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. 

Elderflower cordial. The ultimate Danish summer-hygge thingy—a recipe with visual aids

No collection of genres is complete without a recipe—that broad, yet strangely poignant, genre for culinary action.

So, here is my favorite summer recipe—elderflower cordial. There are a truckload of different recipes going around. Fortunately, the best one is also the simplest. Here is what you do. 

You take an elderberry tree in bloom. Like this.

You collect a lot of flower heads. If you have access to volountary child labor, you are free to employ said child labor—under supervision—at this stage.

You then get out a large pot, and cut the elderberry flowers into slightly smaller pieces removing leaves and bugs from the mix, and put them in the pot. 

How many flower heads? Well, how many did you cut down? They do not take up a lot of space, and the taste only suffers if you use too few. I use a lot. 

Then it looks like this:

You add a lot of sugar. 

How much? Well, how much can the pot take? Then it looks like this. There are five kg of sugar in there. Some people will tell you to use brown sugar; I much prefer white. 

The trick here is a relation of ingredients. The amount of sugar your pot can take determines how much you can make. For each kg of sugar you need one lemon and 40 grams of citric acid. Remember to look around a bit for the citric acid. The price may vary wildly. Some people will tell you to use oranges. Don´t; it's a weak concept.

You add the citric acid, then it looks like this.

You slice the lemons and add them. Remember to use organic ones. You most definitely don´t want the pesticides from the non-organic ones in your cordial. Then it looks like this. 

I want to emphasize that you should not—I repeat: not—add the voluntary child labor to the cordial; no matter how eager to join in said child labor appears to be. Mine is all for going in head first.

Then you boil a lot of water. It looks like this—but I guess you more or less knew that already.

You then pour the boiling water over the elderflower-sugar-lemon and citric acid in the first pot. Notice, that there's likely to be a lot of bubbles, so stay safe. Notice also, that there will be a lot of air pockets hiding in the sugar, so if you stir, you will cause the cordial to bubble, and allow the water level to drop so you to add more water. You'll need it; the cordial is very strong as it is.

(At this point, keep volontary child labor at a safe distance; it may be too eager for its own good.)

I have no picture of this. I was pouring boiling water... 

But when the water has been poured it looks like this—and smells like heaven.

You put a lid on; let it cool down, and leave it in a cool place 4-5 days. Stir a few times a day. I have no pictures here, as I've only just made the cordial.

After that you pour it through a fine sieve and bottle it. Press the lemons and the elderflowers in the process. There's a lot of good cordial hiding in them. Remember to use a preservative or it will spoil. Some people freeze it instead; which is fine I guess. Except for the time I tried, and it leaked into my freezer. I had no idea what the word "sticky" actually meant before that.

Anyway, you dilute it with ice cold water and drink it. It's likely to be very strong, so have a sip before you serve it. If you add sparkling water instead, you have what my wife calls "champagne for alcoholics"; it's very good too, but definitely sharper. Some people will mix it into other drinks, but that's beyond my expertise. Do try—and tell me about it.

This, a summer day in the garden, and good company is as hygge as it gets for me.

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 labels and fake news

In a previous post I wrote about the genre "real news" as opposed to "news" on the assumption that the genre label "real news" wasn't well-established, but that the rhetorical move performed while invoking it was very strong indeed.

In the present post, I address a genre label that has risen to prominence in recent years: fake news. 

A crucial, sometimes efficient, sometimes highly problematic, feature of genre is that genres tend to naturalize themselves. They become habitual, invisible even. We can do a lot of thinking and a lot of acting with genre with knowing it. "Fake news" is such a chameleon.

Today, the genre label "fake news" is everywhere in debate. It's well-nigh impossible to log on to social media without encountering it, and the phenomenon it covers seems to be responsible for major societal challenges. However, this is a very recent development, and if you go back just a few years not only did few people know what "fake news" meant, those that did, knew that it meant something else. It meant news satire. Thus, this book which is on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. Notice the subtitle.

This one about The Onion and Philosophy is also quite confident in its usage of the "fake news" label to mean "news satire". Again, notice the subtitle.¨

I know all of this, because I research news satire and used to say that I worked with "fake news". Way back then, in 2015 and early 2016, I drew well-nigh no public attention at all with the term and had to explain it wherever I went.

