Disciplinarity in Rhetorical Theory

Disciplinarity in Rhetorical Theory

Bazerman, Dillon, Prior

Bazerman

In Shaping Written Knowledge, Charles Bazerman studies four contexts of writing that must be balanced when writing in any discipline: lexicon used, balance between explicit citation and implicit knowledge, attention to audience, and the author’s values, assumptions, expertise, and originality of claims. In particular, Bazerman compares and contrasts three essay from three different disciplines and discovers that while each discipline’s writing balances these four contexts, they do so in different measures. For example, the science-based article focused more on explicit citation and seemed to erase the context of the author and implied audience, while the humanities-based article used a more balanced approach to citation and implicit knowledge while making an argument to an audience. Thus, writing is not just a matter of “getting the words right.” Instead, one must adapt to each discipline’s communally developed linguistic resources and expectations. Bazerman also points out that these texts and genres are not just responding to disciplinary requirements; by perpetually reproducing them (or versions of them), they continue to create the same requirements over time.

 

Dillon

In Contending Rhetorics, George Dillon examines whether or not disciplinary language does what it claims to do. In general, disciplinary discourse is concerned with not only adding to the body of certified knowledge, but also with certifying those things that are offered. However, disciplinary discourse embodies practices and values that conflict, not only with other disciplines, but within them as well (Prior repeats this sentiment later as part of his rational for arguing for “disciplinarity”). Dillon notes that a rhetoric of objectivity is the dominant mode across all disciplines because it ostensibly shields discourse from personal bias. The text is meant to appear autonomously, without the predispositions of the authors, and it should not appeal to the audience or to authority. Dillon refers to this as a kind of “anti-rhetoric” that is supposed ignore author, audience, and kairos and does not respond to a specific rhetorical situation. But, as Dillon points out, humans are incapable of entirely erasing subjectivity; academics are “interested parties” whether they admit it or not and generally aspire to enhance authority and credibility. Dillon ultimately concludes that academic discourse differs from other discussion because it has means of reaching closure (though he does not reveal how, nor does he himself reach closure in his argument; he only gestures toward a solution via Habermas’s model of an argumentation that could produce agreement within the rhetorical constraints of particular disciplinary communities).

 

Prior

Prior’s Writing/Disciplinarity argues against the notion that disciplines are unified and authoritative and that “discourse community” is not a useful term for disciplinary analysis; even experts admit that they are not operating in predictable arenas of shared values and conventions. Because disciplines are so open historically, socially, and culturally, Prior finds the term “disciplinarity” more useful than “disciplinary” because it allows for multiple contexts whereas “discipline” suggests a unity that does not exist. Prior argues that writing and disciplinary enculturation are situated in specific and dynamic times and places, thus complicating the ability to create generalizations. He refers to writing and disciplinarity as “laminated,” which means they are not autonomous and every moment within them implicates multiple activities, weaves together multiple histories, and exists within the chronotopic networks of lifeworlds where boundaries of time and space are highly permeable. In other words, each person has their own “laminated” sets of objectives, identities, and contexts (thought, history, experiences, goals, dreams, fears, intentions, misperceptions, and detailed discussions) that resist generalization.

Prior also studies literacy within disciplines; he examines how graduate students journey toward gaining literacy in their fields. He also asks scholars to think beyond the notion of “discourse communities” because literacy within disciplines is more complicated, social, and multivariate than such a term allows. Writing in learning, then, are not initiation into discourse communities; instead, writing and disciplinarity are mediate activities within open and permeable networks of persons, artifacts, practices, institutions, and communities: they are functional systems of activity that intermingle person, interpersonal, and sociocultural histories. Prior argues that disciplinary enculturation is constantly ongoing through everyday mediations of activity and agency. Thus, writing in the academy is activity: it is locally situated, extensively mediated, deeply laminated, and highly heterogeneous. In other words, it is affected by contexts both inside and out of the academic situation.

 

How I would answer a question on this theme

I’ve really only got three people to talk about, so I’d just lay them out like I have here in order to make some sort of argument about them. For instance, all three imply that there is no such thing as a truly disciplinary form of writing; even within disciplines, scholars disagree about what makes good writing or what kind of writing can constitute new knowledge. Hence, Prior suggests a new word (disciplinarity) to describe the fact that there is no unitary way to write within any one discipline.

This has interesting implications for composition because it questions what useful knowledge we can really impart on students. Even their own fields can’t agree what good writing should be, so how are we supposed to teach students from multiple fields some sort of totalizing writing style? Devitt answers this question by suggesting that we teach genre awareness over a range of different genres. The more genres students understand and have in their repertoire of antecedent genres, the more potential ammunition they have in any new rhetorical situations.

Genre in Composition Studies

Mapping Genre in Comp Studies (similar-ish to Genre in Rhetoric)

Carolyn R. Miller: “Genre As Social Action”

Miller, quite simply, argues that genre is a social action – a rhetorically sound definition of genre is centered on the action it is used to accomplish because genre is typified rhetorical action. Miller’s definition is a pragmatic (not syntactic or semantic) discourse classification based in rhetorical practice; it is open rather than closed, and organized around situated actions. When constructing discourse, we deal with purpose (which is similar to Bitzer’s exigence) at several levels (we learn to adopt social motives as way of satisfying private intentions through rhetorical action) this is how recurring situations invite a particular type of discourse. This definition of genre helps us learn to understand our rhetorical situations better, and helps us understand how to participate in the actions of a community.

This is important for Comp Studies because it plays into the Social Epistemic belief that knowledge is constructed socially. It makes sense that if knowledge is constructed by social forces, that the purpose, action, and genre of writing would be social as well.

Charles Bazerman: Speech Acts, Genres, and Activity Systems: How Texts Organize Activity and People” (in, What Writing Does and How it Does it)

Bazerman makes an argument that genres are not only embedded within structured social activities, but that they also depend on previous texts the influence social activity and organization. Thus, genres are not only social action, but social actions influence which genres are selected. These genres are also antecedent – the previous genres are taken into account whenever a new text is created. Bazerman also defines genre sets (the collection of types of texts someone in a particular role is likely to produce, IE: all of the documents a teacher produces for a course) and genre systems (comprised of the several genre sets of people working together in an organized way, plus the patterned relationships in the production, flow, and use of these documents, IE: The teacher’s documents and the students’ documents working together in the classroom setting) He suggests that examining genre sets allows you to see the full range and variety of the writing work that can be required within a role (IE: all of the different documents a teacher could be expected to create), as well as identifying the genre knowledge and skills you need to accomplish that work (IE: how a teacher could craft all of those documents)

The implication for Comp Studies is that, if social actions influence which genres are chose, we must be flexible in teaching various genres to students. Teaching them a variety of genres will lead to them developing a wide array of antecedent genres from which they can draw in any given situation (Devitt argues this same point in Writing Genres).

