, Carolyn Miller's "Genre as Social Action" (1984). If you are somehow and do not know Miller, you can find the article here. It is the most quoted piece of genre research ever, methinks, unless you count Aristotle's Rhetoric. Also, there is a little piece on Miller and her influence on my blog here.

Anway, Miller describes how genres are forms of action. They serve rhetorical purposes in our social life, we use them in situations to achieve aims that are achievable through discourse. We do things with genre. This understanding has been foundational for modern genre research. It has been expanded, nuanced, developed, and sometimes twisted, but it has never been fully replaced, and is as alive today as it has ever been—and that's very much alive. 

Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature takes up the hierophagic meals as a genre in this Millerian sense, as it sees these meals as social actions. They are ways things are done in the social world. In the terms of genre research this, incidentally, is an uptake. A concept from Anne Freadman that Dr. Warren would enjoy immensely, I believe. I don't think it's online, but it is discussed in two central pieces by Freadman:

Freadman, A. (1994). Anyone for Tennis? In A. Freedman & P. Medway (Eds.), Genre and the New Rhetoric (pp. 43-66). London: Taylor & Francis
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.

Anyway, Miller only gets Dr. Warren halfways there, because her book discusses "Ancient Mediterranean literature" (emphasis added), not ancient Mediterranean society more broadly, and Miller's concept is directed at an actual sociality. Real people doing real people stuff. Enter stage (right) a lesser researcher; yours truly, who has the honor of playing second violin to Miller's primarius. (Oh, and being second violin to Miller is extremely honorable.Nothing modest here; I'll take that chair any day).

A few years back I made an aesthetic take on Miller by superimposing her concept of genre as social action on narrative literature and thus describing "Genre as Fictional Action".  The study—less groundbreaking than Miller, but you can be less groundbreaking than Miller and still be the s....!—can be found here. It is a lot of fun, if you ask me. The basic idea then is, that you can analyse genre use in a literary work in the same way that you can analyse genre use IRL by looking at the genres themselves, the way they are used, and the—intradiegetic—social situation in which they appear as attempted actions. 24/

This enables Dr Warren to make a central move in her own readings: she does not need to address the IRL-role of hierophagy as a genre; she just has to see the way it works within the literary text she addresses with no commitment to a sociality beyond the texts.

I shall not enter into the text readings in Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean Literature. I might be able to add a thing or two from a perspective of literary analysis, but they are basically the scholarly realm of other researchers. Instead, I shall address two questions that are very much genre questions, and where I may have something more useful to add.

1) The position on the book vis-a-vis what I sometimes call genre research proper.
2) The hierophagic meal as an embedded genre.

1) By "genre research proper" I mean the field of research that either works with genre as its primary topic, or systematically uses existing genre research as an approach to other topics with a clear view to influence our general understanding of genre through its studies.

 The book is, obviously, much closer to the second approach, but it stops short of engaging with developing theory within the genre research field, among other things because it's field of reference is too slim to make a contribution like that. In case you are wondering: No, this is not a criticism of the book, it's an attempt to locate it in relation to genre research. In fact, the book has its own field or fields, as is evidenced by its rich bibliography from the study of ancient Mediterranean literature. It's first and most important contribution lies here. It's use of genre research is ancillary to this purpose. In that perspective, adding in a truckload of other genre researchers, some a lot better than me, would defeat the purpose by obscuring where the contribution lies.

Should we, nonetheless, choose to see it as a contribution to genre research proper, which is not an unreasonable uptake (there's Anne Freadman again lurking at the edge of the thread) even given what has been said above, we might say that it contributes to a return of aesthetics in genre research. Aesthetics has been well-nigh dormant in genre research proper for decades, but has been slowly resurrected these last years and might get to play a more prominent role in years to come. At least, I'll quote it in that function in future work.

2) By "embedded genre" I understand a genre that is contained within the framework of another genre; a pie chart in a report, a joke in a lecture, a threat in a novel. It is under-theorized in current genre research, and Bakhtin's description of primary and secondary genres has been given too much weight, including in my own "Genre and interpretation" (here). (I have a full-scale research article about it loitering in my drawer, but there are some revisions still missing before submission, so it might be a while).

In the context of Dr. Warren's book, it's worth noting that hierophagy as she describes it is systematically an embedded genre. It is not an overarching genre for a whole work, but is a genre that works as an element in other genres. So, it must always be seen in the context of the larger work, in which it appears. And it has this micro-genre kind of function: it is used as a building block in a larger whole. This does not make it any less interesting—personally I wrote a complete book chapter on the riddle in Grundtvig. Even if it only ever appears as an embedded genre in Grundtvig's writing, it is highly consequential. But it is worth noting because, among other reasons, the biblical form criticism also focuses on this kind of genre; even if it is wholly unaware of a organized field of genre research—often for purely chronological reasons: the form critics largely came first. So the questions become:

1) Does hierophagy exist on a "higher" level; is there such a thing as a work of hierophagy? 

2) Does the book's treatment of the embedded genre improve our understanding of the workings of genre in ancient literature compared with form criticism? 

3) What can the book teach us about the working of embedded genres generally, even if it does not use the term? 

