The Genre Function

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The Genre FunctionAuthor(s): Anis BawarshiSource: College English, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Jan., 2000), pp. 335-360Published by: National Council of Teachers of EnglishStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/378935

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T h e G e n r e F u n c t i o n

Anis Bawarshi

he pastfifteenyearshavewitnesseda dramaticeconceptualizationf genreand its role in the productionandinterpretationof texts and culture. Led inlarge part by scholarsin functional and applied linguistics (Bhatia;Halliday;Kress; Swales),communication studies (Campbell;Jamieson; Yates),educa-

tion (Christie;Dias;Medway),and, most recently,rhetoric and composition studies(Bazerman;Berkenkotter;Coe; Devitt; Freedman; Miller; and Russell), this move-ment has helped transformgenre studyfrom a descriptiveto an explanatoryactivity,one that investigatesnot only text-types and classificationsystems, but also the lin-guistic, sociological, and psychological assumptionsunderlying and shaping thesetext-types.No longer structuringandclassifyingamainlyliterarytextualuniverse,asNorthrop Frye (Anatomy fCriticism)and others in literarystudieshave traditionallysuggested, genres have come to be defined as typifiedrhetoricalways communicantscome to recognize andact in all kinds of situations,literaryandnonliterary.As such,genres do not simply help us define and organize kinds of texts; they also help usdefine andorganizekinds of social actions, social actions that these textsrhetoricallymakepossible. It is this notion of genre thatI wish to explorein this study in ordertoinvestigatethe role that genre playsin the constitutionnot only of texts but of theircontexts, including the identities of those who write them and those who arerepre-sented within them.

To makesuch a claim for genre, to argue that communicantsand their contextsare in partfunctionsof the genres they write, is to endow genre with a statusthatwillsurelymake some readers uneasy.After all, in literarystudiesgenre has for the most

Anis Bawarshi is AssistantProfessor of English at the University of Washington, where he teachescoursesin rhetoricandcomposition.His research nterests ncludethe concept of genreand its relationshipto the writerandinvention. Currently,he is collaboratingon a freshmanwriting textbookthat uses genreas a guiding concept andis completing a book manuscripton genre andthe role of the writer.He has pub-lishedarticlesandinterviews n]AC:AJournalofComposition heory,The WritingCenter ournal,WritingontheEdge,andIssuesn Writing.He thanksthe article'sanonymousreaders or their thoughtfulguidance.

CollegeEnglish,Volume 62, Number 3,January2000


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partoccupied a subservientrole to its users andtheir (con)texts,atbest used asa clas-sificatory device or an a posteriori interpretive tool in relation to alreadyexistingtexts, and at worst censured as formulaic writing. Suffice it to say, genre has notenjoyedvery good standing in literarystudies, particularly ince the late eighteenthcentury when interest in literary"kinds"gave way to a concern for literary"texts"and their writers, a shift that can be characterizedas moving from "poetics"to thepoem and the poet. So it is not surprisingthat, aside from the more recent work inNew Historicism and cultural studies (see Greenblatt),the work done to reconcep-tualizegenre over the last fifteenyearshas come predominantlyfrom scholarswork-ing outside of literarystudies, scholars who are interested in how andwhy typifiedtexts reflect and reproducesocial situations and activities.It is their work, especiallyits basis in functionallinguisticsand sociology, that informs a great deal of the theo-retical underpinnings of this study. But breakingwith what has become common-place in nonliterary reconceptualizationsof genre, I do not want to ignore literaryconsiderationsof genre or, for thatmatter,to arguethatliterarytheories of genre areinimical to nonliterary theories of genre. Such distinctions only reinforce alreadyunhealthy divisionsbetween "literary"and "nonliterary" tudies within English de-partments, divisions that are most clearly manifested when we define ourselves aseither working in "literature"or "compositionand rhetoric."Instead,by reviewingrecent studies of genre by literaryscholarsalongside studies of genre by scholarsinrhetoric, composition, and linguistics, I hope to expose the extent to which genresare constitutive both of literary and nonliterary (con)texts as well as of literaryandnonliterarywriters and readers.In so doing, I posit genre theory and analysis as amethod of inquirythat might very well help us synthesize the multipleand often fac-tionalized strandsof English Studies, including literature,culturalstudies, creativewriting, rhetoric and composition, and applied linguistics. Central to this genre-based inquiry are such questions as how and why texts as cultural artifacts are pro-duced; how they in turn reflect and help enact social actions;and how, finally,theycan serve as sites for cultural critique and change. Genres, I argue, can and shouldserveas the sites for such inquirybecause genres, ultimately,arethe rhetoricalenvi-ronments within which we recognize, enact, and consequentlyreproducevarioussit-uations, practices,relations,and identities.

In arguing that genres constitute all communicative action, I offer genre as analternative to what Michel Foucault in "What Is an Author?" calls the "author-function." In his essay, Foucault attempts to locate and articulate the "space leftempty by the author's disappearance"345) in structuralistand poststructuralist it-erary theory.If the author can no longer be said to constitute awork, Foucaultwon-ders, then what does? What is it that delimits discourseso thatit becomes recognizedas a work that has certain value and status? Sans the author,in short, what is it thatplays "therole of the regulatorof the fictive" (353)?For Foucault,the answeris the


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"author-function."The author-function does not refer to the real writer, the indi-vidual with the proper name who precedes and exists independently of the work.Instead, it refers to the author'sname, which, in addition to being a proper name,is also a literary name, a name that exists only in relation to the work associatedwith it. The author-function, then, endows a work with a certain cultural statusand value. At the same time, the author-function also endows the idea of "author"with a certain cultural status and value. So the author-function not only consti-tutes the work, but it also constitutes the author of that work, the "rationalbeingthat we call 'author'" (347) as opposed to the realwriterwith "justa propernamelike the rest"(345).The author-functiondelimitswhat works we recognize asvaluableand how weinterpret them at the same time it accords the status of author to certain writers:"theseaspectsof anindividualwhich we designateasmakinghim anauthorareonly aprojection,in more or less psychologizingterms,of the operationsthat we forcetextsto undergo"(Foucault347). The role of author,therefore,becomes akinto a subjectposition regulated,asmuch as the workitself, by the author-function.Constitutedbythe author-function, he "realwriter"becomespositionedas anauthor,"avariableandcomplexfunction of discourse" 352). Within this position, "the authordoes not pre-cede the works;he is a certainfunctionalprincipleby which, in our culture,one lim-its, excludes, andchooses;in short, bywhich one impedes the freecirculation, he freemanipulation, the free composition, decomposition, and recomposition of fiction"(352-53).

