240 likes | 444 Views
Where Do Genres Come From?. Week 3, Session 2 New Digital Genres Carolyn R. Miller. Class schedule revision. Week IV: New Genres in Teaching and Learning Monday, August 6 at 2:30 pm, Mini-audit ório 1, CAC, with Prof. Bazerman
E N D
Where Do Genres Come From? Week 3, Session 2 New Digital Genres Carolyn R. Miller
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.”
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 byCook, 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 websites? blogs?
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
Assignment for Monday • Topic Plagiarism, originality, and the internet • ReadingBazerman, “Paying the rent”