Genre criticism

Last updated

Genre criticism is a method within rhetorical criticism that analyzes texts in terms of their genre: the set of generic expectations, conventions, and constraints that guide their production and interpretation. In rhetoric, the theory of genre provides a means to classify and compare artifacts in terms of their formal, substantive and contextual features. By grouping artifacts with others which have similar formal features or rhetorical exigencies, rhetorical critics can shed light on how authors use or flout conventions for their own purposes. Genre criticism has thus become one of the main methodologies within rhetorical criticism.

Contents

Literary critics have used the concepts of genres to classify speeches and works of literature since the time of Aristotle, who distinguished three rhetorical genres: the legal or judicial, the deliberative or political, and the ceremonial or epideictic. Since then, rhetorical approaches to genre and understanding of the term "genre" have evolved in several ways. New genres have been studied for their rhetorical effectiveness - like sermons, letters, and (more recently) non-verbal genres like political cartoons, film, and public monuments. Further contemporary genre criticism has revised understanding of genre in several ways. The first turn, represented by Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (1895-1975), among others, focused on the formal features of communication. The second turn, represented by Carolyn Miller, among others, focused on recurring socio-cultural circumstances. In the latest turn, critics have begun applying formalist and socio-cultural concepts to new-media artifacts that tend to resist classification into traditional genre-categories.

Emphasis on formal features in speech genres

The first group of rhetorical critics, following the example of theorists like M. M. Bakhtin, used formal features to analyze texts. For these critics, language is formed through a series of utterances that reflect specific conditions and goals of certain linguistic aspects. These aspects include thematic content, style, and compositional structure which form speech genres. Speech genres are diverse because of the various possibilities of human activity. In "The Problem of Speech Genres" (1986), Mikhail Bakhtin draws attention to the very significant difference between primary (simple) and secondary (complex) speech genres. [1] According to Bahktin, primary speech genres form secondary speech genres and examples of secondary speech genres include novels, dramas, all kinds of scientific research, and major genres of commentary. Since these secondary genres involve complex and comparatively highly developed and organized cultural communication that is artistic and scientific, they absorb and digest various primary genres that have taken form in mediated speech communion. Bakhtin continues to explain that there are three factors of the whole utterance which include semantic exhaustiveness of the theme, the speaker's plan or speech will, and the typical compositional and generic forms of finalization. [2] The first factor refers to the way utterances are used within speech which is linked to the second factor of how the speaker determines to use the utterance.The third factor explains that all our utterances have definite and stable typical forms of construction, but that these forms can change when needed. As Bahktin writes, "These genres are so diverse because they differ depending on the situation, social position, and personal interrelations of the participants in the communication". [3]

Rhetorical approaches to genre

The word “genre” is derived from the Latin term genus, to mean “kind”, “class” or "sort".

Aristotle was one of the first scholars to develop a rhetorical approach to genre. He divided the art of rhetoric into three genres: deliberative, forensic, and epideictic. [4] The deliberative genre of rhetoric involves speeches or writing meant to persuade an audience to take action. Deliberative rhetoric thus includes rhetoric that is used for political persuasion, discusses matters of public policy in order to determine what is advantageous or disadvantageous, and is usually concerned with the future. Rhetoric of the forensic genre questions guilt or innocence, is concerned with legalities, and concentrates on events that occurred in the past. The epideictic genre of rhetoric encompasses all rhetoric used for ceremonial and commemorative purposes. Epideictic rhetoric praises and blames, acknowledging that which is noble or shameful, honorable or dishonorable.

The rhetorical situation is a concept important for understanding rhetorical approaches to genre and the creation of new genres. [5] Campaign speeches are an example of how rhetorical situations recur, producing sedimented genres. As a result of the institutions that execute the U.S. Constitution, every four years at the time of presidential elections, candidates deliver campaign speeches. Campaign speeches have become a distinct genre because they respond to highly similar situations that recur because of a structural or institutional basis.

U.S. rhetoricians Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson refer to genre as a “constellation of elements." [6] They say, “A genre is a group of acts unified by a constellation of forms that recurs in each of its members.” Genres are formed when examined constituents are similar. The metaphors of genres as “constellations” serves to explain how genres, like constellations of stars, are constructed of individual members, but are under the influence of each other and outside elements. As a result, they move together and remain in a similar relation to each other despite their ever-changing positions. [6] According to Campbell and Jamieson, “when a generic claim is made, the critical situation alters significantly because the critic is now arguing that a group of discourses has a synthetic core in which certain significant rhetorical elements, e.g., a system of belief, lines of argument, stylistic choices, and the perception of the situation, are fused into an indivisible whole". [6]

Many contemporary scholars refer to the fusion of traits from different genres in speeches and texts as a "generic hybrid". [7] These generic hybrids can be formed from a blend of the three rhetorical genres. [8] This concept can be explained through an example of a generic hybrid of deliberative and epideictic elements, in which a newly elected president delivers an inaugural address. The President is speaking at a formal ceremony recognizing the current state of the nation (characteristic of the epideictic genre), while simultaneously announcing his policy plans for the upcoming four years.

