Dale L. Sullivan
Modern genre theory can be divided into formalist and social theory approaches.
In this summary, I touch briefly on formalist approaches to genre, but then
discuss social theory approaches in more detail.
Literary and formalist approaches to genre criticism tend to be more conservative
than social approaches because they measure the text being studied by gauging
its participation in the genre. Jackson Harrell and Wil A. Linkugel describe
this approach, explaining that the first step in this critical process is generic
description, a process in which “motivational precedents” and generic
characteristics are identified and mapped. The second step is generic participation,
a process of determining in which genre, and to what degree, the text or performance
being analyzed participates. The third is generic application, the process
of using standards derived from description to criticize specific performances
(274-276).
Using social approaches to identify genre tends to produce more liberal understandings
than those produced through formalistic approaches. Those who use this approach
would acknowledge that a specific rhetorical performance or text participates
in existing generic categories; nevertheless, their primary concern is to describe
how it addresses the exigence of the historical situation. As Jamieson and
Campbell put it, “Genres are not only dynamic responses to circumstances;
each is a dynamis—a potential fusion of elements that may be energized
or actualized as a strategic response to a situation” (Jamieson and Campbell, “Rhetorical
Hybrids,” 146). Thus, the mixed form phenomenon represented by the cluster
of generic participations may simply be seen as an expected state of a rhetorical
response to an historical exigence. As Carol Berkenkotter and Thomas Huckin
explain, genres are “inherently dynamic rhetorical structures that can
be manipulated according to the conditions of use” (3).
Theory supporting social approaches to genre has developed over the last third
of the Twentieth Century, having evolved out of the confluence of several streams
of intellectual thought. As we follow its development, we encounter discussions
of genres as responses to situations, of genres as rule-governed ways of interacting
in social institutions, and of genres as dialogic intertextual responses. In
each of these discussions, the central question is not about the formalistic
features of genres but rather about how people enact, reproduce, and modify
existing genres in their attempts to meet the needs posed by a rhetorical exigence.
Classical rhetorical theory recognized that rhetorical genres are situational.
Aristotle, for instance, claimed that rhetoric consisted of three genres: deliberative
rhetoric attempted to determine the expedient course of action and was practiced
in the assembly; forensic rhetoric occurred during trials and sought to determine
whether or not something occurred in the past, whether or not it was just,
and what should be done to recompense the injustices; epideictic rhetoric was
practiced at public events and magnified the virtues of those being praised
(Rhetoric 1358b). However, in modern rhetorical theory, the view that genres
are situational is founded on Lloyd Bitzer’s “The Rhetorical Situation.” In
that essay, Bitzer claims that “rhetorical discourse comes into existence
as a response to a situation,” and that “discourse is rhetorical
insofar as it functions (or seeks to function) as a fitting response to a situation
which needs and invites it” (5-6). Harrell and Linkugel apply Bitzer’s
observation to genre theory, claiming “certain situational patterns tend
to engender relatively limited types of rhetorical responses” (264).
They are very clear in describing the relationship between situations and genres: “We
think that rhetorical genres stem from organizing principles found in recurring
situations that generate discourse characterized by a family of common factors” (263-264,
emphasis in original).
Both of these discussions of the relationship between situation and genre
are scenic in nature, to use Burkean categories, because they depict the genres
as grounded in situations. Carolyn R. Miller modifies these observations by
emphasizing genres as “typified rhetorical actions based in recurrent
situations” (emphasis added, “Genre as Social Action,” 159).
This slight alteration (substituting the word “action” for “response”)
is a significant addition to our understanding of a genre’s function
as an agency available to a rhetorical agent. Whereas Bitzer’s original
formulation described the exigence as objective—with the result that
the response was constrained by the situation—Miller characterizes the
exigence as socially constructed (157) and genres as mediators between private
perception and public expression, between the singular occurrence recurrent
situations (163).
A second emphasis in modern genre theory that emphasizes social rather than
formal characteristics has to do with the relationship of genres to communities.
For instance, Carolyn Miller, in a later paper, used Giddens’ structuration
theory to elaborate her views. Her new analysis of genre involves placing more
emphasis on genres as possessions of communities rather than of individuals
(72). Because genres belong to communities, individuals are constrained by
existing structures. Therefore, she acknowledges that, although structure “is
a constituent aspect of action,” nevertheless, “action is primary” (“Cultural
Basis of Genre,” 72). Given her appropriation of structuration theory,
Miller now offers an elaborated definition of genre as “that aspect of
situated communication that is capable of reproduction, that can be manifested
in more than one situation, more than one concrete space-time” (emphasis
in original, 71).
Structuration theory has been useful in helping us understand genres as rule-governed,
community-owned means of communication, but it has also helped us understand
genres as dynamic and malleable means of communication. Joanne Yates and Wanda
Orlicowski, who also employ struturation theory to discuss the way genres facilitate
work in organizational settings, describe the process of genre reproduction.
