13 genre
Genre seems to me another one of those words that makes me feel like an imposter. Teachers use it in all sorts of ways. Mostly it means a “kind” of text. What that means sorta depends on what you think language is. Gunther Kress (a philosopher whom I like) points to three approaches:
| Approach | Language | Genre |
| Language as thing | Language is just a thing that’s there, and we explain it with a bunch of rules. | Genre means the rules that explain how to compose and maybe read some kind of text. |
| Language as ideas | Language is stuff in people’s heads, and we try to figure out how to help individuals develop their knowledge of it. | Genre is a structure of language use that people have to learn and practice with so that they become able to recognize or create this or that kind of text. |
| Language as tool | Language is a tool that people use to do something in a context. | Genre describes how people do things with language in a time and place, a context. |
I’m going to emphasize the third approach, language as tool. That may not surprise you if you’ve been reading other keywords. I want us to use genre to name an explanation of the decisions that a group that uses some sort of text made about how to organize that text. Want an example? Think about the 5-paragraph essay.
- 5-paragraph essay as a thing. We can emphasize the rules that this genre follows (for instance, it’s made of 5 paragraphs : ). I’m not sure that knowing those rules helps most writers write essays. Worse, the writers I’ve meet who follow those rules write very rigid essays and have a hard time writing essays that are not 5-paragraph essays. Turns out that most college educated readers don’t have much use for 5-paragraph essays. I don’t know many folks outside college who use this genre at all.
- 5-paragraph essay as an idea. We could view the 5-paragraph essay as an idea. Surely, this idea circulates in classrooms and on Advanced Placement exams. It seems to be the case that college writers sorta leave this idea behind because it is too school-based and too limiting. College writers do write essays, just not really 5-paragraph essays. It’s a pretty limited form of language use. It feels to me like an idea meant to give way to a different idea (the essay).
- 5-paragraph essay as a tool. I think of the 5-paragraph essay as a tool that is used mostly in high school and some first-year college classes. I see it as a tool that helps teachers and writers keep ideas under control. It’s also a way that teachers keep students under control and often justify grades. This tool is worth knowing about and knowing when to use. Maybe if we think of it as a tool rather than our idea about school writing, we won’t crank out a 5-paragraph essay when the context calls for a report.
To use another big idea, a genre is the explanation of the “conventions” or “grammars” that some community follows when it produces a particular kind of text. For instance, when people my age in my social group send texts, we tend to write complete or nearly complete sentences and pop in emogies at the end of sentences for emphasis. Often our texts run more than a sentence long, and while grammar isn’t critical, we do use punctuation even if we use Siri to compose for us. Texts are representations of meanings within contexts; genre names the form that was arrived at to organize particular kinds of meanings.
So what will we do with genre? We will use genres (plural) as designers of texts. Rather than just blindly follow genres, designers select genres critically and often transform them. Gunther Kress offers me ideas that help me think about how this happens.
- A genre does things in the world. Genres are not just rules that teachers obsess about.
- Taking up an exigence (check keywords on rhetoric for this term) and producing a text in response always means taking up a genre even if part of the purpose is to break with the genre.
- Each genre is the result of social relations between people involved with a text.
- Genres create limitations and opportunities to push back on those limitations. Genres are open to change.
- Working with a genre requires thinking about who and what maintains the genre and what possibilities for change are available. Sometimes you use the tool exactly the way it is designed ’cause that gets you what you need.
Bottom line, taking up genres critically can position composers to see into how some community makes and circulates certain kinds of meaning. Newbies need to see how genres work; old timers need to talk through how and why genres work without getting defensive. Everybody needs to recognize that genres are used to make communication effective and also to protect power arrangements. They really need to recognize that genres are open to change.
References
Resources
HtWA. Chapter 2 in HtWA is called “Defining Genres and Purpose.” Pretty useful stuff, it seems to me, as far as it goes. I tend to shudder when I see a list of genres. For me, genres are being established as people come together to do things with texts, so lists are always incomplete. As often is the case, HtWA doesn’t get particularly critical; the advice is to follow the rules. I want to understand the rules so I understand the community that uses the genre and decide how to leverage the rules so as to communicate. That’s me.
OWL. If you search the Purdue OWL for genre, you get a list of kinds of writing that students, business students, and graduate students do. There is a page on genre analysis that is interesting.