Charles Bazerman: Shaping Written Knowledge

Bazerman is looking at how many textual elements shape written knowledge, but regarding genre he examines how genres help shape that knowledge. His work with genre is clearly inspired by Miller’s “Genre as Social action” (he even thanks her in the acknowledgements for her help). Specifically, he argues that “genre is a sociopsychological category which we use to recognize and construct typified actions within typified solutions – it is a way of creating order in the ever-fluid symbolic world.” Text and genre do not just respond to the rhetorical world – they help create it. When discussing the scientific academic community, Bazerman suggest that regularizing the writing genres and situations within specific communities can increase the likelihood of successful communication and thus knowledge creation. Only with a communally shared, reliable set of formulations will we be able to develop intelligent curricula to meet the local rhetorical needs of students entering into specific knowledge-generating communities, to frame efficient analytical procedures to allow writers to analyze their rhetorical situations and rhetorical options, and to present to other disciplines a knowledge and technology that will be of obvious use and power.

When speaking of students, he points out that each new text in a genre reinforces or remolds some aspect of the genre, so each reading of a text reshapes the social understanding of that text. However, genres should not be followed so meticulously that we must teach students cookie cutter approaches for their anticipated careers; instead, the students must understand and rethink rhetorical choices embedded in each generic habit in order to master the genre. Genre can stabilize the rhetorical situation and simplify rhetorical choices to be made, but the writer loses control of the writing when they do not understand the genre. As teachers, if we provide our students with only the formal trappings of the genres they need to work in, we offer them nothing more than unreflecting slavery to current practice and no means to ride the change that inevitably will come in the forty to fifty years they will practice their professions; we need to show students that genre is a flexible and ever-changing social phenomenon.

Since Bazerman directly addresses students, the implications here should be obvious. Since text and genre help to create the rhetorical world, genres should be regularized in order to increase the chances for successfully using the genre as well as communicating within it. But we should not drill generic formalities into students’ heads; instead, we should teach them how genre stabilizes situations and simplifies their rhetorical choices (again, Devitt would agree).

Candace Mitchell: Writing and Power

For Mitchell, genres can be the source of power. She talks about how journals can be a non-threatening, non-male-dominated form of writing that allows the free flow of feelings, thoughts, and impressions without any constraints caused by academic writing. However, it should not be the only genre of writing taught at the college level – students also need to learn how to write an essay or research paper. Mitchell argues that it is not oppressive to teach students how to reference work, seek information, and formulate critical questions in order to learn something and present this information to an audience (indeed, this is the foundation of education). Since some genres clearly “count” more than others, she argues specifically that “nonmainstream” students (read: ESL or basic writers) especially need to be taught all of the different genres of the academy. They need to understand that speaking outside of the accepted genres of one’s discipline may hold serious consequences. Denying students access to this knowledge potentially denies them possibilities for future academic and professional success (Peter Elbow argues something similar, but not in terms of genre).

Mitchell appears to be operating under an old-fashioned definition of genre as form (journals, essays, research papers, etc), not social action. Yet, she hints that genres are the result of or may even lead to action. She mentions that journals are meant for reflection and research papers are meant to create and disseminate knowledge. Though she does not say it explicitly, Mitchell would appear to implicitly support the notion of genre as action. She makes it clear that she is a linguist whose background led her to take an interest in this topic, so perhaps she does not realize that there is a distinction.

Amy J. Devitt: Writing Genres

Devitt builds upon and extends Miller’s definition of genre as a typified social action. She associates genre with recurrent situation; in other words, she expands from “rhetorical situation” to an interaction of different contexts at different levels that encompass the impact of preexisting genres as well as situation and cultural context. Most definitions of genre refer only to a genre’s situational context, but Devitt adds two more levels: culture and other genres. Culture (a shared set of material contexts and learned behaviors, values, beliefs, and templates) influences how situation is constructed and how it is seen as recurring in genres. It defines what situations and genres are possible or likely (and it is a dynamic element in constructing both; adding culture is important because it captures the way existing ideological contexts partially construct what genres are and are in turn constructed by performing genre actions. “Other genres” refers to the face that one never speaks/writes in a void; we always have access to existing genres we have encountered through experience or suggestion. The “context of genres” includes all the existing genres in that society, the individual genres and sets of genres, the relatively stagnant and the changing genres, the genres commonly used and those not used. The existence of prior genres shapes the development of new or newly learned genres. The context of situation, context of culture, and context of genres all influence the actions of writers/speakers, speakers/listeners – and they do it partly through genre.

Devitt also argues for teachers to teach contextual genres, situated within their contexts of culture, situation, and other genres. She explains that generic forms must be embedded within their social and rhetorical purposes so that rhetorical understanding can counter their urge toward following a formula. Genres must also be embedded within their social and cultural ideology so that critical awareness can counter potential ideological effects. Genres must also be taught as both constraint and choice so that individual awareness can lead to individual creativity. Devitt is arguing for teaching genre awareness, a critical consciousness of both rhetorical purpose and ideological effects of generic forms. This method of teaching will enable writers to learn newly encountered genres when they are immersed in a context for which they need those genres; students may also acquire new genres that can serve as antecedent genres for their future writing. The goals of teaching genre awareness are for students to understand the intricate connectedness between contexts and forms, to perceive potential ideological effects of genres, and to discern both constraints and choices that genres make possible. Devitt believes that to deny this knowledge of genre to students is to hide the fact the language, genre, and writing interact; she also believe that this would deny them access to a better understanding of why and what they write (similar to Mitchell).

If I had to answer a question on this theme

I would begin with Miller, since her definition of genre is key to all of the discussions of it that follow. I might connect her notion of genre as social action to the social constructionism/epistemic camp of Comp Studies, but only if I have enough time to do so. Just establishing her as the base will be enough; connecting her directly to Comp will be icing on the cake.

Next, I would bring in Bazerman and Devitt since they have similar things to say about genre. First, is Bazerman. He suggests regularizing genres so that scholars are able to work and communicate within genres more easily. He discusses the sciences in particular, but this has implications for our students as well: rather than having to learn all of the intricate quirks of several genres, regularized genres would forego some of those more specific idiosyncrasies in order to enhance the ability to utilize genres without accidentally breaking from their form (because, though genres are social they also have formal qualities, and these formal qualities can trip people up). Another point Bazerman makes, and that Devitt echoes, is the need to teach students a base of antecedent genres from which they can draw in any new rhetorical situation. But they should not just learn the formal qualities of each genre; instead, they should learn how genres both stabilize the situation and simplify the choices that students can make. In other words, genres provide both constraint and choice in order to enhance creativity. Devitt calls this critical consciousness of genre use “genre awareness” and advocates that we teach students, not just the formal qualities of genres, but that genres are socially constructed and construct our social world; thus, students will be more capable of mastering a wide array of genres, which is important since an understanding of genre is key to successfully addressing a rhetorical situation.

Finally, I would end with Mitchell, who has some interesting thoughts on genre that relate to what she calls “nonmainstream” students. She argues that journal writing can be useful sometimes (it is a non-threatening, low stakes, reflective genre with some obvious benefits for students), but that it should not be the only genre ESL students and basic writers should learn. She argues that teachers do those students a disservice by not teaching them the basic academic genres they will be expected to know later. Denying them this knowledge denies them future academic and professional success. Some of the skills she suggests students need to learn for the academic essay are referencing sources, formatting essays around an inquiry of some sort, and performing research, all of which suggest formal generic qualities. However, she also implies broader social implications involving genre. Like Bazerman, Mitchell seems to be implying that genres create the rhetorical world; without access to academic genres, “nonmainstream” students will have a much narrower view of what is rhetorically possible. But by teaching them a range of academic genres, perhaps in a way similar to Devitt’s genre awareness, students will be more likely to succeed academically and professionally because they will be able to draw on antecedent genres to meet each new rhetorical situation.