Conceptually,the author-functionhelps delimit what Foucault calls a "certaindiscursiveconstruct"(346) within which a work and its author function, so that theway we recognize a certaintext and its author as deserving of a privileged status-atext worthy of our study,say, ratherthan simply to be "used"-is regulated by theauthor-function.Not only does the author-function,then, play a classificatoryrole,helping us organize and define texts (346), but more significantly,Foucault explains,it marksoff "the edges of the text, revealing, or at least characterizing,its modeofbeing.The author's name manifests the appearanceof a certain discursiveset andindicates the status of this discoursewithin a society and a culture"(346; emphasisadded).Insofar as the author-functioncharacterizesa text's"mode of being," it con-stitutes it and its author,providinga text andits author with a cultural dentity andsignificancenot accordedto texts that existoutside its purview.As Foucaultexplains,"The author-functionis. . . characteristicof the mode of existence, circulation, andfunctioning of certaindiscourseswithin a society"(346; emphasisadded).For exam-ple, he identifiessuch textsasprivate etters andcontracts, even though they arewrit-ten by someone, as not having "authors,"and, as such, as not constituted by theauthor-function,ostensiblymeaning that their mode of being is regulatednot by anauthor'sname but by some other function.


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In English Studies,we use the author-function o designatecertainworks we call"literary,"works most often recognized, valued, and interpretedin relation to theirauthors'names,which become culturalvalueswe ascribeto these works.So, for exam-ple, a traditional iteraryscholarmight state,"IstudyD. H. Lawrence"or "Iam read-ing a lot of VirginiaWoolf these days,"whereas a scholar n rhetoricandcompositionmight state, "I am studyingthe research article."Yet, if we use the author-functiononly to characterizeand clarifycertain discourses' modes of existence, we stand toignore a greatmany other discoursesand their existence,in particular,how and whynonliterarydiscoursesassume certaincultural values and regulatetheir users' socialpositions, relations, and identities in certainways. Foucault describes, for instance,how the author-function,endowing a certain text with an author-value,"shows thatthis discourse s not ordinaryeverydayspeech thatmerelycomes andgoes, not some-thing that is immediatelyconsumable. On the contrary, t is a speech that must bereceivedin a certainmode and that, in a given culture,must receive a certainstatus"(346). But what about the "everyday peech thatmerely omes ndgoes"?Since it doesnot exist within the realm of the author-function,what is it that regulatessuch dis-course?We need a concept thatcanaccount not only for how certain"privileged"dis-coursesfunction,but alsofor how all discoursesfunction,anoverarchingconcept thatcanexplainthe socialroles we assignto various discoursesandthosewho enact andareenactedby them. Genre is such a concept. Within each genre, discourse is "receivedin a certain mode" and "must receive a certain status," including even discourseendowedwith an author-function.In fact,it is quite possible that the author-functionis itself a function of literarygenres,which createthe ideologicalconditionsthat giverise to this subjectwe call an "author."And so, I propose to subsume what Foucaultcallsthe author-functionwithinwhatI amcallingthegenre unction,which constitutesall discourses'andallwriters'modes of existence, circulation,andfunctioningwithina society,whether the writer is William Shakespeareor a student in a first-yearwrit-ing course, andwhether the text is a sonnet or a first-yearstudenttheme.

As a broaderconcept, the genre function can help us democratize some of theentrenchedhierarchiesthat areprevalent n English Studies,hierarchiesperpetuatedby the author-functionthat privilege literarytexts and their "authors"as somehowmore significant than nonliterary texts and their writers. In "Resisting Privilege:BasicWriting andFoucault'sAuthorFunction,"Gail Stygall arguesthat the author-function is partly responsible for the marginalizationof basic writers (and theirteachers)within departmentsof English (for others who have explored the author-function and its relation to literary and nonliterary texts and writers, particularlythrough the lens of legal discourse,see Woodmansee andJaszi).Stygall,for example,appliesthe rhetoricof the author-function,so embeddedapartof whatshe callsEng-lish Studies'"discursiveeducationalpractices," o the "institutionalpracticeof basicwriting" (321). We define and position basic writers, she explains, against the con-


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ceptual backdropof the author-function,a backdropagainstwhich they aredoomedto fail from the start. It is our unquestionedcommitment to the author-functionthatensures basic writers and their texts remain marginal.That is, when we define stu-dents as basicwriters,we immediatelydeny them the status of authors and the con-comitant privileges that accompany it, so that these students' inabilityto meet ourexpectationsis foretold by the very discourse with which we eventuallydefine themas basic writers. In exposing the author-function andits entrenched discursiveprac-tices, Stygall describes how we reinscribe our own privilege by constructing basicwriters asnonauthors,asother thanus, even asnonbeings. Because we areconceptu-ally limited by the author-function to dismissnonprivileged(that is, nonliterary)dis-course as "everydayspeech that merely comes and goes," we do not know how tovalue it. We ignore it becauseit is not an obviouspartof our "discursiveeducationalpractices."The genre function, however,can expandthe boundariesof our inquiry,allowingus to studyhow allkindsof discourses, iteraryandnonliterary,arecomplexsociorhetorical actionsthat enabletheirusers to recognize, enact,andreproducevar-ious social practices, relations, and identities. We are all, "authors"and "writers"alike,subjectto the genre function.I argue, then, that genres function, just as Foucault claims the author'snamefunctions, on a conceptualaswell as a discursive evel. That is, genres areimplicatedin the waywe experienceandenact a greatmany of our discursiverealities,function-ing as such on an ideological as well as on a rhetoricallevel. Thus how we come toperceive and rhetoricallyact within these realities-and in so doing, how we repro-duce these realities and ourselveswithin differentkinds of texts-become relevantquestionsto the studyof genre, which accountsnot only forwhatFoucault callsa dis-course'smode of being, but also for the mode of being of those who participate n thediscourse.Suchquestionsregardingthe socialmode of being of discourseand its par-ticipants have become more central for scholars and teachers of genre, especiallysince Carolyn Miller's groundbreakingarticle, "Genre as Social Action," first ap-peared in 1984. Based in part on Miller's work and the work of Campbell andJamieson;Burke;Bitzer;andHalliday,whose work she extends,genre theoristshavebegun to question traditionalviews of genres as simplyinnocent, artificial,and evenarbitrary orms that containideas.This containerview of genre, which assumesthatgenres are only familiarcommunicativetools individualsuse to achieve their com-municative goals, overlooks the sociorhetorical function of genres-the extent towhich genres shape and help us recognize our communicative goals, including whythese goals exist,what andwhose purposesthey serve,andhow best to achievethem.It is this oversight that genre theorists have begun to correct. Miller, for example,defines genres as "typified rhetorical actions based in recurrent situations" (159;emphasisadded).For her, genres are not only typifiedrhetoricalresponses to recur-rent situations, but they also help shape and maintain the ways we rhetoricallyact


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within these situations.In other words, as individuals'rhetoricalresponsesto recur-rent situations become typified as genres, the genres in turn help structure the waythese individuals conceptualize and experience these situations, predicting theirnotions of what constitutes appropriateand possible responses and actions. This iswhy genres are both functional and epistemological-they help us function withinparticularsituations at the same time they help shape the ways we come to knowthese situations.