They begin by summarizing Giddens’ view of structuration as the “ongoing
interaction between individuals and institutions” mediated by social
rules (299). As people interact with each other in discursive activity, they
draw on genre rules to produce discourse, thereby reproducing genres over time
(302). However, people “enact” genres with varying degrees of adherence
to the rules. When they use genres without significant alteration, they maintain
the genre, but when they adapt the genre slightly, they “elaborate” the
existing genre. In some cases people consistently transgress genre rules and
thereby “modify” existing structures (306). Similarly Charles Briggs
and Richard Bauman explain change within generic categories. By choosing to
use a particular genre, a writer implicitly claims authority to “decontextualize
discourse that bears . . . historical and social connections and to recontextualize
it in the current discursive setting” (148). However, genres leak—they
do not fit each new rhetorical situation adequately; the result is an “intertextual
gap” (149). Therefore, using an existing genre entails making certain
features more explicit and down playing others. Such appropriation of genres
amounts to a reconstruction of the genre (148). Although genres are malleable
and in the process of change, they are, nonetheless recognizable structures.
As one critic puts it, genres are “stabilized-for-now or stabilized-enough
sites of social and ideological action” (Schryer 108).
The third major emphasis in modern genre theory based in a social perspective
is the analysis of the relationship of a generic response to dialogue and to
other texts. Discussion of genre in terms of dialogic intertextuality springs
from Mikhail Bakhtin’s attempt to move linguistic study away from focusing
on a language system as a “grammatical phenomenon” (66) to focusing
on the way people use language in dialogue. The major conceptual shift involved
in his work, then, was to redefine the context in which a unit of language
is to be perceived. Instead of seeing a word contextualized within a sentence
and a sentence within a paragraph (73-74), he suggested the basic unit of language
is the utterance, the boundaries of which are determined by a change in speaking
subjects (71). Each utterance is responsive to the utterances of others and
anticipates rejoinders.
To enter dialogue, however, one not only needs to respond to previous utterances
and to anticipate future responses (91), one also has to participate in accepted
communication practices, and so, Bakhtin says, “We speak only in definite
speech genres, that is, all our utterances have definite and relatively stable
typical forms of construction of the whole” (78, emphasis in original).
Some speech genres are simple, others complex (61-62). Simple speech genres
are usually oral and brief. Complex genres are usually written and longer (he
refers to them as “works” [75]). Because complex genres embed simple
genres and because they respond to previous discourse and anticipate future
response, they are ideological (62) and intertextual in nature. According to
Julia Kristeva’s reading of Bakhtin, a text is “an absorption of
and a reply to another text” (39). However, the absorption of others’ words
may challenge the past (40), especially when the words of others are recontextualized
and given new meaning (43).
So then, from a social perspective, genres are typified responses to rhetorical situations; they are reproducible, rule-governed forms of discourse belonging to communities; they are agencies that enable the rhetor to take social action; they are evolving, yet relatively stable, discursive structures; and they are instruments that enable dialogic exchange, sometimes in brief exchanges, sometimes in complex ideological works that embed smaller structures. In all of these respects, we imagine a speaker or writer faced by an exigence attempting to find an appropriate and timely way to speak to exigence within a community of discourse.
Works Cited
Aristotle. The Rhetoric and Poetics of Aristotle. Trans. W. Rhys Roberts. New York: The Modern Library.
Bakhtin, M. M. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986.
Berkenkotter, Carol and Thomas N. Huckin. Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication: Cognition/Culture/Power. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1995.
Bitzer, Lloyd F. “The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy and Rhetoric1 (1968): 1-14.
Briggs Charles L. and Richard Bauman. “Genre, Intertextuality, and Social Power.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 2 (1992): 131-172.
Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, “Form and Genre in Rhetorical Criticism: An Introduction.” Form and Genre: Shaping Rhetorical Action. Ed. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. Falls Church, VA: Speech Communication Association [1978], 18-25.
Harrell, Jackson and Wil A. Linkugel. “On Rhetorical Genre: An Organizing Perspective.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 11 (1978) 4: 262-281.
Jamieson, Kathleen Hall and Karlyn Kohrs Campbell. “Rhetorical Hybrids:
Fusions of Generic Elements,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 68 (1982):
146-157.
Kristeva, Julia. “Word, Dialogue and Novel.” The Kristeva Reader. Ed. Toril Moi. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.34-61.
Miller, Carolyn R. “Genre as Social Action.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 70 (1984): 151-167.
---. “Rhetorical Community: The Cultural Basis of Genre.” Genre and the New Rhetoric. Ed. Aviva Freedman and Peter Medway. London: Taylor & Francis Publisheres, 1994. 69-78.
Schryer, Catherine. F. “The Lab vs. the Clinic: Sites of Competing Genres.” Genre and the New Rhetoric. Ed. Aviva Freedman and Peter Medway. London: Taylor & Francis Publisheres, 1994. 105-124.
Yates, Joanne and Wanda J. Orlikowski. “Genres of Organizational Communication:
A Structurational Approach to Study Communication and Media.” Academy
of Management Review 17 (1992): 299-326.