My argument? I would agree with all three. I think it’s pretty rare for writing courses to center around only journaling, as Mitchell suggests, but I do think students need access to as many genres as possible to be able to succeed both in college and in their careers beyond. For example, teaching something like a resume and cover letter in ENGL 103 constructs an antecedent genre from which students can draw when creating a LinkedIn page or perhaps a profile on eLance or some other professionally-oriented site. I’m not sure what to make of Bazerman’s call to regularize genres; I don’t entirely understand what that would look like or how it would affect Comp Studies (so I may just not bring that part of the answer up).

Rhetorical Situation in Rhetoric

Rhetorical Situation in Rhetoric

Lloyd Bitzer: “The Rhetorical Situation”

• The rhetorical situation calls discourse into existence and obtains its rhetorical character from the situation which generates it
  • A work can only be rhetorical if it responds to a situation
• Simply defined, a rhetorical situation is a context of persons, events, objects, relations, and an exigence that strongly invites utterance
  • It is the ground of rhetorical activity
  • By mediating thought and action, rhetoric creates a discourse that alters reality
• 3 constituents of a rhetorical situation: exigence, audience, and constraints
  • 1) Exigence: imperfection marked by urgency – the thing that needs to be done/changed – problem to be solved
    • Capable of modification that can be assisted by discourse
  • 2) Audience: persons capable of being influenced by discourse and of being mediators of change
    • Must be able to serve as mediator of change that the discourse functions to produce
  • 3) Constraints: persons, events, objects, and relations that have the power to constrain decision and action needed to modify the exigence
    • Two kinds: 1) those originated in or managed by rhetor and method, 2) Those which are operative
  • Added constituents: rhetor and speech when they enter the situation
  • Rhetorical situation must be real, not fictive – unless the fiction is responding to a real exigence outside of fictive context

 

Devitt responds to Bitzer

• Bitzer limits rhetorical situation to only those situations with rhetorical exigencies that require discourse action, so his definition of rhetorical situation is too narrow for the wide range of discourse for which genre theorists need to account
• Activity systems have the benefit over rhetorical situations of encompassing much more than narrowly defined rhetorical exigencies, including even the nonlinguistic, and much more than the immediate situation, including cultural values and other, interacting activity systems
  • Readers and writers construct situation – people’s actions around discourse delineate what is relevant and not, what constitutes the situation
  • The activity system, context of situation, or rhetorical situation is created by people through their use of discourse

 

Vatz takes on Bitzer: “The Myth of the Rhetoric Situation”

• Exigences, audiences, and constraints are created by rhetors who choose to activate them by inscribing them into their texts
  • In other words, a situation is only rhetorical when a speaker/writer evokes an audience within a text, embodies an exigence within the text that the evoked audience is led to respond to, and handles the constraints in such a way that the audience is convinced that they are true or valid
  • Argues that “no situation can have a nature independent of the perception of its interpreter or of the rhetoric with which he chooses to characterize it”

Kennedy builds on Bizter, examines the first rhetorical situations in early humans

• On rhetorical situation: it should be the starting point for an approach to the early stages of human language as rhetoric
  • Bitzer: “Rhetorical situation may be defined as a complex of persons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or potential exigence which can be so completely or partially removed if discourse, introduced into the situation, can so constrain human decision or action as to bring about the significant modification of the exigence”
  • Kennedy notes: situation occurs to which an agent feels an emotional reaction and which impels utterance
    • He has suggested that the instinct for self-preservation is the fundamental factor, extended in social situations to include the perceived best interest not only of the agent, but of the family, the social group, and their progeny – in biological terms, the survival of their genes
    • The “situation” is the context of a reaction on the part of an individual and of the creation of mental energy that is then transmitted by a rhetorical code
  • Bitzer discusses audience and constraints – he limits it to the situation of public address
  • Kennedy extends that limitation to include a small group, one person, the agent addressing the self (or some aspect of the self)
    • He even includes physical objects (rocks, trees, rive, storms) because some societies believe these objects are alive and can be appeased/persuaded
  • He addresses the “constraints” encountered by early humans in rhetorical situations
    • Limited control of vocal apparatus, thus the variety, pitch, and volume of sound
    • Limited vocabulary, though it was aided by gesture
    • Limited range of rhetorical techniques to accomplish persuasion
    • Conservatism and resistance toward anything innovative or nontraditional

 

Covino and Joliffe

• In some rhetorical situations, writers cannot know with any certainty who their readers are
  • Writers work to construct an audience, playing on the assumptions and operating within the rhetorical constraints to which they presume the constructed audience would adhere

 

Berlin on Epistemic Rhetoric

• Truth in a text never exists a priori outside the rhetorical situation the generates the discourse, nor dwells immanently within speaker/writer
  • It is forged via negotiation, as a transaction among rhetor, audience, and constraints of rhetorical situation
• In “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class,” Berlin argues that rather than seeing writers as “objective” reporters of reality, comp instructors are now urged to help their students understand themselves as ideologically situated writers in real rhetorical situations

 

Ernest Bormann

• Focused on the social construction of rhetorical situations
  • Examines how groups of individuals participate in elaborate, dramatic fantasy-events made up of smaller units of the “fantasy-theme,” which he defines as a “recollection of something that happened to the group in the past or a dream of what the group might do in the future”
  • As participants act out these fantasies, they make increasing use of a collective, group imagination, a shared sense of myth, hero, villain, story, and subplot

 

Charles Bazerman: Shaping Written Knowledge

• Even though genre can stabilize the rhetorical situation and simplify the rhetorical choices to be made, the writer loses control of the writing when he/she does not understand the genre
• The regularization of writing genres and situations within specific communities can increase the likelihood of successful, forceful communication
• If the communal wisdom of a discipline has stabilized the rhetorical situation, rhetorical goals, and rhetorical solutions for accomplishing those goals in those situations, the individual writer and reader no longer need make so many fundamental choices and perform virtuosities of communication
• Regularities occur because individuals perceive situations as similar and make similar choices
  • Institutionalization and codification occurred because repeated choices appear to the collective wisdom (or wisdom of a few powerful actors) to be generally and explicitly advisable
• The success of the genre in carrying out the business of the scientific community has also turned the genre into another kind of social fact, as an authoritative model to be emulated by other disciplines, interpreted through their own perceptions and problems
• In recognizing and using genre, we are mobilizing multidimensional clusters of our understanding of the situation, our goals, and our activity
• Understanding the genre one is working in is understanding decorum in the most fundamental sense – what stance and attitude is appropriate given the world one is engaged in at that moment
• Steps to better writing:
  • 2) Consider the structure of the literature and the community, and your place in both
    • As you step in to add your utterance, it necessarily must address the rhetorical situation established by that literature, for certainly it will be received and measured against that communal construction
    • The rhetorical moment one speaks to is shaped not only by history of paper, but by living persons whom you wish to move in some manner by your written comments
      • These individuals share communal assumptions and projects as well as familiarity with the disciplinary literature
      • They are also driven by their own active projects and view communal legacy through their own interests and schema
    • 3) Consider your immediate rhetorical situation and task
      • All choices have rhetorical import, for they help shape the next statement to be made
    • Only with a communally shared, reliable set of formulations will we be able to develop intelligent curricula to meet the local rhetorical needs of students entering into specific knowledge-generating communities, to frame efficient analytical procedures to allow writers to analyze their rhetorical situations and rhetorical options, and to present to other disciplines a knowledge and technology that will be of obvious use and power