To arguethat genres help reproducethe veryrecurringsituations to which theyrespond (Devitt, "Generalizing") s to identify them as constitutive rather than asmerely regulative,which is also what Foucaultwas claimingfor the author-function.John Searledistinguishesbetween regulativeandconstitutive rules as follows:"Reg-ulative rules regulate a pre-existing activity,an activitywhose existence is logicallyindependent of the rules. Constitutiverules constitute (and also regulate)an activity,the existence of which is logically dependent on the rules"(34). Those scholarswhodefine genre as regulative perceive it, at best, as being a communicative or interpre-tive tool, a conduit for achieving or identifying an already existing communicativepurpose(see, for example,Hirsch andRosmarin n literarystudies;BhatiaandSwalesin linguistics),and, atworst, an artificial,restrictive "law" hatinterfereswith or triesto trap communicativeactivity (Blanchot; Derrida; Croce; to name just a few). AsMiller and Devitt argue,however,genre does not simplyregulatea preexistingsocialactivity; nstead, it constituteshe activity by making it possiblethrough its ideologicaland rhetorical conventions. In fact, genre reproducesthe activity by providingindi-vidualswith the conventions for enacting it. We perform an activity in terms of howwe recognize it-that is, how we identify and come to know it. And we recognize anactivity by way of genre. Genre helps shape and enable our social actions by rhetori-cally constituting the way we recognize the situations within which we function.

We witness a remarkableexample of the genre function at work in GeorgeWashington's first state of the union address.As Kathleen Jamieson explains,Wash-ington faced an unprecedented rhetorical situation when directed by the Constitu-tion to "reportto Congress on the state of the union" (411). Faced with this novelsituation, the first president of the United States, who had earlier led a successfulrebellion against the British monarchy, promptlyrespondedby deliveringa state ofthe union address, Jamieson tells us, "rooted in the monarch's speech from thethrone"(411). That is, Washington adopted an alreadyexisting genre to respond tothe demands of a new situation, a situation,ironically,that had emerged asa reactionagainst the situation appropriatefor that antecedent genre. Even more remarkably,this presidential address, so similar to the "King'sSpeech" in style, format,and sub-stance, in turn prompted a response fromCongress that, far from being critical of thepresident'sspeech, reflected the "echoing speech" that the House of Parliament tra-ditionally deliversin response to the King's Speech (411). AsJamieson explains,"the


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parliamentaryantecedent had transfusedthe congressionalreplywith inappropriatecharacteristics," haracteristics hatnot only voiced an approvalnot felt by all mem-bers of Congress, but also, "becausepatternedon a genre designed to pay homageand secure privileges,"carried"a subservient tone inappropriate o a coequalbranchof a democraticgovernment"(413).What Congresswasrespondingto in its replyto Washington'sstate of the unionaddress was not so much the exigence of the rhetoricalsituation at hand as it was thesituation as embodied by the genre functionof the King's Speech.Members of Con-gress assumeda subjectrole scriptedby the King'sSpeech andconsequentlyenactedthat role by respondingin ways made possible by the "echoingspeeches"of Parlia-ment. One genre thus created the sociorhetorical condition for the other in whatAnne Freadmanhas calledan "uptake,"a concept adaptedfrom speech act theory torefer to the situated anddialogicalrelationshipbetween texts, in which one text-theKing's Speech-prompts an appropriateresponse or uptake from another-theechoing speech-in a particularcontext ("Anyone"95). "Patterningthe first presi-dential inaugural on the sermonic lectures of theocratic leaders,"Jamieson claims,"promptedan addressconsonant with situational demands" 414), demandsscriptedby the genres that communicants had available to them. This generativenature ofgenre, AvivaFreedmancontends, reveals that "genresthemselves form part of thediscursive context to which rhetorsrespondin their writing and, as such, shape andenable the writing" (273). Antecedent genres thus play a role in constituting subse-quent actions, even acts of resistance.Despite effortsto resistmonarchicalpractices,Washington, perhapsunconsciously,assumeda monarchical role when he wrote hisstate of the union address as a King's Speech, turning to an alreadyscriptedsubjectrole to respond to a more immediate and idiosyncraticcircumstance.Aware of thepowerful constraints antecedent genres impose, Jamieson asks, "How free is therhetor'schoice from among the availablemeans of persuasion" 414)? She answers:

To holdthat"therhetor s personallyesponsible orhisrhetoric egardlessf gen-res," s. .. to becomemired nparadoxes.Wewouldbythatdictumhave o interpretourfounding athersas deliberatelyhoosingmonarchicalormswhiledisavowingmonarchy . .; butthoserhetorswouldbeheld"personallyesponsible"orrhetori-calchoices hat n fact hey didnotfreelymake. 414-15)

Jamieson'sresearchilluminatesthe powerfulrole that the genre function playsin constituting not only the ways we respond to andtreatsituations,but also the sub-ject roleswe assume in relationto these situations.Genreshave this generativepowerbecause they carrywith them socialmotives-socially sanctionedways of "appropri-ately"recognizing and behaving within certain situations-that we as social actorsinternalizeasintentions andthen enactrhetoricallyassocialpractices. So evenwhenunique circumstances such as the first state of the union addressandthe democratic


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ideals on which it is based call for new intentions, George Washington, as the writerof this address, is still so socialized by the traditional monarchical motives of theKing's Speech that his intention as a writer/speakeris shaped and enabled by theantecedent genre and the traditionalideology it embodies. In order to write, Wash-ington must first locate himself within the social motives embedded rhetoricallyinthe genre function.We will now consider how the genre function is at work in muchthe samewaywithin literarystudies.

GENRE AND LITERARY STUDIES: LOOKING BACK,LOOKING FORWARD

Heather Dubrow begins her 1984 surveyof genre theory by askingreadersto con-sider the following paragraph:The clockon themantelpieceaid enthirty,butsomeonehadsuggestedecentlyhatthe clockwaswrong.As thefigureof the deadwomanayon thebed n the frontroom,a no less silent igureglidedrapidlyrom he house.Theonlysounds o be heardwerethetickingof thatclockand he loudwailingofan infant. 1)

How, she asks, do we make sense of this piece of discourse? What characteristicsshould we pay attention to as significant?What state of mind need we assume tointerpret the action it describes?The relevance of these questions, Dubrow claims,points to the significanceof genre in helping readersdelimit andinterpretdiscourse.For example,knowing that the paragraphappears n a novel with the title MurderatMarplethorpe,eaderscan begin to make certaininterpretivedecisions asto the valueand meaning of specific images, images that become symbolic when readersrecog-nize that the novel they are reading belongs to the genre of detective fiction. Theinaccuracyof the clock and the fact that the woman lies dead in the front roombecome importantclues when we know what genre we arereading.The figure glid-ing away assumes a particularsubject role within the discourse, the subjectrole ofsuspect. If, Dubrow continues, the tide of the novel was not Murderat Marplethorpebut ratherThe PersonalHistoryofDavidMarplethorpe,hen the waywe encounter thesame text changes. Reading the novel as a Bildungsroman,we will place a differentsignificance on the dead body or the fact that the clock is inaccurate.Certainly,wewill be less likely to look for a suspect.That is, we will not be readingwith "detectiveeyes"as we would if we were readingdetective fiction. The crying baby,as Dubrowsuggests, will also take on more relevance, perhaps being the very David Marple-thorpewhose life's storywe are about to read.