U.S. rhetorician Carolyn R. Miller is the author of the article "Genre as Social Action" (1984). She argues, “Rhetorical criticism has not provided firm guidance on what constitutes a genre” and a “rhetorically sound definition of genre must be centered not on the substance or the form of discourse but on the action it is used to accomplish.” [9] Miller also argues that new media genres may develop and formalize more quickly than traditional, written genres. She is among other rhetoricians who have expressed concerns about the appropriateness of traditional genre theory for new media communication. They argue that because genre theory originally was developed for describing written texts, the theory should be modified to account for nonlinguistic communication. Miller and colleague Dawn Shepherd illustrate an example of applying socio-cultural theories to genre studies in "Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog". They explain how the weblog may be establishing a new genre because of its integration of current social and cultural trends. [10]

Socio-cultural approach to genre studies

In the 1980s, scholarship in genre theory and criticism has turned towards a socio-cultural approach to the study of genre by actively interrogating the rhetorical situation of a given communication artifact in light of its particular generic form. In this mode of inquiry, the rhetorical artifact is examined as a social response to a set of recurrent rhetorical exigencies rather than a collection of formal, generic elements. In the rhetorical tradition of genre criticism, Carolyn R. Miller's work on the socio-cultural approach to genre theory has been influential. Again in her 1984 journal article, Miller argues that “rhetorical criticism has not provided firm guidance on what constitutes a genre” and that a “rhetorically sound definition of genre must be centered not on the substance or the form of discourse but on the action it is used to accomplish”. [9] Later, when Miller and Shepherd engaged the socio-cultural approach to genre criticism in “Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog” (2004), they exposed some of the difficulties of applying genre theory to new media. In their analysis, Miller and Shepherd examine the extent to which the weblog might constitute a genre in light of its interaction with current social and cultural trends.

Genre studies in new media

Recently scholars and researchers in rhetoric, linguistics, and information sciences have begun to explore the relationships between new media and socio-contextual genre theories (like those of Carolyn Miller, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Charles Bazerman). These researchers have expressed concerns about the appropriateness of traditional genre theory for new media communication. Some scholars have argued that since genre theory was originally developed to describe written texts, the theory needs to be modified to account for nonlinguistic communication. Linguist and semiotician Gunter Kress suggested that much of the vocabulary of generic analysis is ill-equipped to address non-written communication, arguing that “there are no genre terms for describing what [a] drawing is or does…” [11] Similarly, rhetoricians Miller and Shepherd have argued that traditional written genre theory does not appropriately address the visual features of a genre's format. [10]

Rhetoricians and information scientists have also pointed out that new media genres may develop and formalize more quickly than traditional written genres. The authors of the article "Genres and the web" argue that the personal home page is functioning as a new and discrete genre, and they explore the entirely digital nature of home pages, suggesting that home pages “have no obvious paper equivalent”. [12] Additionally recent work in new media genre theory has explored how new communication technologies allows for forms of “genre hybridity.” Spinuzzi, for example, explores what can happen when multiple related genres are remediated into a single new media artifact. [13]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Public speaking</span> Performing a speech to a live audience

Public speaking, also called oratory, is the act or skill of delivering speeches on a subject before a live audience.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhetoric</span> Art of persuasion

Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse (trivium) along with grammar and logic/dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or writers use to inform, persuade, and motivate their audiences. Rhetoric also provides heuristics for understanding, discovering, and developing arguments for particular situations.

Genre is any form or type of communication in any mode with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other forms of art or entertainment, based on some set of stylistic criteria Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. Stand-alone texts, works, or pieces of communication may have individual styles, but genres are amalgams of these texts based on agreed-upon or socially inferred conventions. Some genres may have rigid, strictly adhered-to guidelines, while others may show great flexibility.