 

Carolyn R. Miller: “Genre As Social Action”

• Definitions of rhetorical genres are grounded in: strategies/forms in discourse; similarities in audience; similarities in rhetorical situations
• Classification is important to human action – must classify situation before forming action
• Rhetorical situation: is social construct / semiotic structure, then exigence (social motive) must be located in the social world
• Genre is a category of discourse based in large-scale typification of action – acquires meaning from situation and social context
• One way a genre can fail: inadequate consideration of all the elements in recurrent rhetorical situations
• Her definition of genre helps us learn to understand our rhetorical situations better
  • Helps us understand how to participate in the actions of a community

 

Amy J. Devitt: Writing Genres

• Genre entails purposes, participants, and themes, so understanding it entails understanding a rhetorical situation and its social context
• The genre a writer needs for a particular situation often already exists and hence already guides responses to that situation
  • Genre depends heavily on the intertextuality of discourse
  • Situations construct genres, genres construct situations
• A writer who mixes or shifts genre in the middle of the text causes confusion to the reader because the reader cannot be sure of the writer’s purpose or the reader’s role (the situation)
• Grocery list example:
  • Using it means they have defined the need for food as a weekly action – a recurring situation with the same participants, purpose, and process
  • Keeping the list assumes that a similarity in experience from week to week, even if the experiences are not similar
  • It creates the sense of recurring situation
  • It makes the situation recur
• Rhetorical situations never actually recur – each situation is unique
• Genre and situation are reciprocal, mutually constructed, and integrally interrelated
• Culture: a shared set of material contexts and learned behaviors, values, beliefs, and templates
  • It influences how situation is constructed and how it is seen as recurring in genres
  • It defines what situations and genres are possible or likely – therefore it is a dynamic element in constructing both
• Adding culture is important because it captures the ways that existing ideological contexts (contexts beyond the more immediate context of situation of a particular genre) partially construct what genres are and are in turn constructed (reproduced) by performing genre actions
• The rhetorical situation to which a genre is related arises from the functional needs of a particular group
  • Those who encounter that situation are those who need and use that genre
  • Rhetorical situations are likely to be perceived as recurring by the same group of people, whose experiences are similar enough and repeated in similar enough ways to be perceived as recurring situations

 

Notes on practice question

Bitzer on RS: context of persons, events, objects, relations, exigence

• A rhetorical situation calls discourse into existence; the situation determines its rhetorical nature
• The exigence is something that must be changed – it is the reason for the situation; the action that needs to happen
• When the rhetoric enters the situation and speaks, he or she initiates discourse that will alter reality

 

Vatz takes on Bitzer by pointing out that his definition is too narrow:

• He fails to mention that a situation is only rhetorical when the rhetor invokes an audience on top of the context of persons, events, objects, relations, and exigence
• Rhetor embodies exigence in order to evoke an audience and lead them to respond to the text – convinces audience that her text is true/valid
• One particular lens useful for analyzing rhetorical situation is genre

Miller: Genre teaches us how to respond to particular rhetorical situations and to participate in the action of our community

• Focuses (obviously) on the socialness of rhetoric and especially genre.
• Rhetorical situation is also social – it is constructed by social forces, which means Bitzer’s exigence must also be social in nature – it redefined as a social motive whose exigence (for lack of a better word) is grounded in society, and whose outcome will effect society
• Like Bazerman, Miller realizes that an understanding of genre is essential to the success of the rhetorical situation – inadequately considering all elements will lead to a failure of the genre
  • For example, if a someone fails to realize that she must format a résumé in a specific way and instead writes a paragraph, she will have failed to utilize the correct genre to meet the rhetorical situation of applying for a job.

 

Bazerman: in order for a writer to take advantage of a rhetorical situation, he/she must first understand the genre in which he/she will speak/write – he argues for a regularization of writing genres in specific communitie

• This will lead to more effective communication
• It takes away the writer’s choice to make generic and situational choices (ie: format of writing or tone of writing – that is all determined by the regularization
  • Examples: genres of the scientific community – perceived recurring situations led to standardization of writing genre, led to being emulated by other disciplines as the “empirical standard” to which they should strive
• We need reliable formulations for students entering knowledge-generating communities – helps them enter the discourse of their discipline with more ease

 

Devitt: Responds directly to Bitzer: his definition limits rhetorical situation to only those situations with rhetorical exigencies that require discourse action – in other words, he limits them to situations with motives that can be addressed via language

• She offers activity systems as an alternative – they include environment, history of the person, culture, role of the artifact on top of the people, events, objects, relations, and exigencies of Bitzer
  • This is a much wider definition of what was should mean when we say “rhetorical situation” because it includes the social context beyond the immediate situation
• She expands on Bazerman’s notion that genres are important to the rhetorical situation
  • She discusses that situations never recur, they only seem to because they are similar, but we have nonetheless established genres in order to make confronting/entering these situations easier; because we often use the same genres for similar situations, those situations appear to recur, but they do not (ex: grocery list)
• Like Bazerman and Miller, she claims that genres will fail if misunderstood; understanding a rhetorical situation and social context leads to understanding a genre.

Is the term useful?

Not so much. The term is hotly contested, and every time a rhetoric scholar accidentally says the word situation in conversation, s/he appears to always need to clarify which version s/he operates under. It seems to be more crippling than useful. Amy Devitt suggests using activity systems, which seems like a move in the right direction. It has the benefit of being interdisciplinary and well-known in the social sciences (and so its use could bring our departments some prestige), and seems to work well for a wider definition of what we want to mean when we say “rhetorical situation.” It goes beyond Bitzer’s contexts of people, objects, events, relations, and exigencies, beyond Vatz’s addition of audience evocation. In addition to both, the term encompasses Miller’s notion of the sociality of genres (because it acknowledges such social factors as culture and personal history), and even Bazerman’s, Miller’s, and Devitt’s notions that an understanding of rhetorical situation leads to successful use of genre; a rhetorical situation, or activity system, that includes such useful information as environment and culture will help lead to a stronger understanding of genre because the rhetor will have more information to factor into the utterance for which the situation calls.

 

If I had to answer a question related to rhetorical situation

I’d start with Bitzer, since he kicked the whole thing off: rhetorical situation is a context of persons, events, objects, relations, and an exigence that strongly invites utterance. Then I’d move into Vatz, who added the “audience” component to the definition. I’d finish this section off with Consigny, who says that a combination of both is the way to go.