Dubrow'sexample is significantfor what it reveals about what I am calling thegenre function. Not only does the genre function in this case constitutehow we readcertainelementswithin the discourse, allowingus to assumecertainsubject positions


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asreadersof the discourse,but it also constitutesthe roleswe assignto the actorsandevents within the discourse.The actors in the discourse-the crying baby,the deadwoman, the inaccurateclock, the gliding figure-all assumesubjectroles within andbecause of the genre. How readers act in relation to the discourse as well as theactionsthat takeplacewithin the discoursebecome constitutedby genre, so that, forexample,the figurewho glides rapidlyawayfromthe house can eitherbe recognizedas in the act of escapeor in the actof seekinghelp, dependingon the genre.The typeof action taking place within the text, then, is largely constituted by the genre inwhich the text functions, becausegenre provides the conditions-what John Austinin his theory of speech acts calls the "felicityconditions"-within which utterancesbecome speech acts. The meaningof the utterances in the Marplethorpeparagraph,including the actions these utterances are performing, the roles of the charactersdoing the performing, and even the sequence and timing of the utterances,are allinterpretable n relationto the contextualconditionsmaintainedbythe genre.Thesegenre conditions allow readers to limit the potentiallymultiple actionssustainedbythe utterances to certainrecognizable, socially defined actions. Suffice it to say,werecognize, interpret, and, in the spirit of reader-responsetheory,also construct thediscoursewe encounter using the genre function. Genre, in short, is largelyconsti-tutive of the identities we assumewithin andin relationto discourse,whetherwe arecharacters n a novel or presidentsdeliveringstate of the union addresses.

Socialaction as well asidentityconstructionarethuspartlygenre-mediatedandgenre-constituted.Dubrow seems to suggest this when she explains,following E. D.Hirsch, that genre is like asocialcode of behaviorestablishedbetween the readerandauthor(2), akindof "genericcontract" 31) thatstabilizesandenablesinterpretation.Or when she writes that, "muchlike a firmly rooted institution, a well-establishedgenre transmitscertainculturalattitudes,attitudeswhich it is shapedby and in turnhelps shape"(4). Dubrow does not go on to develop the potential inherent in thisclaim, at the very least the potential of this claimfor readersandwritersof nonliter-ary texts. As in nearlyevery study of genre publishedby a literaryscholar,Dubrowtakesgenre to mean only kindsof literarytexts,andwhat she calls the "genericcon-tract"to include only the readerandwriterinvolvedin a literarycontext. Andso, forDubrow and other literarytheorists, genre remains a uniquely literaryinstitution,much like the author-functioncharacterizesa specificallyliterarydiscourse.For allthe insight literarytheories of genre such as Dubrow'scan lend to studies of socialaction andidentity,genre remainsgenerallyperceived by literaryscholars as solely aregulatorandclassifierof literaryactions andidentity,at best helping to identifyandinterpret literarytexts, while at worst interferingwith or restrictingthe free play ofliterarytexts.In either extreme, the relationshipbetween genre and text hashistoricallybeen

and still remains an uneasy one in literarystudies, with most scholars denigrating


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genre to a subordinate,a posteriori classificatorystatus.For those who perceive lit-erarytextsasbeing indeterminate,an expressionof unboundedimagination, genre isan institutional threat to literarytexts and authors. Benedetto Croce, for instance,argues that classifying literary works according to genre is a denial of their truenature,which is basedin intuition, not logic. Genres, Croce claims,are logical con-cepts and as such should not be appliedto literaryworks,which resist classificationand are, anticipatingDerrida's ater poststructuralistargument,indeterminate(38).Perhaps the most famous dismissal of genre, cited by both Marjorie Perloff andAdenaRosmarinin their studies of genre asrepresentativeof the antigenreposition,comes from MauriceBlanchot,who, in Le Livrea venir(1959), writes that "thebookalone is important,as it is, farfrom genre, outside rubrics... under which it refusesto be arrangedand to which it denies the power to fix its place and to determine itsform"(Perloff 3;Rosmarin7-8). Echoing in partthe formalistand more so the NewCritical dreamof a freestandingtext made up of its own internalrelations and sub-ject to its own structural ntegrity,Blanchot perceives genre as a threat to the text'sautonomy. BecauseformalistandNew Criticaltheories of literaturegenerallyarguethat a text'smeaning existsrelationallywithin its structure,everytext thereforemedi-ates its own meaning and so does not requirean external set of conventions to helpidentify or clarifyit. Textsdo not necessarilyneed genres.Even poststructuralistcritiques of structuralismsubordinategenres. Rejectingthe stability of structures and exposing the contradictions, fissures, and tangleswithin what appearsto be a self-contained and coherent text, poststructuralist heo-rists have, with iconoclastic vigor, deconstructed texts in an effort to highlight theinstability and arbitrarinessof meaning. In relation to such textual indeterminacy,genre exists tenuously. For example,Jacques Derrida, who in his "Lawof Genre"acknowledgesthat "every ext participates n one or severalgenres;there is no genre-less text"(65), insiststhat the "law"of genre, aswith anyother kindof law,is an arbi-traryand conservativeattemptto impose orderon what is ultimately indeterminate.Genre, asone more structuralistattemptto regulateor governwhat Derridacallsthe"nonlocusin which aninfinite numberof sign-substitutionscome into play"("Struc-ture" 1118), is a useful, albeit unstable, controlling structurewithin which texts par-ticipate but do not belong ("Law"65), because in the end, a genre's"law"cannotenforce or contain a text'sindeterminacy.

While Derridadoes not rejectgenre,he nonetheless subordinates t to an adhocstatus, like many others, denigratinggenre "asan aporia, a criticalphantasm,or animposition on literature" (Beebee 8). For Derrida and others (Cohen; Hirsch;Perloff; Rosmarin;and Todorov, to name just a few), genre, although relevant onlyafterthe literaryfact, servesausefulrole in the interpretationof texts.As an explana-tory tool, genre not only classifiestexts but also helps readers nterpretthem. Thesecritics are careful to note, however, that even though genre may exercise some


