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November 21, 2005
by any other name? (genre 16.1/25)
Bhatia, Vijay K. "Genre-mixing in Academic Introductions." English for Specific Purposes. 16:3 (1997): 181-196.
1 sentence summary: the variously named elements of academic works that serve to introduce those works both overlap far more than the array of names reserved for them would indicate (such that there's often no way to distinguish a "preface" from a "prologue" from an "introduction" from a "forward") and sometimes sneakily share generic properties with such other genres as advertisements.
definitions
181. genre analysis "is the study of situated linguistic behavior in institutionalized academic or professional settings, whichever way one may look at it, whether in terms of typifications of rhetorical action...regularities of staged, goal oriented social processes...or consistency of communicative purposes" & genres "are essentially defined in terms of the use of language in conventionalized communicative settings. they are meant to serve the goals of specific discourse communities, and in so doing, they tend to establish relatively stable structural forms and, to some extent, even constrain the use of lexico-grammatical resources in expressing those forms"
183. many introductory "genres" "share the same communicative purpose of introducing the book," while "some of them occasionally incorporate a number of other minor purposes too"--"academic," "promotional," & maybe other?
185. they usually share "set conventions to number pages in roman numerals rather than Arabic numbers" (& maybe that's illuminative, & maybe it occludes)
186. one possibility: "over a period of time, these historically somewhat distinct genres have come so close to each other that they seem to have lost whatever traditional distinctions they may have had"
187. "it is not uncommon to find a dual communicative purpose in academic introductions, to introduce the book and to promote it to the potential readers, who may be tempted to invest in the knowledge being offered"
188. advertising is marked by adjectives; "promotional letters" with "i'd love to hear your comments" appeals
190. claim: "this mixing of generic resources...to introduce variation in genre construction, whether it is a deliberate mixing of communicative purposes, or a subtle exploitation of one generic context to communicate private intentions, is always considered to be tactically superior and hence must not be viewed as transgression of generic conventions. it tends to give considerable tactical freedom to expert members of the specialist discourse community to respond to novel situations on the basis of prior experience and past interactions"
191. if "pure genres" are even possible, "mixing" is one deliberate action & "embedding" another--"in genre embedding...one often finds a particular generic form...used as a template to give expression to another conventionally distinct generic form" (ex. is a job advertisement written as a poem)
192. so what? "genre theory needs to account for the complex communicative realities of the academic and publishing world" & "be able to account for genre-mixing and embedding, on the one hand, and to maintain generic integrity, on the other" (he makes no effort to explain what "generic integrity" does or could mean)
Posted by ttobryan at November 21, 2005 07:11 PM