Next, I’d move into a discussion of Miller and Bazerman, since both discuss the importance of genre to an understanding of rhetorical situation: in order to properly respond to the situation, the rhetor must not only understand their exigence/purpose/motive, but must also be able to choose and understand the genre that will help them respond most properly. To this end, Bazerman argues for a regularization of genres. Miller is the only one of the two who directly addresses rhetorical situation when she explains that it is socially constructed; social forces create it.

I’d finish with Devitt, who invokes Bitzer’s original definition. Like Vatz (and many others), she finds Bitzer’s definition too restricted. She argues that Bitzer’s definition calls only for the contexts of the rhetorical situation itself, but many other factors outside of that situation (such as the rhetor’s education, upbringing, ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, culture, etc) influence how that person will respond in that situation. She also discusses genre as the key to succeeding in a rhetorical situation, arguing that we should teach genre awareness to students so that they will be able to analyze the rhetorical situation and be more likely to succeed within it. Since rhetorical situation is too narrow, she proposes a change to a term like “activity systems” that will account for all of the contexts outside of the immediate situation. This would allow a broader understanding of how speakers approach the situation.

Locations of Rhetoric

Mapping Locations of Rhetoric

 

Aristotle/Plato/Cicero: Oral

Dillon/Bazerman: Writing

Plato and Augustine: Anti-Writing

Bolter: New Media/Digital

Ong: Orality vs. Literacy

 

 

Oral Rhetoric

Plato: dialectic

• Rhetoric should be a dialogue between two people that searches for the ultimate truth
  • It is not used to persuade, but only to correct error and help the other person come to their own internal realization about the nature of truth
    • Persuasion to belief is a bad kind of rhetoric that manipulates
  • The dialectic is between one person who knows the truth (a philosopher) and someone he is trying to help discover it as well
• Oral presentations must acknowledge the counterpart’s “soul” and adapt to it

 

Aristotle: rhetoric is the counterpart to dialectic

• Rhetorical study focuses on the modes of persuasion, which is a form of demonstration
  • He provides the first comprehensive account of how a rhetorician can be effective orally
  • He focuses on the orator balancing ethos, pathos, and logos in his demonstrations
  • He gives general and specific lines of argument
  • He lists five matters on which everyone deliberates: ways and means, peace and war, national defense, food supply, and legislation
  • He distinguishes between artistic and inartistic proofs
    • Artistic: proofs we can create – ethos, pathos, logos
    • Inartistic: those proofs available to the orator – contracts, laws, oaths, testimony
  • He lists 28 lines of proof
  • He lists three different genres in which rhetoric performs: deliberative (future), forensic (past), epideictic (praise and blame)
• In making a speech, he says to study three points:
  • Producing means of persuasion
  • Style must be clear an appropriate
    • It is important to say what we ought as we ought
  • Arrangement
• He also focuses on delivery
  • Pay attention to volume of sound
  • Be aware of the modulation of pitch
  • Be aware of the rhythm at which you are speaking
• Unlike Plato, Aristotle allows for rhetoric to be practiced when one speaker persuades others to agree with him (instead of dialectic)
  • But like Plato, Aristotle believes the orator should be backed by truth
• Good orality is adapted to the audience
  • The orator will present different proofs, etc and arrange and deliver a speech differently for different audiences

 

Cicero: imitate good models

• He wants aspiring orators to practice actual lawsuits
  • He specifies that the common topics must be grounded in social custom to be useful
    • They should focus on winning the audience’s favor
  • As far as delivery, orators should match thoughts to words
    • IE: everyday talk is “dignified”/plain style, or a middle ground between the two
  • True skill in oratory comes from a combination of natural talent and education
  • The “complete” orator upholds his own dignity (Quintilian’s “good man, speaking well”), but also the safety of his own country
  • “Doctus orator” = the good orator must have a wide background in many subjects
    • His harmonious, graceful style must be backed by knowledge and thought
      • This is different from Plato and Aristotle, who think the orator must be backed by truth
    • Wise thinking and elegant speaking are linked
      • Cicero seems to indirectly address Plato when he points out that philosophy is not the only aspect of good rhetoric – wide culture is needed too
      • In other words, one must be keen to both find the probable answer to the problem, but also to give it in an eloquent manner
    • Importantly, good orators realize that speaking in public is difficult
      • They are able to admit that a speech does not always work as well as they had hoped
      • They are fearful/nervous before a speech
    • The art of speaking relies on: proof of allegation, winning favor, and rousing the required impulses

 

Writing

Cicero: Writing is useful

• He thinks writing is how you develop skill in oratory
  • This is how one learns eloquence
  • One can also perfect their arrangement

 

Dillon: focuses on the differences in writing between scientists and scholars

• They are important because learning them is a traditional purpose of schooling
• Discursive terrain is not neutral or inert
  • It is like a culture – it embodies practices and values that conflict, not only within other disciplines, but within the discipline itself
• For Aristotle, orality was a demonstration – for Dillon, (academic) writing presents probable arguments, not demonstrations
• Disciplinary discourse is personal and engages the writer’s and reader’s interests, biases, and desires, even if it pretends not to
• Dillon wants rhetoricians to define rhetoric as the study of discursivity in general, encompassing both oral and written texts

 

Bazerman: must consider social and intellectual endeavors of a discipline in order to write in it

• Focuses on the importance of written genres
  • Students must understand and rethink rhetorical choices embedded in each generic habit to master the genre
  • Even though genre can stabilize the rhetorical situation and simplify the rhetorical choices to be made, the writer loses control of the writing when s/he does not understand the genre
• A writer’s self-consciousness about the power of words allows them to wield that power
  • The writer is self-conscious and reflexive by simply knowing what they are doing
  • Writing is choice making – it is evaluating the options
  • This seems to counter the Ancients’ orality – they focus on orators having immediately at their disposal all of the means of persuasion (Aristotle) and knowledge they need (Cicero), but Bazerman seems to assert that writers only need awareness of their potential power in order to be able to wield any of those things as needed
• The writer sees human consciousness created from nothing
  • Feels responsible to participate in creation of the human world
  • The choices a writer makes shape the contributions to knowledge
• Writing has the capacity to be citational
  • It draws on and ties together other writers, readers, prior texts, and experienced reality to constitute knowledge
  • Oral rhetoric can do this to, but not to as great of a degree given that it has not been recorded

 

 

Anti-Writing

Plato does not trust writing

• He thinks it leads to forgetfulness because writers are not practicing their memories
  • Writing discourages memory, one of the five rhetorical canons
    • (Indeed, it seems as if that particular canon has fallen out of style since the rise of writing)
  • He also points out that written word cannot defend itself like spoken word can
    • Written word never changes, but spoken word (ideally) happens in a dialogue, so it could be defended and/or clarified by the speaker

Augustine: sermons must be memorized, not delivered from writing

• Prayer will help the preacher learn rhetorical skill
  • Praying is more important than oratorical skill
• Writing is not necessary
• Information must be presented in several forms – writing inhibits this

 