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explanatorypower over literarytexts, it does not interferewith their autonomy.Lit-erarytexts are produced and exist independentlyof genres; genres function only ascritical apparatuses.Notice, for example, the apparent defensiveness with whichAdena Rosmarinproclaims"The Power of Genre,"which happensto be the title ofher book: "The critic who explicitlyuses genre as an explanatory ool neither claimsnor needs to claimthat literarytexts should or will be written in its terms, but that,atthe present moment and for his implied audience,criticism canbest justifythe valueof a particular literary text by using these terms" (50-51). Genre is therefore thecritic'stool or heuristic,a lens the critic uses to interpretliterarytexts.The sametextcan be subjectto differentgenre lenses without compromisingthe text's ntegrity,sothat, along with Rosmarin,a critic could say,"let us explorewhat 'Andreadel Sarto'is like when we read it as a dramaticmonologue ..." (46).Despite this seeming defensiveness,Rosmarindoes acknowledgegenre'sconsti-tutive power,albeitonly as aninterpretivetool, involved in literaryconsumption, notliterary production. This acknowledgment,echoed in Cohen, Perloff, and Hirsch,for example, signals a shift in literary genre theory away from classification andtowardclarificationof texts.This shift in emphasis,which Dubrow identifies ashav-ing begun in the 1930s, helped redefinegenre so that it no longer only representedaclassification system but also constituted the relationship between a text and itsreaderas well as textsandother texts (Dubrow 86). As aresult,genre came to be rec-ognized more andmore as a psychologicalconcept, a state of mind a readerassumesin relationto a literarytext.As Tzvetan Todorovbeganto argue,and aswe sawin theMarplethorpeexampleearlier,genres constructan interpretivecontextwithinwhichboth the readerandtext aresituatedandwhich determinesto a largeextent the waythat the two interact (Todorov,TheFantastic).Moreover, genres not only establisharelationshipbetween readerandtext in whatamountsto apsychologicalrelationship,but they also establish a relationshipbetween texts in what amounts to a sociologicalrelationship-a kind of literaryculture.

Sociology is the science of social relations, organization, and change, whatAnthony Giddenscallsthe studyof "human ocialactivities"and the "conditionsthatmake these activitiespossible"(2). Sociology, then, is the study of how social life isenactedandorganized,how socialactivity s definedandrelatedto other socialactiv-ity in time-space. In his book Metaphors f Genre,David Fishelove exploresthe con-nections between sociology and genre theory,explainingthat the metaphor "genresare social institutions" is commonly used by literaryscholarsto explaingenre. Likesocial institutions, genres constitute textualrelations, organization,and change. Infact, like social institutions, genres also providethe conditions that maketextualac-tivity possible and even meaningful.Fishelove, following Northrop Frye in Anatomyof Criticism,describes genres as shaping and governing a literaryuniverse, so thatgenre theory becomes akinto the sociology of literaryculture.As Rene Wellek and


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Austin Warren put it, literarygenres are institutions in the same way that church,university,and state areinstitutions(226). Yet,whereas the social and the culturalarethe domain of sociology, genresare the domain of poetics (Fishelove 85). Within thisliteraryuniverse, genres create a kind of literaryculture or poetics in which textualactivity becomes meaningful. FredricJameson describes such a culture when hewrites, "genres are essentially literary institutions, or social contracts between awriter and a specificpublic, whose function is to specify the properuse of a particu-lar cultural artifact"(106). As artifacts,texts become both useful and meaningfulinsofar as they exist in relation to one another within generic contexts. As Todorovexplains,"failingto recognize the existence of genres is equivalentto claimingthat aliterarywork does not bear any relationship to already existing works. Genres areprecisely those relay-pointsby which the work assumesa relationwith the universeof literature" TheFantastic8).

Genres thus endow literary exts with a socialidentitywithin the "universeof lit-erature,"constituting a literarytext's and its producer's"mode of being"-a literarycontext within which literary activity takes place. As sociological concepts, genresconstitute and regulate literaryactivitywithin particularspace-time configurations.KaiiteHamburger,for example,arguesthat each genre representsa particularreality,especiallya temporalreality,so that, for instance, the "pasttense in fiction does notsuggest the pasttense as we know it but rathera situationin the present;when we read'Johnwalkedinto the room,' we do not assume,as we would if we encountered thesame preterite in another type of writing, that the action being described occurredpriorto one in our world"(qtd.in Dubrow 103). So genres regulateour perceptionsof time. But they also regulatehow we spatiallynegotiate our way through time, asboth readersand writers.Recall, for example,the Marplethorpe paragraphdiscussedearlier.If we readit as detective fiction, then we immediately begin to make certainspace-time connections: the gliding figure and the dead woman assume a certainspatial-temporalrelationshipto one anotheras possiblemurdervictim:suspect.Thatis, they assume a genre-mediatedcause/effect relationshipin terms of their spatialproximityand theirtemporalsequence.The gliding figure may simplybe a gliding fig-ure, peripheral o the plot. However,if we read the paragraph s detectivefiction,thenthis figure'sgliding awayfromthe site of adeadbody atthis particular ime andat thisparticulardistancemakesthis figurea suspectandthe deadbodyavictim.The actionsof each actor, in other words, along with the inaccurateclock, combine within thegenre to form a genre-mediatedsociorhetoricalconstructin which spaceandtime areconfigured n a certainwayin orderto allowcertainevents andactions to takeplace(formore on genreandits relationto spaceandtime, see Bakhtin;Schryer;andYates).

Northrop Frye has argued that literary texts do not, as the New Criticsclaimed, exist as freestanding structures,but instead exist in relation to one anotherwithin a genre-mediated literaryuniverse. His Anatomyof Criticisms in essence an


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effort to describe andclassifythis universe. Genres playa significantrole in the soci-ological constitution of this literaryculture, identifying the various roles that textsand their authorsplaywithin it and how these roles get performedwithin the space-time configurationsit constructs. This is why Gerard Genette refers to the classicalliterarytriad of lyric, epic, anddramatic (eachof which representsspaceand time inparticularways) as archigenres. Archigenres, which are overarching genres thatgovern all other literary genres, constitute just this kind of literary universe, a"properlyaesthetic" universe within which literarytexts andtheir writers and read-ers "naturally"unction.As we see from the preceding discussion, for many genre theorists in literarystudies literary genres constituteand regulate literary activities. That is, adaptingSearle'searlierdistinction,genres do not just regulatepreexistingactivities,activitieswhose existence is independent of generic conventions;rather,genres constitutehevery conditions that their conventions in turn regulate.This is why genre theoristsoften define genre in terms of literarysocial institutions,institutions that enable andshape"human ocialactivities"and the "conditions hat makethese activitiespossible"(Giddens 2). David Fishelove, for example,explainsthat as "aprofessor s expectedtocomply with certainpatternsof action, and to interact with other role-players (e.g.,students)according to the structureand functions of an educational nstitution ..., acharacter n a comedy is expected to performcertain acts and to interact with othercharactersaccordingto the structuralprinciplesof the literary institution'of comedy"(86). It is these "structural rinciples,"which function and aremaintained at the levelof genre, thatmakethe activityat once possible andrecognizable,sociallyandrhetor-ically. And just as social institutions assign social roles, so genres assign genre roles,both to the characterswho participatewithin them and to the writers andreaderswhointeract with them. Indeed, as Fishelove insists, "the concept of role is inseparablefrom thatof genre"(101). Yet the problem here, asthroughout thisdiscussionof genretheory, is that literary scholars identify genre roles only with literaryroles. Genresfunctiononly to maintain a literary nstitution,constructing a literaryworld in whichvariousliteraryactivities andidentitiesareenacted.

