Texts in contemporary society are increasingly multi-semiotic.[ . . .] Texts are social spaces in which two fundamental social processes simultaneously occur: cognition and representation of the world, and social interaction.
—Norman Fairclough
Looking at the development of writing theory, one can see how it has evolved to accommodate changing notions of writing and how, specifically, genre theory--the most fully elaborated theory of writing to date--provides a key link between writing theory and hypertext theory.
The 1960's witnessed a major shift away from a behaviorist understanding that viewed writing principally in terms of models and rules derived from an assessment of the features of finished texts. Writing theory, despite a range of differences among theorists, has come to view writing commonly as a process and, moreover, as a process with social connotations. Early attempts to understand this process focused largely on writing as a process of discovery and the ways in which the imagination invented ideas. Early challenges to this understanding of the writing process argued that writing might be seen as depending less on the imagination and more on the acquisition of acquired skills.
The simple duality of imagination versus skills soon gave way to more sophisticated probings of the nature of writing as researchers over several decades proposed various understandings of the writing process. Bizzell describes these intellectual tensions among process theorists as existing along a kind of continuum. At one end, Bizzell places the cognitivists whose approach she describes as more "inner-directed"; they focus on the thinking that goes on independently of social influence and, furthermore, expect to find universals in those thinking habits. At the other end Bizzell locates the "outer-directed"; they view thinking as context bound and, as such, contend that there can be no universals because context is constantly in flux (65-71). Faigley views the cognitive and social approaches much the same as Bizzell, but includes a distinct expressive approach, which emphasizes authentic voice as a major shaping influence. Although Bizzell's and Faigley's models oversimplify what was undoubtedly
a complicated intellectual exchange of ideas, these models do serve to synopsize and cast into perspective a large body of theory. In the final analysis, the exchanges among these earlier process theorists "reinvented the rhetorical tradition" (see Freedman and Pringle) and emphasized the need for research to consider a writer's context more fully in order to reveal the full complexity of writing as "a manifestation of complex and interpenetrating cognitive, social, and cultural processes" (Kennedy 243).
"A shift in perspective from things cognitive to things social" (Faigley, Fragments of Rationality 33) is the dynamic upon which genre theory is built--the most fully elaborated theory of writing to have materialized thus far within writing and rhetoric. Genre theory may be seen as closely connected to more comprehensive discourse theories that approach text as a "rather broader conception . . . where a text may be either written or spoken discourse" (Fairclough 4). It is at this intersection with discourse theory that genre theory connects writing theory to hypertext theory.
In his 1995 study, Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language, Norman Fairclough’s expanded definition of what discourse includes also implies how that definition might be applied in a practical sense within genre theory:
My view is that "discourse" is the use of language seen as a form of social practice, and discourse analysis is analysis of how texts work within sociocultural practice. Such analysis requires attention to textual form, structure and organization at all levels; phonological, grammatical, lexical (vocabulary) and higher levels of textual organization in terms of exchange systems (the distribution of speaking turns), structures of argumentation, and generic (activity type) structures. (6)
Fairclough further expands the boundaries of "how texts work within sociocultural practice" beyond simple contextual consideration towards the ultimate objective of "studying connections between language, power and ideology" (23). Genre theory shares many if not all of these considerations to varying degrees, but restricts its focus, more or less, to writing. A significant body of research devoted to genre study in this context has developed since the 1980’s (Freedman and Medway 1-7).
According to Freedman and Medway in Genre and the New Rhetoric, major shaping influences on genre theory are wide-ranging. Paraphrasing Freedman and Medway's more in-depth analysis, these influences include:
 |
Richard Rorty's concept of ongoing "conversation" as a viable alternative to truth-defining argument.
|
|
Mikhail Bakhtin's definition of utterances as the elemental units or "primary genres" of speech
|
|
Clifford Geertz's emphasis on the "shaping power of the social"
|
|
Stephen Toulmin’s analyses of different modes of reasoning
|
|
John Austin’s observations about word connotation
|
|
John Swales’s work in applied linguistics
|
|
Kenneth Bruffee’s contentions about the collaborative nature of discourse
|
|
Kenneth Burke’s notion of language as symbolic action--which has been firmly behind the evolution of new rhetoric from the start, and is still clearly evident in genre theorists’ understanding of writing as social action (4-6)
|
Within this context, genre researchers seek to understand how the interests, goals, and shared assumptions of different discourse communities impact on the writing process, and how different genres may function as both modes of thought and heuristics of process. Paré and Smart speculate that genre theory recognizes the "distinctive profile of regularities" apparent in the texts themselves, the authoring process, the interpretive process of reading, and the social roles of the readers and writers (147). This interpretation of genre implies that a writer’s task may be affected by her knowledge and consideration of genre, and that this may figure into the decision-making process that writers experience.