New Media/Digital Rhetoric

• Bolter: still talking about writing, but now it’s in a new location – digital
  • Most people use computers as the primary medium for communication
• The impermanence and changeability of text in digital technology reduces the distance between author and reader, and even makes the reader into an author
• Ideally, the digital text can tailor itself to each reader’s needs
  • This is a huge revolution that mixes orality and writing
  • The product is still written, but the author is able to read his/her audience in a way that can accommodate them instantly (in much the same way an orator would be able to read the audience and adjust his tone, volume, subject, etc)
• Writing no longer needs to linear – it can be rhizomatic
• Digital writing can make use of remediation: this is where a newer medium takes the place of an older one, borrowing and reorganizing the characteristics of writing in the older medium and reforming its cultural space
  • It is both homage and rivalry
• Hypertext: each topic may participate in several paths – reader chooses which to take
  • This means the reader can be a sort of author that “writes” the text they are reading as they choose which path to take
  • Bazerman says writing is all about the writer making conscious choices
  • Bolter here suggests that it is also about the reader making conscious or unconscious choices about how to progress through the text
    • This means the reader can become an “adversary” by making the text in a way the author did not intend

 

Orality and Literacy

Ong: the literate mind is analytic/objective – the oral mind is aggregative/traditional/attached to context

• Writing makes it easier to see the logical relationships and to hierarchicalize ideas
• Writing enacts more genres than orality because it allows the “speaker” to maintain a train of thought longer, go back and revise, etc

 

If I had to answer a question on this theme:

I would start with Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero to establish some of their commonalities: all three focus on developing the skill necessary to be successful in oral speaking. Plato focuses on how good rhetoric is used in a dialectic where one person (a philosopher) helps another discover Truth for themselves through correction of error. Aristotle sees rhetoric as one orator coming to an oratory with all of the available means of persuasion (proofs, lines of argument, delivery, style, arrangement, etc) under his belt to be used at a given moment to persuade an audience to truth. Cicero thinks good oratory is a combination of natural skill and talent, and that the orator must be well-versed in both philosophy and wide culture. All three focus on the necessity of reading and responding to their audience.

Next, I would move on and contrast Plato and Augustine’s distaste for writing with Ong’s notion that literacy changed the way people think and gave rise to more genres. Plato distrusts writing because he thinks it decays memory. Augustine dislikes writing because he thinks prayer is more important (God will provide the necessary words at the right moment) and writing a speech ahead of time would damage the spontaneity of delivery. Ong contradicts both by pointing out that literacy allows anyone to think more analytically and objectively. Oral cultures are more aggregative, traditional, and dependent on context because they are not used to being able to step back and analyze their situations. Literature cultures are able to see logical relationships and hierarchicalize their ideas. They are able to write in more genres (Aristotle only lists three in his oral culture).

Next, I would discuss the importance of writing to developing knowledge. I probably wouldn’t bring up Dillon as I had originally planned; he’s not very interesting or as relevant as I thought. I would, however, focus on Bazerman and his notion that writing is key to developing human knowledge. Writing’s power comes from the writer realizing their power and wielding it in writing. Unlike the ancient orators (who needed to have immediately at their disposal all available means of persuasion [Aristotle] and the knowledge they may need [Cicero]) the writer is able to draw on these resources when/if they see fit; they only need to be aware of their potential in Bazerman’s construction. Bazerman’s notions of genres also fit nicely with Ong’s notion that writing changes the way people think. Now that there are more genres available, writers need to be aware of them. Writers must understand and rethink their rhetorical choices in order to master genre. The writer will lose control of his/her writing if s/he does not understand the genre. Genre, then, becomes much more important in written rhetorical situations than oral simply because there are more of them (than Aristotle’s three).

Finally, I would close with a discussion of Bolter’s notions of digital writing in order to discuss how it revolutionizes both written and oral discourse. Digital rhetoric is based in writing and so is able to draw on all of the genres and conventions of writing. However, it also hearkens back to orality. Ong mentions that the move from orality to literacy resulted in the ability to think hierarchically, but Bolter argues that hypertext, a digital means of writing, deconstructs hierarchicalization because the reader can choose which path s/he wants to take. Just as Bazerman’s writer makes conscious choices in writing, Bolter’s reader makes conscious or unconscious choices when moving through digital texts, thus becoming a sort of author. This collapses the differences between readers and authors, while also allowing readers more power to be adversaries since they can read/write the text in ways the author did not intend.

Genre in Rhetoric

Mapping Genre in Comp Studies

 

Aristotle: Rhetoric

• He argued that every audience is either a judge or not a judge
  • If the audience is a judge of what has happened in the past, the species is judicial (forensic)
  • If it judges what action to take in the future the species is deliberative
  • If it is not a judge but hearers/readers who are not asked to take any specific action, the species is epdeictic
• There are only three kinds of genres: deliberative, judicial, epideictic
  • They are both formal and social
  • In one sense, the genre will determine all formal elements of the oratory: the arrangement, style, subject matter, delivery, etc
  • In another sense, the decision to use a particular genre is socially constructed: the aim of each is to persuade, but needing to use forensic, for example, comes from the need to convict someone of wrongdoing or to defend them against such accusations
    • It would be socially inappropriate to use epideictic or deliberative in this situation
    • Although, it may be necessary to use elements of each – the three genres do not need to be mutually exclusive
      • To convict/defend someone, you will undoubtedly use epideictic’s “praise and blame” approach, though the focus will fall more heavily on judicial

 

Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy

• Ong explains the link between Aristotle’s oral genres and written genres
  • Written cultures are more objected, analytical, and hierarchical than oral cultures simply because writing things down allows people to remember and refer back to them more easily
  • This also allows room for more genres than Aristotle’s original three

 

Carolyn R. Miller: “Genre As Social Action”

Miller, quite simply, argues that genre is a social action – a rhetorically sound definition of genre is centered on the action it is used to accomplish because genre is typified rhetorical action. Miller’s definition is a pragmatic (not syntactic or semantic) discourse classification based in rhetorical practice; it is open rather than closed, and organized around situated actions. When constructing discourse, we deal with purpose (which is similar to Bitzer’s exigence) at several levels (we learn to adopt social motives as way of satisfying private intentions through rhetorical action); this is how recurring situations invite a particular type of discourse. This definition of genre helps us learn to understand our rhetorical situations better, and helps us understand how to participate in the actions of a community.

• Definitions of rhetorical genres are grounded in: strategies/forms in discourse; similarities in audience; similarities in rhetorical situations
• Useful principle of classification for discourse: should have some basis in conventions of rhetorical practice, including ways actual rhetors/audiences comprehend discourses they use
• Aristotle: 3 genres: forensic, epideictic, deliberative
  • Each has a characteristic substance and each has appropriate forms
  • Explicate the knowledge that practice creates
• Classification is important to human action – must classify situation before forming action
• Rhetorical situation: is social construct / semiotic structure, then exigence (social motive) must be located in the social world
  • Exigence provides a sense of rhetorical purpose, but not rhetor’s intention
• Form, substance, and context are relative (not absolute) and occur at many levels on a hierarchy of meaning
• Genres change (evolve and decay) – the number of genres current in any society depends on complexity and diversity of the society
• 5 understandings of genre:
  • 1) It is a category of discourse based in large-scale typification of action – acquires meaning from situation and social context
  • 2) It is interpretable by rules that occur at a high level on a hierarchy of rules for symbolic interaction
  • 3) It is distinct from form – it is a fusion of lower-level form and characteristic substance
  • 4) It is the substance of forms at higher levels – as recurrent patterns of language use, genres help constitute the substance of our cultural life
  • 5) It is a means for mediating private intentions and social exigence; it motivates by connecting that private with the public, and the singular with the recurrent
• 3 ways a collection of discourse may fail to constitute a genre:
  • 1) Failure of significant substantive/formal similarities at the lower levels of the hierarchy
  • 2) Inadequate consideration of all the elements in recurrent rhetorical situations
  • 3) No pragmatic component – no way to understand genre as a social action
• To say it’s not a genre is to say that its interpretive rules do not form a normative whole that we can consider a cultural artifact – a representation of reasoning and purposes characteristic of that culture