What about identifying genres not only asanalogicalto social institutions but asactualsocial institutions,constituting not just literary activity but social activity,notjust literary textualrelations but all textualrelations, so that genres do not just con-stitute the literarysites in which literaryactors(writers,readers,characters)andtheirtexts function, but also constitute the social reality in which the activitiesof all socialparticipants are implicated? In other words, to what extent is the university as aninstitution and the roles enacted within it, to return to Fishelove'sexample, consti-tuted by its genres: researcharticles, grants, assignment prompts, lectures, criticalessays, course evaluations,memos, oral exams, committee minutes, to name just afew? This is the question that genre theorists in linguistics, communication studies,


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education, and rhetoric and composition have begun asking over the last fifteenyears, and it is the question that we will now begin to consider. Answering it willallow us to begin synthesizing the literaryas well as nonliterary ways that the genrefunction is at work in making all kinds of social practices, relations, and identitiespossible andmeaningful.

BEYOND LITERARY STUDIES: GENRE AS SOCIAL SEMIOTICFor most literaryscholars,genre'sjurisdictionappears o end when we leave the lit-eraryworld. Not so for M. M. Bakhtin or Thomas O. Beebee. In "The Problem ofSpeech Genres," Bakhtin argues that genres mediate all communicative activity,from novels to militarycommands to everydayshort rejoinders.In so doing, Bakhtintakes perhaps the most significant step toward a view of genre as social semiotic.Defining speech genres as typifiedutterancesexistingwithin language spheres (60),Bakhtin claims that "we speakonly in definite speech genres; that is, all our utter-ances have definite and relativelystable typicalformsofconstructionf the whole" 79;Bakhtin'semphasis). Such generic forms of the utterance shape and enable whatBakhtincalls a speaker's"speechplan"or "speechwill"(78). He explains:

Thespeaker'speechwill s manifestedrimarilynthechoicefaparticularspeechenre.This choice s determined ythespecificnatureof thegivensphereof speechcom-munication.... Andwhenthespeaker'speechplanwith all tsindividualityndsub-jectivitys applied ndadaptedo a chosengenre, t is shapedanddevelopedwithinacertaingeneric orm.Suchgenresexistaboveall n thegreatandmultifariousphereof everyday ralcommunication,ncludinghe mostfamiliar ndthemostintimate.(78;Bakhtin'smphasis)

Genres, therefore, do not justconstitute literaryrealityand its texts.They constituteall speech communicationby becoming partof "ourexperiencesand our conscious-ness together" and mediating the "dialogic reverberations" hat make up commu-nicativeinteraction(78, 94).

When individualscommunicate, they do so withingenres,and so the participantsin any communicativeact assume certain genre-constituted roles while interactingwith one another.Bakhtinrefers to the participantswithin discourseas "speechsub-jects" (72). The speaker's peech planis mediatedby her chosen genre;so is her style.In addition, the speaker'svery conception of the addresseeis mediated by genre,becauseeach genre embodiesits own typical conception of the addressee 98). In fact,the veryword andits relationto otherwordsis alsomediatedby speech genres:"Inthegenre the word acquiresa particular ypical expression.Genres correspondto typicalsituationsof speech communication, typical themes, and, consequently,alsoto partic-ularcontactsbetween the meaningsof wordsandactualconcreterealityundercertaintypical circumstances" 87). Speech genres thus constitute the very communicative


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situationswithin which speech subjects-both speakersand addressees-interact inthe samewaythat literarygenres constitute the literarycontextwithin which literarysubjects-writers, readers,andcharacters-interact.Thomas O. Beebee, defining genre as the "use-value"of texts, in part applieswhat Bakhtin claims for speech genres to written genres. For Beebee, "primarily,genre is the precondition for the creation and the reading of texts"(250), becausegenre providesthe ideological context in which a text and its participantsfunctionand attainculturalvalue. Genres, in other words, embody texts with use-value(7)-"a text'sgenre is its use-value. Genre gives us not understanding n the abstractandpassive sense but use in the pragmatic and active sense" (14). This use-value issociallydetermined andso makesgenresin partbearersandreproducersof culture-in short, ideological.In turn,genresarewhat maketextsideological, endowing themwith a socialuse-value.As ideological concepts or categories,then, genres delimitalllanguage-not just poetic language-into what Beebee calls the "possibilities ofits usage," transforminglanguage from a denotative to a connotative level (278).Philippe Gardy describes this transformationas a "movement of actualization" nwhich "bruteinformation"or the "brute'facts'of discourse"(denotation) becomeactualizedas "ideologicalinformation" connotation)(qtd. in Beebee 278). So genreis an "actualizer"of discourse,transforminggeneraldiscourseinto a sociallyrecog-nized and meaningful text by endowing it with what Foucaultcalls a mode of beingor existence.It is genre, thus, thatgivesa text a socialreality.Beebee concludes,"Therelation of the text to the 'real'is in fact establishedby our willingness to place itgenerically,which amounts to our willingness to ideologically appropriate ts bruteinformation"(278).

Because genres function on an ideological level, constituting discursivereality,they operate as conceptual schemes that also constitute how we negotiate our waythrough discursivereality as producers and consumers of texts. In his functionalapproachto language, Languageas SocialSemiotic,M. A. K. Halliday explores thisconnection between languageandsociology. Hallidaymaintainsthat "thenetwork ofmeanings"that constituteanyculture,what he callsthe "socialsemiotic,"is to alargeextentencoded in andmaintainedbyits semanticsystem,whichrepresentsaculture's"meaningpotential"(100, 13). As such, "the construal of reality [socialsemiotic] isinseparable romthe construalof the semanticsystem in which the reality s encoded.In this sense, languageis a sharedmeaningpotential, atonce apartof experience andan intersubjective interpretation of experience" (1-2). This is why, as Hallidayrepeatedlyinsists, languageis aform of socialization,playinga role in how individu-als become socializedwithin pockets of culture he calls"contexts of situation."Language is functional not only because it encodes and embodies the socialsemiotic but also because it helps enact the social semiotic. Language, therefore,makessocialrealityrecognizable andenablesindividualsto experienceit, others, and


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themselves within it. Halliday explains: "By their everydayacts of meaning [theirsemantic activities],people act out the social structure,affirmingtheir own statusesand roles, and establishing and transmitting the shared systems of value and ofknowledge" (2). The semantic system, representingwhat Halliday calls a culture's"meaning potential," n turn constitutes its individuals'"behaviourpotential,"whichcharacterizes ndividuals'actions and interactions within a particular ocial semioticor context of situation (13). The semiotic system,which is social in nature,becomescognitively internalized as a systemof behaviorwhen it is manifestedin the semanticsystem, so that we internalize and enact culture as we learn and use language.Thesemanticpotential (whata communicatorcan do or mean within social reality)con-stitutes the "actualizedpotential"(whata communicator does or means within socialreality)(40).For Halliday,contexts of situation(particular ocial semioticswithin socialreal-ity) often reoccur as "situationtypes,"a set of typified semiotic and semantic rela-tions that makeup "a scenario ... of persons and actions and events fromwhich thethings which are said derive their meaning" (28-30). Examples of situation typesinclude "players nstructingnovice in a game,""motherreadingbedtime story to achild,"and "customersordering goods over the phone" (29). These situation types"specifythe semantic configurationsthat the speakerwill typicallyfashion"(110).