This concept is supported by Berkenkotter and Huckin, who argue for what they call a "sociocognitive theory of genre" which acknowledges both contextual and individual units of analysis. They hypothesize that individual writers within a specific discipline are privy to "insider" knowledge of that discipline’s conventions, and that because "genres are inherently dynamic rhetorical structures that can be manipulated," (4) writers with insider knowledge are able to both learn and manipulate the values and ideology of a particular discourse community by "learning genres of disciplinary or professional discourse" (13). Berkenkotter and Huckin go so far as to suggest that acquiring the rhetorical skills of the insider "has similarities to second language acquisition" (13). To some degree, Berkenkotter’s and Huckin’s reasoning thus creates a viable and logical connection between the cognitive and the social.
The opening out of process theory into genre theory is based on a "reconceptualization of genre" (Freedman and Medway 1) that regards genre differently from its traditional sense in the context of literature. Although genres are still identified by structural and textual features, "genre is now understood rather as the functional relationship between that structure and the situation" (Kennedy 137). In other words, "the new genre theory focuses primarily on symbolic action--what texts and utterances do--and only secondarily on what they say" [emphasis in original] (Kennedy 138). Paré and Smart define this "reinterpretation" of genre succinctly as "a complex pattern of repeated social activity and rhetorical performance arising in response to a recurrent situation" (146).
In what is regarded as a defining treatise in genre theory, Carolyn Miller’s 1984 essay on "genre as social action" identifies five specific features of genre common to writing. Roughly paraphrased these features suggest that genre is:
|
comprised of categories of discourse resulting from social action
|
|
rule-governed to some degree
|
|
distinguishable from form
|
|
constitutive of culture
|
|
a mediating force between the individual and society (36-37)
|
Thus, although the formal textual elements are still important, they are now seen in light of how they may cause a writer to act. It is, therefore, the pragmatics of genre that are of concern. Writing is seen, in effect, as social action (Bazerman, Shaping Written Knowledge 10). Jay Lemke even goes so far as to suggest that in some circumstances the use of different "discourses" might be regarded as " ‘identity kits’ [that] people adopt" to facilitate or manage social activity (12).
As with earlier process theory, antithetical dynamics inform the evolution of genre theory. Although they share a common basis in their understanding of "the primacy of the social" and the "role of context," the North American and the Australian or Sydney "schools" approach genre from distinctive perspectives. While the North American school is more interested in the "complex relations between text and context," the Sydney school concentrates on textual features (Freedman and Medway 9). Furthermore, North American scholars approach genre as being relatively unstable or, at best, as Catherine Schryer suggests, "stabilized-for-now" (Freedman and Medway 107). North American pedagogy, therefore, generally resists the impulse to teach generic form in any prescriptive kind of way. The Sydney school, however, views generic forms as relatively stable and, therefore, teachable--with the express aim of empowering students socially and politically (Freedman and Medway 9).
Nonetheless, despite intellectual tensions typical of evolving theory, genre theory thrives as the most fully elaborated theory of writing to date because it joins the micro level of writing to the macro level of discourse, unites process with product, and connects the individual (cognitivist) and the social (constructionist) approaches. The hook which genre theory extends is its vital connection to the more comprehensive notion of discourse that regards text as a "broader conception" of language than just words inscribed on a page (Fairclough 4) and as "the functional relationship between . . . structure and the situation" (Kennedy 137). This conception clearly embodies the inherently multi-medial and interactive nature of electronic hypertext. Genre theory is where Gutenbergian and electronic forms of writing intersect and, as such, it provides the scaffolding upon which to build the next reinvention of writing theory that will include electronic writing within its mainstream.
|
