Where Do Genres Come From?

Week 3, Session 2

New Digital Genres

Carolyn R. Miller

April 10, 2023 2

Class schedule revision

Week IV: New Genres in Teaching and Learning

Monday, August 6 at 2:30 pm, Mini-auditório 1, CAC, with Prof. Bazerman

Bazerman, "Paying the Rent: Languaging Particularity and Novelty.”

Tuesday, August 7, regular time and place

Brooks, "Reading, Writing, and Teaching Creative Hypertext."

Palmquist, "Writing in Emerging Genres.”

April 10, 2023 3

Today’s agenda

• De Cosio & Dyson, genre definition on websites

• “remediation”• Miller & Shepherd, blogging as social

action• comparisons• preview• discussion of second paper

de Cosio & Dyson

Premises• definition of genre• genre conventions support both

production and consumption • form more important than content• categories: education, commercial,

services, personal, culture, sports & entertainment (p. 166, Appendix 2)

de Cosio & Dyson

Methods

• create coding categories

• select 50 informational websites, 2000

• analyze graphic elements

• analyze navigation

• analyze information structure

de Cosio & Dyson

Conclusions• Conventions in printed material are

insufficient to define genres in electronic documents.

• Information structure of sites is not yet clear.• Some patterns: lists not prose, no T of C, blue• Different kinds of texts, for rapid transactions,

for reference and information • Strong resemblance between websites and

print (newspapers, commerce)

Remediation

• by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin

• MIT Press, 2000• Reviewed by

Blakesley, Kairos• Reviewed by

Cook, RCCS

Remediation• "the representation of one medium in another"

(45). digitized texts remediate print texts word processor remediates typewriter webcam site remediates film novels remediate letters early print remediates medieval manuscripts photography remediates painting film remediates theater computer screen remediates tv screen, desktop tv screen remediates computer screen (to be “new)

Remediation—how?

• Immediacy: remove evidence of mediation to achieve transparency, authenticity, reality

• Hypermediacy: acknowledge and emphasize acts of representation and mediation

Remediation—why?

• Repair inadequacies of earlier media (more real, more direct, more accurate, faster, etc.) (immediacy)

• Emphasize novelty, innovation• Emphasize the process of mediation

itself, as an experience of representation (hypermediacy)

Remediation—why?

“Transparent [immediate] digital applications seek to get to the real by bravely denying the fact of mediation; digital hypermedia seek the real by multiplying mediation so as to create a feeling of fullness, a satiety of experience, which can be taken as reality.” (Bolter and Grusin 53)

Comparison

• Remediation (Bolter & Grusin)

• Replication (Shepherd & Watters)

• Reproduction (Giddens and others)

• Recurrence (Bitzer, Miller)

Miller & Shepherd

Premises• definition of genre• presumption of genre status• new genres are of rhetorical interest because

the negotiated balance between stability and change has disappeared

Miller & Shepherd

Methods• analysis of kairos• “secondary ethnomethodology”: perceptions and

reports of users• analysis of content• analysis of formal features• analysis of pragmatic action• analysis of ancestral genres• determine exigence and social action

Miller & Shepherd

Conclusions• The exigence is recurrent need for cultivation and

validation of the self.• That need arises in the culture of mediated

voyeurism, relentless celebrity, unsettled boundaries between public and private, and decentralizing technologies.

• The social action is self-disclosure that intensifies the self.

• The analysis applies only to personal blogs.

Herring et al.

• “Bridging the Gap: A Genre Analysis of Weblogs”

• Proceedings of the 37th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2004

• Content analysis of 203 randomly selected weblogs, 2003

• Compares empirical evidence with popular claims

• Examines antecedents

Herring et al.

Coded for

• author characteristics (number, gender, age, etc)

• blog purpose (filter, personal, etc)

• temporal features (updating, age)

• structural features (archives, images, links, comments, etc)

Comparison

De Cosio & Dyson, Miller & Shepherd. . .

• examine discursive phenomena (genres?) that are changing rapidly.

• apply to unregulated, implicitly structured genres.

• fit Shepherd & Watters’s categories differently.

Cybergenres

extant novel

replicated variant emergent indigenous

Shepherd & Watters, “The Evolution of Cybergenres”

Cybergenres

extant novel

replicated variant emergent indigenous

blogs?websites?

Preview

• “Genres are sites of contention between stability and change” (Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995).

• Re-examine (update) personal blog.• Explore public-affairs blog.• Develop genre theory.

Relationship between genre and medium Recurrence, stability, persistence of form

Second paper

Schryer & Spoel

Shepherd & Watters

Yates et al.

regulated replicated

variant

emergent

explicitly structured

regularized spontaneous implicitly structured

April 10, 2023

Assignment for Monday

• Topic

Plagiarism, originality, and the internet

• ReadingBazerman, “Paying the rent”