Hallidayrefers to this typifiedsemiotic andsemantic scenario as"register."Reg-ister is "the clusteringof semantic featuresaccordingto situationtypes" (68), a situ-ated and typified semantic system that regulates the activities of communicators,including their contexts and their means of communication,within a particular ypeof situation. It is register, ultimately,that links a text and its sociosemiotic environ-ment, because register assigns a situation type with particularsemantic properties(145). Registerthus syntacticallyandsemanticallyembodies asituationtype, becom-ing a linguistic, textual,and ideological simulacrumof a situation type. As Hallidayexplains, register is "aconceptualrameworkor representingthe social context as thesemiotic environment in which people exchange meanings" (110; emphasis added).As a conceptual frameworkwithin which a situation type is semantically realized,register regulateswhat actuallytakesplace communicatively (the "field"),who is tak-ing part (the "tenor"),andwhat role language is playing (the "mode").The field ofdiscourse represents the institutional setting in which language occurs, that is, thewhole activityof communicationwithin a particular etting. The tenor of discourserepresents the relation between participants-their role relations-within thediscourse. And the mode of discourse represents the channel of communicationadopted by the participants 33). All three levels interactin particularand fairly typ-ified wayswithin register.

What is of particularnterest to us is where Halliday positions genrewithinreg-ister.For Halliday, genre is a mode or conduit of communication, one of the linguis-


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tic means available within register that helps communicants realize the situationtype. Functioning at the level of mode, within the field, tenor, and mode complex,genre representsthe vehicle throughwhich communicantsinteract within asituationtype. Genres are thus relegatedto typified tools communicants use within registersto enact and interact within a particularsemiotic system. It is this semiotic system,Halliday explains,"thatgeneratesthe semiotic tensions andthe rhetoricalstyles andgenres that express them" (113). As modes of communication, genres are instru-ments communicantsuse to expresstheir typifiedsocialrealities.Yet,as we have seenin the work of Bakhtin, Beebee, and some of the other literary scholars, genresoccupy more than just an expressiverole; genres also constitute what I have calledparticularand typified literarycultures,or, in keeping with Halliday, literarysemi-otics. That is, genres create the conditionsin which not only texts but also theirwrit-ers and readers function. And so, I propose to give genre more of a constitutive rolein Halliday'stheory of language,making it function not only as one element withinregister,but also asan integralpartof the very social semiotic that is realizedby reg-ister.This is what I mean by genre as social semiotic.As integral partsof how we maintainandcome to recognize typifiedcontextsofsituation, genres are not simply how we communicate within register;they are alsohow we constitute register and all the semantic, social, and lexicogrammaticalcon-figurationswithin it. I makethis claimbecause, as I see it, Halliday'snotion of regis-ter is too abstract and vague, too much akin to what composition scholars call"discoursecommunity."It is not very helpful, on either a theoreticalor a pedagogi-cal level, to claim that particular ypes of situations are realizedby certainregisterswhich in turn regulatethe natureof the communicativeactivity, he relationbetweenparticipants n the activity,andthe mode of language,includinggenre, that is used toexpressthe activity.It is not enough becausethe idea of "situationtype" is much toogeneral.Within the samesituationtype, for example,more thanone genre is often atwork, and each genre within a situation type constitutes its own typified register-that is, its own particularsocial activity,its own subject roles as well as relationsbetween these roles, andits own rhetoricalandformalfeatures.Each genre, then, constitutes its own social semiotic. To make this claim, how-ever, is not to say that genres do not interact or participatewith one another.Moreoften than not they do interact in what composition scholars have called "genresets" (Devitt "Intertextuality") r "systemsof genre"(Bazerman"Systems").Thesesets of genres will often function together within situationtypes, each with its ownparticularfield, tenor, and mode complex, yet each cooperating to construct a typeof social activity or, to borrow David Russell'srecent term, an "activitysystem."Within such activitysystems, genres not only constitute particularparticipantrolesand texts, but they also regulate how participantsrecognize and interact with oneanother.As such, any typified social activity-a report on the state of the union, for


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example-is mediated by genres, each of which sets up its own situated identitiesand actions, including motives and intentions, as well as relations. This notion ofsituation type asresulting from and mediatedby a set of genres can be clarified if welook at an example.If we take a situationtype, say"teacher nstructingstudentsin a classroom,"werecognize that there cannot be only one registerat work within it. This situationtypeis much too dynamic-actualized by a range of shifting, even conflicting, situatedactivities,participantrelations,and rhetoricalstyles and goals-to be embodied by asingle register.What is at work within the situation type, rather,is a set of genres,each with its own particularsocial semiotic and each organizing and maintainingwhat we recognize as this situation type. For instance, the lecture represents onegenre that constitutes a particularfield (literally the physical configuration of theroom, with teacher in front, students facing teacher in rows, and so on), tenor (theway studentsraisetheir hands and wait for signalsfrom the teacher to askquestions,and the power dynamicthis sets up), and mode (how the teacher organizes the lec-ture itself, the question-answernature of the dialogue). But the lectureis not the onlygenre. Others include the assignmentprompt, which in turn constitutes a differentfield, tenor, and mode, the student papers,the teacher'scomments on the students'papers, the syllabus, the course description, and so on. Each of these genres con-structs a differentsociosemanticdynamic,aparticular ocial semiotic which both stu-dents and teachers come to recognize and which in turn shapes and enables theirvarious identities, activities, and relations within the situation type.

Halliday writes that "realityconsists of meanings" (139). Genres do not justexpressorhelp communicantscommunicatethesemeaningsaspartof register;rather,genres mediate andmaintain these meanings.As such, genres are not merely classi-fication systems or innocent communicative tools; genres are socially constructedcognitive andrhetoricalconcepts-symbiotically maintainedrhetoricalecosystems,if you will-within which communicants enact and reproduce specific situations,actions, relations,andidentities.As individualsmaketheirway throughculture,theyfunctionwithinvariousand at times conflicting genre situations,situationsthatposi-tion them in specificrelationsto othersandthat contributeto the way they recognizetheir activities, themselves,andothers.