However, at some point during 2016 all of this changed. "Fake news" was suddenly on everybody's lips. It wasn´t even early in the year, more like mid-late 2016, when the US presidential election heated up. But the genre label had a new meaning (or rather two new meanings, I'll get back to that); and the older meaning was well-nigh forgotten. If you say "fake news" today you definitely don´t make people expect to hear about news satire. This demonstrates two interesting features about genre labels.

• They can can change their meaning; they can even rise to prominence without retaining their original meaning. 
• When a cultural phenomenon rises to prominence it is going to need a genre label.

Along the way, the meaning of the word "fake" in the genre label itself changed. An old beloved dictionary of mine defines the word "fake" in this way:

To do up, to cover up defects and faults so at to give a presentable appearance to, to doctor; to contrive, to fabricate, to make up from defective material; to cheat, to fraud, to deceive. n. A thing thus prepared for deception, esp. a manufactured antique <...> a swindle, a dodge.

In this sense, in its original meaning, "news satire", the meaning of the word was ironic. The news satire services themselves pointed to the fradulent character of their news reporting. Thus UNnews, a service of the Wikipedia parody Uncylopedia describes itself like this:

UnNews is a service of Uncyclopedia that spreads misinformation and cons the public into swallowing it hook-line-and-sinker (and worm), by guilefully making it resemble authentic news articles. UnNews stories use satire to ensure the most unfair and biased reporting possible.

So, the cheating is clearly labelled, and there is no actual disinformation taking place, though there is a lot of pretend disinformation. (Isn´t it lovely btw?)

In the new usage, however, the "fake" in the term clearly refers to a fraudulent intention in the supposed news reporting. It is a purposeful swindle, a dodge. Like a manufactured antique, it is there to make you buy something that you would do better to avoid. The sudden rise to prominence of a genre label clearly points to the fact that something had become exigent in the public sphere: the information value and trustworthiness of what appeared to be news reporting. Disinformation in presumed news reporting had become critical.

As recent developments in the Cambridge Analytica- scandal have again demonstrated, it is no coincidence that this happend alongside the Brexit-vote and the US presidential election. Fake news has been a key term to understand both. And it has been pertinent ever since. However, no sooner had the term risen to prominence, before it acquired two different meanings. Related, but quite obviously opposed.

One was the disinformation posing as news spread by the likes of Breitbart, InfoWars and similar - sometimes even more obscure - "news" services, but also frequently presented by supposed serious media institutions. Here, false stories were fabricated to achieve a social impact - in particular through repostings on social media. It's worth noticing that these stories are closer to bullshit in the Frankfurtian sense than to lying. It does not matter if the untruths get exposed; in fact claiming that the pope or this or that actor supports Trump's election is bound to be found out. However, the revelation lags behind the fabricated story which spreads like wildfire across SoMe and reaches far more people than the, less dramatic, correction. So, the swindle-stories are written for effect; not to hide the truth per se, but to spread a certain kind of disinformation. In this case, therefore, the "fake news" genre label is used to warn against a certain kind of disinformation. And as such it has been fairly effective.

However, at the same time, or following it closely. another meaning arose. It was used by the very disinformers themselves to attack not fabricated news stories, but the channels that reported the actual news. If, for example, a news story is inconvenient to the sitting US president, it is labelled "fake news"; no matter how well documented it is. Rhetorically speaking, it's a lame-ass bully defense and can be torn apart easily in rational discourse, but again it is strangely effective. Again, it doesn´t matter if the lie is disingenuous and exposed as long as the disinformation works; as long as you can get the MAGA-crowd to shout "fake news", you can de-legitimize the actual news reporting and legitimize your own actions without having to answer for them.

So, the genre label "fake news" has moved from a fairly harmless, if somewhat confusing label for news satire to a critical cultural battleground in the fight to retain Western democracy as we know it. If you can define what news stories belong to the genre, if you can label them, you can win the rhetorical battle over what information gets to count in the public sphere and thus further the public acceptance of your political agenda. Be it democratic or despotic.

For further reading, this rather good academic article disambiguates the different usages nicely.

The blog post was originally written as a Twitter thread to celebrate my 5000th follower. The thread can be seen here.

Update April 16th: I forgot to mention that most of what I know about genre labels I have learnt from my former PhD student Jacob Ølgaard Nyboe. Some of Jacob's fine work with genre labels and genre signatures can be found in his brilliant article "The Game of the Name" here.

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.