Gorgias was an ancient Greek sophist, pre-Socratic philosopher, and rhetorician who was a native of Leontinoi in Sicily. Along with Protagoras, he forms the first generation of Sophists. Several doxographers report that he was a pupil of Empedocles, although he would only have been a few years younger. W. K. C. Guthrie writes that "Like other Sophists, he was an itinerant that practiced in various cities and giving public exhibitions of his skill at the great pan-Hellenic centers of Olympia and Delphi, and charged fees for his instruction and performances. A special feature of his displays was to ask miscellaneous questions from the audience and give impromptu replies." He has been called "Gorgias the Nihilist" although the degree to which this epithet adequately describes his philosophy is controversial.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Literary genre</span> Category of literary composition

A literary genre is a category of literature. Genres may be determined by literary technique, tone, content, or length. They generally move from more abstract, encompassing classes, which are then further sub-divided into more concrete distinctions. The distinctions between genres and categories are flexible and loosely defined, and even the rules designating genres change over time and are fairly unstable.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhetorical criticism</span>

Rhetorical criticism analyzes the symbolic artifacts of discourse—the words, phrases, images, gestures, performances, texts, films, etc. that people use to communicate. Rhetorical analysis shows how the artifacts work, how well they work, and how the artifacts, as discourse, inform and instruct, entertain and arouse, and convince and persuade the audience; as such, discourse includes the possibility of morally improving the reader, the viewer, and the listener. Rhetorical criticism studies and analyzes the purpose of the words, sights, and sounds that are the symbolic artifacts used for communications among people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Visual rhetoric</span> Communication through visual elements

Visual rhetoric is the art of effective communication through visual elements such as images, typography, and texts. Visual rhetoric encompasses the skill of visual literacy and the ability to analyze images for their form and meaning. Drawing on techniques from semiotics and rhetorical analysis, visual rhetoric expands on visual literacy as it examines the structure of an image with the focus on its persuasive effects on an audience.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mikhail Bakhtin</span> Russian philosopher and literary theorist

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin was a Russian philosopher, literary critic and scholar who worked on literary theory, ethics, and the philosophy of language. His writings, on a variety of subjects, inspired scholars working in a number of different traditions and in disciplines as diverse as literary criticism, history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and psychology. Although Bakhtin was active in the debates on aesthetics and literature that took place in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, his distinctive position did not become well known until he was rediscovered by Russian scholars in the 1960s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genre studies</span> Branch of general critical theory

Genre studies is an academic subject which studies genre theory as a branch of general critical theory in several different fields, including art, literature, linguistics, rhetoric and composition studies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhetoric (Aristotle)</span> Work of literature by Aristotle

Aristotle's Rhetoric is an ancient Greek treatise on the art of persuasion, dating from the 4th century BCE. The English title varies: typically it is Rhetoric, the Art of Rhetoric, On Rhetoric, or a Treatise on Rhetoric.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chaïm Perelman</span> Belgian philosopher (1912–1984)

Chaïm Perelman was a Belgian philosopher of Polish-Jewish origin. He was among the most important argumentation theorists of the twentieth century. His chief work is the Traité de l'argumentation – la nouvelle rhétorique (1958), with Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, translated into English as The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, by John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver (1969).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glossary of rhetorical terms</span>

Owing to its origin in ancient Greece and Rome, English rhetorical theory frequently employs Greek and Latin words as terms of art. This page explains commonly used rhetorical terms in alphabetical order. The brief definitions here are intended to serve as a quick reference rather than an in-depth discussion. For more information, click the terms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhetoric of science</span>

Rhetoric of science is a body of scholarly literature exploring the notion that the practice of science is a rhetorical activity. It emerged after a number of similarly oriented topics of research and discussion during the late 20th century, including the sociology of scientific knowledge, history of science, and philosophy of science, but it is practiced most typically by rhetoricians in academic departments of English, speech, and communication.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Epideictic</span> Branch or "eidē" of rhetoric

The epideictic oratory, also called ceremonial oratory, or praise-and-blame rhetoric, is one of the three branches, or "species" (eidē), of rhetoric as outlined in Aristotle's Rhetoric, to be used to praise or blame during ceremonies.

The third persona is the implied audience which is not present in, or is excluded from, rhetorical communication. This conception of the Third Persona relates to the First Persona, the "I" in discourse, and the second persona, the "you" in discourse. Third Persona is "the 'it' that is not present, that is objectified in a way that 'you' and 'I' are not." Third Persona, as a theory, seeks to define and critique the rules of rhetoric, to further consider how we talk about what we talk about—the discourse of discourse—and who is affected by that discourse. The concept of the third persona encourages examination of who is implicitly excluded from a discourse, why they are excluded, and what this can tell us about how that discourse participates in larger networks of social or political power.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhetorical situation</span> Context of a rhetorical event

The rhetorical situation is an event that consists of an issue, an audience, and a set of constraints. A rhetorical situation arises from a given context or exigence. An article by Lloyd Bitzer introduced the model of the rhetorical situation in 1968, which was later challenged and modified by Richard E. Vatz (1973) and Scott Consigny (1974). More recent scholarship has further redefined the model to include more expansive views of rhetorical operations and ecologies.

