Thursday, November 6, 2014

Working Definitions



After reading the texts for this week, Tyreek and I were both left with the impression that there were so many key terms that supported theories of genre that building a critical gloss would be helpful for students like us who are new to the theories. The tool that we sketched out is more than a mere glossary though. Rather, it was designed to function as a map of related terms--though we shun the word network--that would illuminate the development of those terms in between theorists across time. I won't belabor the description of the tool, which is detailed in our exploratory write-up. Briefly, we planned for the tool to be a collection of hyperlinked terms in a wiki space online, so that users could eventually become contributors as their understanding of genre theory developed. In the tool, users click on the hyperlinked text of the terms to generate a drop-down (or pop-up) field containing an evolving conceptual definition of the term with a focus on how it had changed over time as authors had repurposed it, or renewed former uses of it, in building theories of genre. Then we would list the authors from this week's readings who had used the terms. For the sake of organization, we chose to present the authors in chronological order, and following each author, the scholars influencing their use of the term. For some terms we imagined (based on our experience with the readings this week) that some terms would share common origins, so we devised a color system to show that overlap of influence. Tyreek and I each provided an example of how a term might look in the tool, but the examples we provided are only rough sketches in that they do not contain the conceptual definitions of the terms charted over time. I would like to use this critical blog post to elaborate a bit on how such a description might look for the term 'form'.

According to multiple genre theorists including Amy Devitt and Carolyn Miller, understanding of genre goes beyond treating form and content or substance as a divisible dichotomy. Devitt showed how "older" theories of genre contained many false dichotomies between surrounding terms that support theories of genre, revealing many related to the term form. One prominent dichotomy that seems to be well known across rhetorical theory (see Silva Rhetoricae) is that form and content are somehow separable from one another. In Miller's theory of genre, which she defined as "typified rhetorical actions based in recurrent situations" the fusion of form and substance results in meaning (159). Further, form and substance fuse into "symbolic meaning as action" at different hierarchical levels, which provide context for the other combinations. Drawing from Kenneth Burke, Karlyn Cambell and Kathleen Jamieson, Miller claimed that "Form shapes the response of the reader or listener to substance by providing instruction, so to speak, about how to perceive and interpret; this guidance disposes the audience to anticipate, to be gratified, to respond in a certain way. Seen thus, form becomes a kind of meta-information, with both semantic value (as information) and syntactic (or formal) value" (159). Form was a central element in Miller's theory and arguably many theories of genre. What we saw in our readings for this week was how certain authors complicated the term, noting how certain traditional theories (Miller might argue that these were not in fact theories) of genre uncritically conflated form and genre. This is also a practice that arguably still occurs today, which necessitates exposure to the "newer" genre theories. Hopefully this means that our tool could serve a vital purpose in facilitating this exposure. 

On a somewhat related note, there is one final thought that I would like to express concerning the ongoing nature of our tool, which I think derives in part from the nature of assignment. Two salient features for me are the collaboration inherent to the exploratory assignments and the technical explanation of how the tool should work (without having actually built the tool). Tyreek and I briefly discussed this yesterday following our collaborative work session. Through our collaboration we negotiated the nature of the tool itself. In this rhetorical situation, we arrive at a shared conceptualization of what our tool is and how it should work. During this process, there is some degree of trial and error in imagined functionality, especially when we put the ideas into writing. This negotiation continues after the collaboration ends, as the formal description of the tool (if this is composed when team members are apart, as was the case for us) the tool might drift in functionality as the team members work independently. With more time together, more discussion, or more revision, the "drift" might be reduced, but I think that a little a little drift is natural and even exciting. Part of this comes from spending more time thinking about how the tool can and should work as one is engaged in the act of describing it. I think this especially comes into play when we decide to "perform" or demonstrate the tool to the class. Has this been a longwinded way of expressing my anxiety about the presentation? Yes. Is our tool unfinished? Of course. But I am also excited to walk through the idea with Tyreek, possibly do some real-time negotiation, and see and hear everyone else's ideas (and if I'm lucky some real-time negotiation, discomfort, excitement, etc.).
 

Works Cited
Devitt, Amy. “Generalizing about Genre: New Conceptions of an Old Concept.” CCC 44.4 (Dec. 1993): 573-586.
Miller, Carolyn. “Genre as Social Action.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 70.2 (1984): 151-67.

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