I believe at least question is sort-of answered in the book, but I'll leave the answers to Dr. Warren herself. 

Anyway, a highly interesting book. I very much recommend it to you. Go buy, go read!

NB: This thread was originally a thread on Twitter. You can see the thread here.

NB NB: You can buy the book here.

The "self-own" as retroactive genre

The screengrabbed tweet below is a clean example of a genre that is sometimes called a "self-own". 

(Screenshot by Twitter user David Harrison @davidlharrison)

The tweet itself has suffered a fate which is known as being "ratioed" on Twitter. Being "ratioed" means that the number of comments to a tweet strongly outpaces the number of likes and retweets. It's not a good thing, because it invariably means that the tweet has been met with a storm of negative replies (a positive respondent would also like and sometimes retweet the tweet.)  As I am writing this, the tweet has risen to 1,300 likes and 305 retweets, which is quite good, but also to a staggering 6,700 comments—which is downright awful. 

The replies are merciless. They point out that the Hotel Imperial in Vienna is a Mariott Hotel, and thus American owned. They point out that Austria's government up till recently was closely allied with the far right. They point out that the Austrian government cannot be held responsible for the state of elevators in Austrian hotels, because they are privately owned, since Austria is nowhere near a socialist country. They point to the staircases. Also, there is incivility going on. Loads and loads of often highly original incivility. it's all very entertaining—and very well deserved.

Without speaking of it as a genre, Merriam-Webster's listing of "Words We're Watching" includes this beautiful description of the self-own: 

On social media, people will often try to put themselves in positions where they look smarter than the person with whom they are arguing, only to have it blow up in their faces. They might, for example, inadvertently highlight evidence that contradicts their point, or simply present themselves in a way that comes off as more pathetic than the person they are trying to upstage. It is during such instances that we become witness to the glorious phenomenon of the self-own. (here) 

One could almost think that the description was written for Luntz' tweet; and it's a very good genre summary. The genre label "self-own", thus, describes a social action that backfires badly and in which a person tries to do one thing, usually something not very pleasant, only to experience a well-deserved backfire. The person has tried to "dominate" (the word is, again, from Merriam-Webster's description) someone or something, but finds that the only person being dominated is himself or herself.

Now, it's fairly clear that the genre of the self-own is not one, most people would actually attempt. In Rhetorical Genre Studies, a movement I seem to belong to without having ever actually applied for membership, we usually see genres as recurrent forms of discursive action. You need something done, and the genre is your way to do it. 

All this is well and good in most cases, but there are interesting exceptions. The self-own is one such exception. It is a retrospective genre label, one that is attached to an utterance after the fact; once it becomes clear that the utterance has actually turned into a self-own.

One of the key concepts in contemporary genre theory is Anne Freadman's rightfully famous concept "uptake", it describes genre use as based on an inherent "bi-directionality". The fundamental idea is that the genre identity of a given utterance is never completely fixed, but can be modified by later genre uses. The self-own demonstrates this by being a genre that can well-nigh only be applied after the original genre use. As Freadman describes it, a genre use invites certain uptakes, but cannot fully secure them. The genre identity of any given utterance is thus subject to a negotiation—and at times an interpretive power struggle. 

The self-own is by its very definition an agonistic genre, as it not only retroactively defines the utterance in a negative light, but portrays the person making the utterance as a someone who has brought the backlash on herself or himself, and who deserves the backlash to the full. Frank Luntz is a case in point.

There is however, at least one way—and dare I say: a very sensible one—in which a genre user can use the existence of the self own pro-actively. It has to do with securing and inviting uptakes. The Luntz tweet invited the uptake that turned it into a self-own, even if that uptake was unwanted. In the process it failed to secure the positive, affirming uptake it was aiming for. However, it remains fully possible to stop and think before speaking. And one thought might be: "does this utterance invite uptakes that would turn it into a a self-own". This line of thinking is highly recommended as it can lead to all kinds of good things—genre wise, discursive, socially, and otherwise. 

But, of course, if you are the kind of person liable to post bigoted stupidities, hoping for reflection and discursive pre-meditation may be too big a genre ask. 

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. 

Genres and media landscapes in virtual-physical learning spaces. Moving frontlines?

International conference of the CCD network, School of Education and Communication, Jönköping University, 12-14 September 2018

The international conference Genres and media landscapes in virtual-physical learning spaces. Moving frontlines?, GeM 2018, aims to create a multi-disciplinary platform for dialoguing on the every-day uses of modality rich, parallel, linked, and hybrid, communicative genres that are embedded in media landscapes and circulate in learning spaces inside and outside institutional settings. The digitized era and the global world of mobility and migration have brought about a shift for human-beings in general and the research enterprise more specifically, thus, making it necessary to (re)consider conditions for communication or languaging as well as for learning and identity production. Today, analogue and digital dimensions are seen as being blurred and interdependent, just as accumulation, density and change, are fundamental features of media landscapes. Genres for representation and communication are created, renewed, transformed and fluid in these flexible and expanding environments 

More information and full CfP here.

Oh, and I am there as a featured speaker and so are a plethora of other highly fascinating researchers. 

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.

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.