Edwin Benjamin Black was one of the leading scholars of rhetorical criticism. He criticized "Neo-Aristotelianism" for its lacking a larger historical, social, political, and cultural understanding of the text and for its concentrating only on certain limited methods and aspects, such as the Aristotelian modes of rhetoric: ethos, pathos, and logos. He urged critics to analyze both the motives and goals within situated cultural norms and ideologies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhetoric of technology</span>

The rhetoric of technology is both an object and field of study. It refers to the ways in which makers and consumers of technology talk about and make decisions regarding technology and also the influence that technology has on discourse. Studies of the rhetoric of technology are interdisciplinary. Scholars in communication, media ecology, and science studies research the rhetoric of technology. Technical communication scholars are also concerned with the rhetoric of technology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Feminist rhetoric</span> Practice of rhetoric

Feminist rhetoric emphasizes the narratives of all demographics, including women and other marginalized groups, into the consideration or practice of rhetoric. Feminist rhetoric does not focus exclusively on the rhetoric of women or feminists, but instead prioritizes the feminist principles of inclusivity, community, and equality over the classic, patriarchal model of persuasion that ultimately separates people from their own experience. Seen as the act of producing or the study of feminist discourses, feminist rhetoric emphasizes and supports the lived experiences and histories of all human beings in all manner of experiences. It also redefines traditional delivery sites to include non-traditional locations such as demonstrations, letter writing, and digital processes, and alternative practices such as rhetorical listening and productive silence. According to author and rhetorical feminist Cheryl Glenn in her book Rhetorical Feminism and This Thing Called Hope (2018), "rhetorical feminism is a set of tactics that multiplies rhetorical opportunities in terms of who counts as a rhetor, who can inhabit an audience, and what those audiences can do." Rhetorical feminism is a strategy that counters traditional forms of rhetoric, favoring dialogue over monologue and seeking to redefine the way audiences view rhetorical appeals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carolyn Miller</span> American academic

Carolyn Rae Miller is SAS Institute Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric and Technical Communication Emerita at North Carolina State University. In 2006 she won the Rigo Award for Lifetime Achievement in Communication Design from the ACM-SIGDOC and in 2016 the Cheryl Geisler Award for Outstanding Mentor, the Rhetoric Society of America. She is a Fellow of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (1995) and of the Rhetoric Society of America (2010). Her “groundbreaking and influential article” on “Genre as Social Action” is foundational for Rhetorical Genre Studies. Three of her articles have been identified as essential works in Technical Communication.

References

  1. Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). "The Problem of Speech Genres". Speech genres and other late essays. Trans. V. W. McGee. University of Texas Press. p. 62.
  2. Bakhtin, Speech genres and other late essays, p.77.
  3. Bakhtin, Speech genres and other late essays, p. 79.
  4. Hill, F.I (1995). "The Rhetoric of Aristotle". A Synoptic History of Classical Rhetoric (2nd rev. ed.), Davis, CA. Hermagoras Press.
  5. Bitzer, L.F. (1968). "The rhetorical situation". Philosophy and Rhetoric, vol. 1, pp. 1-14.
  6. 1 2 3 Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson (1978), Form and Genre: Shaping Rhetorical Action. The Speech Communication Association. Falls Church, VA. p. 21.
  7. Jamieson, K.M.; Campbell, K.K. (1982). "Rhetorical hybrids: "'Fusion of generic elements'". Quarterly Journal of Speech (68), pp. 146-157.
  8. Aristotle, Rhetoric, (Trans. W.R. Roberts, 1954), New York: Modern Library.
  9. 1 2 Miller, C. R. (1984). "Genre as social action." Quarterly Journal of Speech (70), pp. 151-67.
  10. 1 2 Miller, C. R.; Shepherd, D.(2004). "Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog", Into the Blogosphere. Retrieved 10 April 2005.
  11. Kress, G. & Van Leeuwen, T (1996). Multimodal Discourse. London: Routledge. p.110.
  12. Dillon, Andrew; Gushrowski, Barbara A. (2000). "Genres and the web: Is the personal home page the first uniquely digital genre?" Journal of the American Society for Information Science , 51(2), pp. 202-205.
  13. Spinuzzi, C. (2003). Tracing genres through organizations: A sociocultural approach to information design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Sources