 

 

Charles Bazerman: Speech Acts, Genres, and Activity Systems: How Texts Organize Activity and People” (in, What Writing Does and How it Does it)

Bazerman makes an argument that genres are not only embedded within structured social activities, but that they also depend on previous texts the influence social activity and organization. Thus, genres are not only social action, but social actions influence which genres are selected. These genres are also antecedent – the previous genres are taken into account whenever a new text is created. Bazerman also defines genre sets (the collection of types of texts someone in a particular role is likely to produce, IE: all of the documents a teacher produces for a course) and genre systems (comprised of the several genre sets of people working together in an organized way, plus the patterned relationships in the production, flow, and use of these documents, IE: The teacher’s documents and the students’ documents working together in the classroom setting) He suggests that examining genre sets allows you to see the full range and variety of the writing work that can be required within a role (IE: all of the different documents a teacher could be expected to create), as well as identifying the genre knowledge and skills you need to accomplish that work (IE: how a teacher could craft all of those documents)

• Each successful text creates a social fact for its reader
  • These social facts consist of meaningful social actions being accomplished through language, or speech acts
  • These speech acts are carried out in patterned, typical, and therefore intelligible textual forms or genres, which are related to other texts and genres that occur in related circumstances
  • Together the text types fit together as genre sets within genre systems, which are part of the systems of human activity
• The definition of genres only as a set of textual features ignores the role of individuals in using and making meaning
  • It ignores the differences of perception and understanding, the creative use of communications to meet perceived novel needs in novel circumstances, and the changing of genre understanding over time
  • Genres arise in social processes of people trying to understand each other well enough to coordinate activities and share meanings for their practical purposes
• The system of genres is also part of the system of activity of the class
  • In defining a system of genres people engage in, you also identify a framework which organizes their work, attention, and accomplishment
• Examining the genre system allows you to understand the practical, functional, and sequential interactions of documents, which allows you to see how individuals writing any new text are intertextually situated within a system and how their writing is directed by genre expectations and supported by systematic resources
  • Considering the activity system enables you to understand the total work accomplished by the system and how each piece of writing contributes to the total work

 

Charles Bazerman: Shaping Written Knowledge

            Bazerman is looking at how many textual elements shape written knowledge, but regarding genre he examines how genres help shape that knowledge. His work with genre is clearly inspired by Miller’s “Genre as Social action” (he even thanks her in the acknowledgements for her help). Specifically, he argues that “genre is a sociopsychological category which we use to recognize and construct typified actions within typified solutions – it is a way of creating order in the ever-fluid symbolic world.” Text and genre do not just respond to the rhetorical world – they help create it. When discussing the scientific academic community, Bazerman suggest that regularizing the writing genres and situations within specific communities can increase the likelihood of successful communication and thus knowledge creation. Only with a communally shared, reliable set of formulations will we be able to develop intelligent curricula to meet the local rhetorical needs of students entering into specific knowledge-generating communities, to frame efficient analytical procedures to allow writers to analyze their rhetorical situations and rhetorical options, and to present to other disciplines a knowledge and technology that will be of obvious use and power.

When speaking of students, he points out that each new text in a genre reinforces or remolds some aspect of the genre, so each reading of a text reshapes the social understanding of that text. However, genres should not be followed so meticulously that we must teach students cookie cutter approaches for their anticipated careers; instead, the students must understand and rethink rhetorical choices embedded in each generic habit in order to master the genre. Genre can stabilize the rhetorical situation and simplify rhetorical choices to be made, but the writer loses control of the writing when they do not understand the genre. As teachers, if we provide our students with only the formal trappings of the genres they need to work in, we offer them nothing more than unreflecting slavery to current practice and no means to ride the change that inevitably will come in the forty to fifty years they will practice their professions; we need to show students that genre is a flexible and ever-changing social phenomenon.

• There are many ways of grouping texts, depending on the analyst’s purposes, but when considering genres within their contexts, the generic classification that matters most must be the classification recognized by the users of those genres
• Writing is choice making, the evaluation of options – genres determine our choices
  • In whatever way these writing choices are realized and become institutionalized, they shape the kind of thing we consider contributions to knowledge
• It is remarkable that statements emerge over time that represent an overwhelming consensus as the best of currently available formulations, and that these formulations are sufficiently reliable to be near infallible
  • Ex: operating microwave ovens
• Theme of book: variety of discourse systems and their relation to evolving communities
• The differences between texts are not just on the page, but in how the page places itself with respect to social, psychological, textual, and natural worlds
• If the communal wisdom of a discipline has stabilized the rhetorical situation, rhetorical goals, and rhetorical solutions for accomplishing those goals in those situations, the individual writer and reader no longer need make so many fundamental choices and perform virtuosities of communication
• Genre is not just a linguistic category defined by a structured arrangement of textual features
• The textual features associated with any particular genre do not necessarily have a fixed definition – even attempts by social processes of institutionalization to hold features firm only lead to temporary stability
• In recognizing and using genre, we are mobilizing multidimensional clusters of our understanding of the situation, our goals, and our activity
  • Understanding the genre one is working in is understanding decorum in the most fundamental sense – what stance and attitude is appropriate given the world one is engaged in at that moment
• Because genre is such a multidimensional, fluid category that only gains meaning through its use as an interpretive, constructive tool, the reduction of any genre to a few formal items that must be followed for the sake of propriety misses the life that is embodied in the generically shaped moment
  • A list of formal requirements of any particular genre gives us only weak command over what we are doing and gives us no choice in mastering or transforming the moment
  • We do better to grant ourselves and our students means to understand the forms of life embodied in current symbolic practice, to evaluate the consequences of the received rhetoric, and to attempt to transform our rhetorical world when such transformation appears advisable

 

Amy J. Devitt: Writing Genres

Devitt builds upon and extend Miller’s definition of genre as a typified social action. She associates genre with recurrent situation; in other words, she expands from “rhetorical situation” to an interaction of different contexts at different levels that encompass the impact of preexisting genres as well as situation and cultural context. Most definitions of genre refer only to a genre’s situational context, but Devitt adds two more levels: culture and other genres. Culture (a shared set of material contexts and learned behaviors, values, beliefs, and templates) influences how situation is constructed and how it is seen as recurring in genres. It defines what situations and genres are possible or likely (and it is a dynamic element in constructing both; adding culture is important because it captures the way existing ideological contexts partially construct what genres are and are in turn constructed by performing genre actions. “Other genres” refers to the fact that one never speaks/writes in a void; we always have access to existing genres we have encountered through experience or suggestion. The “context of genres” includes all the existing genres in that society, the individual genres and sets of genres, the relatively stagnant and the changing genres, the genres commonly used and those not used. The existence of prior genres shapes the development of new or newly learned genres. The context of situation, context of culture, and context of genres all influence the actions of writers/speakers, speakers/listeners – and they do it partly through genre

Devitt also argues for teachers to teach contextual genres, situated within their contexts of culture, situation, and other genres. She explains that generic forms must be embedded within their social and rhetorical purposes so that rhetorical understanding can counter their urge toward following a formula. Genres must also be embedded within their social and cultural ideology so that critical awareness can counter potential ideological effects. Genres must also be taught as both constraint and choice so that individual awareness can lead to individual creativity. Devitt is arguing for teaching genre awareness, a critical consciousness of both rhetorical purpose and ideological effects of generic forms. This method of teaching will enable writers to learn newly encountered genres when they are immersed in a context for which they need those genres; students may also acquire new genres that can serve as antecedent genres for their future writing. The goals of teaching genre awareness are for students to understand the intricate connectedness between contexts and forms, to perceive potential ideological effects of genres, and to discern both constraints and choices that genres make possible. Devitt believes that to deny this knowledge of genre to students is to hide the fact the language, genre, and writing interact; she also believe that this would deny them access to a better understanding of why and what they write (similar to Mitchell)

• Genres as types of rhetorical actions that people perform in their everyday interactions with their worlds
• She breaks with older, traditional notions of genre and moves toward more contemporary views in order to explain why genre cannot be equated with classification (though they do classify), and why genre cannot be equated with forms (though they are often associated with formal features)
• She argues that genre both encourages standardization and enables variation and that, similarly, genre both constrains and enables individual creativity

• Genre entails purposes, participants, and themes, so understanding it entails understanding a rhetorical situation and its social context
• Genres help people do things in the world
  • They are both social and rhetorical actions – they operate as people interact with others in purposeful ways
  • Genres are strategies that have commonly been used to answer situations
• The genre a writer needs for a particular situation often already exists and hence already guides responses to that situation
  • Genre depends heavily on the intertextuality of discourse
• Knowing the genre means knowing such rhetorical aspects as appropriate subject matter, level of detail, tone, and approach as well as the expected layout and organization
  • Knowing a genre means not only knowing how to conform to generic conventions, but also knowing one way of responding appropriately to a given situation
• If genre is based on recurrence at all, it must be a recurrence perceived by the individuals who use genres
• A writer/reader recognizes recurrence because they recognized an existing genre
  • But for existing genres to exist at all, people must have perceived similarities among disparate situations
  • Paradoxically, people recognize recurring situations because they know genres, yet genres exist only because people have acted as though situations have recurred
• This paradox works because people construct genre through situation and situation through genre – their relationship is reciprocal and dynamic
• Rhetorical situations never actually recur – each situation is unique
  • Genre and situation are reciprocal, mutually constructed, and integrally interrelated
• Because a genre develops from the actions of the people in the group in the context of a perceived situation, the genre will show how most people in the group act or are expected to act and what most of its members believe, behave as if they believe, or think they should believe
• The encouragement of conformity among its participants is a fact of genre, for genres provide an expected way of acting
• The loss of a genre reflects the loss of its function, the result of changing needs and ideologies as society and individuals change
• The existence of a genre in an established rhetorical and social context does not dictate any writing – it is a choice to be made with powerful incentives and punishments attached
• Genre necessarily simultaneously both constrains and enables writers and such a combination of constraint and choice is essential to creativity
  • Creativity theory suggests that creativity derives from constraint as much as from freedom, giving genres a significant role in making choices possible
• Genres conventionalize formal expectations, and make visible opportunities for variations
• Having learned how to perceive the purpose behind form, the learner can discover the purposes behind the particular forms they notice
  • Having learned how to discern potential ideological effects, the learner can be alert to the ideologies underlying the genres they are acquiring
• Teaching language and genre explicitly risks enforced conformity to formula, but it also has the potential reward of helping students integrate their understanding of rhetoric with linguistic and generic forms that they produce

 

How I would answer a question related to genre:

(This would be a good Aristotle’s Time Machine approach)

I would move chronologically through all five authors. I would treat Aristotle’s conception of the three oral genres first. I would mention what they are and define them, then move into Ong’s notion that the move from orality to literacy influenced the way people think; thus, literacy enabled the existence of more genres than orality did. Ong’s notion is the bridge between Aristotle and Miller, Bazerman, and Devitt.

Next, I’d treat Miller’s argument that genre is social action: a rhetorically sound definition of genre is centered on the action is it meant to perform. When constructing a discourse, we adopt social motivations to make our private intentions a reality. This kind of a definition helps us understand rhetorical situations better, as well as adapt to a discourse community. I would compare Miller to Aristotle, pointing out that her idea is not as revolutionary as it may seem; indeed, it is a response to contemporary notions of genre that construe it as a form, not to Aristotle. Aristotle’s three genres are both formal and social: they suggest formal elements, but their use is social in nature. An orator would not use epideictic in the place of forensic, though a forensic speech may call for elements of the epideictic in order to perform its intended action.

Then, I’d move on to Bazerman. He expands on Miller: genres are not only social action, but social forces also effect which genre will be chosen. Text and genre do not just respond to the rhetorical world; they help create the knowledge within it (writing is a set of choices, and its power lies in the writer’s self-consciousness of those choices). However, a writer must fully understand a genre before using it; failure to understand it can result in its misuse and thus a failure of the text to effect its social action. This is another notion of genre that it seems Aristotle would agree with. Though he only advocates three genres, it seems he would argue that the orator must fully understand their formal conventions as well as typical situations in which they occur. For example, if an orator is making a speech in a situation that calls for him to prove someone innocent of wrongdoing (forensic/judicial), but focuses heavily on asking the judges to deliberate, it is likely that they do not understand the genre and will fail to convince his audience in his favor.

Finally, I’d bring up Devitt’s expanded definition of genre. Where Miller and Bazerman seem to bring up elements of genre with which Aristotle would agree (since they are built into his own genres), Devitt blows up the typical definition a makes it much more broad than it seems Aristotle would have conceived of. She add two more levels to the standard definition of genre: it is not only situational context, but also cultural context and other genres. Cultural context limits and promotes certain genres in certain contexts, while other genres set a precedent for what has been done in the past (as well as implications of what can be done in the future). Such antecedence is grounded in literacy, as Ong’s argument suggests. Devitt also argues for teaching genre awareness. Like Bazerman (who argues for regulating genres so that students may learn more easily how to operate within them), she does not mean drilling students on the formal qualities of particular genres. Instead, she wants so make students aware of the opportunities and constraints genres entail and how they can help students realize their own ability to work within and without of particular genres (by either adhering to or manipulating them). Students would then develop knowledge of a large supply of antecedent genres from which they may draw. Aristotle appears to be silent on this issue of the impact a broadened social awareness would have on genre, as well was the effect of genre awareness on an orator’s ability to speak. Obviously, an orator must have some awareness of his genre (enough that, as Bazerman suggest, he will not fail in his rhetorical situation), but since he only needs to be conversant in three genres, he need not establish a pool of antecedent genres form which he may draw.