GENRE AND THE CONSTITUTION OF SOCIAL IDENTITY

Sociologist Anthony Giddens argues that human activity-motive, intention, andagency-is constituted by and enactedwithin social systems,which it in turnrepro-duces. Giddens explains:"Human social activities... are recursive.That is to say,they are not broughtinto being by social actorsbut continuallyrecreatedby themviathe verymeanswhereby they expressthemselvesas actors.In andthroughtheiractiv-ities agents reproducethe conditions thatmakethese activitiespossible" (2). Giddens


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describes this ecological process as the "dualityof structure,"which is based on thetheory "that the rules and resources drawnupon in the productionandreproductionof social action are at the sametime the means of systemreproduction" 19). Humanactors,in their socialpractices, reproducethe verysocial situations that in turnmaketheir actionsnecessary,possible, andrecognizable,so that their actions maintainandenact the very situationsthat consequentlycall for these very actions.Giddens's theory of structuration has much to offer genre studies. CarolynMiller, for one, has alreadyexploredthe connections (see "RhetoricalCommunity")by arguingthat genres, as typified sociorhetoricalactions, play a key role in repro-ducing the very situationsto which they in turn respond (see also BerkenkotterandHuckin;YatesandOrlikowski;andGiltrow andValiquette).Millerwrites: "The rulesand resources of a genre provide reproducible speaker and addressee roles [seeBakhtin],social typificationsof recurrentsocial needs or exigencies, topical struc-tures (or 'moves' and 'steps'),andways of indexing an event to materialconditions,turningthem into constraintsor resources" 71). Genres do this, aswe discussedear-lier,by constitutingtheir own social semiotic, a semiotic thatrhetoricallyshapesandenables social action and in turn is constituted by the very action which it enables.This is why genres shape our social realities andus as we give shape to them. Let usexplorehow genres do this in more detail.Take a visit to a physician,for example.A physician'soffice is not a rhetoricallyunmediated environment in which doctor and patient interact, a site within which"everyday peech merelycomes andgoes"becauseit ostensiblylies outside the realmof the author-function.We might be tempted to think it is arhetoricallyunmeditatedsituation because the doctor-patient relationshipis such a sensual, tactile one, butthis would be to underestimate the power of genre in shapingand enabling this veryphysical relationship. Prior to any interaction between doctor and patient, thepatient has to complete what is generally known as the Patient Medical HistoryForm. Patients recognize this genre, which they encounter on their initial visit to aphysician,as one that solicits critical informationregarding a patient'sphysicalsta-tistics (sex, age, height, weight, and so on) as well as medicalhistory, including priorand recurring physical conditions, past treatments, and, of course, a description ofcurrent physical symptoms. This is followed by insurancecarrierinformation andthen a consent-to-treatment statement and a legal release statement, which thepatient signs. The genre is at once a patient recordand a legal document, helping thedoctor treatthe patient andpresumablyprotecting the doctor frompotentiallawsuits.But these are not the genre's only functions. The Patient Medical History Form(PMHF) also helps the patient and doctor reproduce the sociorhetoricalconditionswithin which they interact. For instance,the genre reflects how our culture andsci-ence separatethe mind from the body in treating disease,constructingthe patientasan embodied object. As TeresaTran-a pre-med studentwho conducted a semester-long case study of the PMHF in a genre analysis course I taught-concluded, the


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genre is mainly rhetoricallyconcerned with a patient'sphysicalsymptoms, suggest-ing that we can treatthe body separatelyfromthe mind-that is, we canisolatephys-ical symptoms and treat them with little to no reference to the patient'sstate of mindand the effect that state of mind might have on these symptoms. In so doing, thePMHF reflects Western views of medicine, views that arerhetoricallypreservedandreproduced by the genre and that in turnarephysicallyembodied in the waythe doc-tor recognizes and treats the patientas a synecdoche of his or her physicalsymptoms(forexample, "Itreateda knee injurytoday"or "the earinfection is in Room 3").ThePMHF, then, is at work on the patient,socializingor scriptingthe individual nto therole of "patient" an embodied self) priorto his meeting with the doctor at the sametime it is at work on the doctor,preparingher to meet the individual as an embodied"patient."So powerfulis the socializingpower of genre in identity formationthat wemore often than not accept and act out our genre roles. As Tran explains,"Also onthe [PMHF], there is apartthatsays'othercomments' which apatientwillunderstandasaskingwhetheror not he or she hasanyother physical problems,not mental ones"(2; emphasisadded).Even when a patientostensiblyhas a choice, the genre functionand the culturalideology it reflects and reproducesare alreadyat work constitutingthe patient'ssubject position in preparationfor meeting the doctor. Thus the genreenables us to assume certain situationalroles, roles establishedby our culture andrhetoricallyenactedandreproduced by the genre.

The PMHF as a genre works rhetorically to predict the physical interactionbetween doctor and patient. It is one of the many genres that maintains thesociorhetorical conditions shaping and enabling this environment or "activity sys-tem"(see Russell)we callthe physician'soffice.The PMHF is not unique,then. Othergenres in a physician'soffice arealso at work constitutingother social situationsandrelations:relations between nurses and doctors, doctors and other doctors, doctorsand pharmacists,andso on. Within this genre-constitutedandgenre-mediatedenvi-ronment, communicantsassumeandenactvariousgenre identities-ways of writingand speakingthemselves into existence in particular ituations,much aswe write our-selves into the role of patient in the PMHF and, in so doing, shape and enable notonly our social practices and relations, but also "the ways we think of ourselves aswriters, the roles we use to describe ourselves"(BrookeandJacobs 216).We all function-authors, presidents, and patients alike-within genre-constituted realitieswithinwhich we assumegenre-constituted dentities.The reasonfor this is that genre is recursivelyandinseparably inked to the concept of exigence,definedas asituation or event that individualsrecognizeasrequiring mmediateatten-tion or response.This means that genres are not simplytypifiedrhetoricalresponsesto alreadyexisting exigencies, merely tools individuals use to dealwith a priori situ-ations. Rather,situations and their participantsare alwaysin the process of repro-ducing each other within genre: the PMHF rhetoricallymaintainsthe situational


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conditionswithin which doctor and patientenact their roles and activities,and theirroles and activities n turnreproducethe veryconditionsthat makethe PMHF neces-saryand meaningful.Genres, in short, constitute the very exigencies to which theirusersin turnrhetoricallyrespond,so that the genre function does not simplyprecedeindependentlyof us but is rathersomethingwe reproduceas we function within it. Letus look at an other example. Like many other events, death is a materialand socialrealityin our world, one that callsfor various and often culturally diosyncraticreac-tions. In some ways,we can define the responseto death in terms of what Hallidaycalls asituationtype,atypifiedsocialrealityorsemioticthat is realizedsemanticallybyregister.But this is not entirelyaccurate.As a situationtype, "theresponseto death"does not represent a single social semiotic realized within a single register.Rather,death is treated as a slightly differentsocial semiotic in each of the varioussemanticand lexicogrammaticalresponsesto it. Each semantic and lexicogrammaticresponseis actualizedby a particulargenre,which in turnconstitutes deathas a slightlydiffer-ent exigency recognized as requiring a particulartype of immediate attention orresponse.The variousways in which individualsrecognize, experience,and respondto death,therefore,become constitutedby the genresthey areusing.As a situationtype, the "responseto death" s representedandrealizedby a vari-ety of genres in our culture,each of which constitutes it as a specific exigency,callingfor a particularkindof response to fill aparticular ocial need. So each genre consti-tutes its own social semioticwithin which death takeson a particular ocial meaningandbecomes treatedas a particular ocial action (field),within which those involvedtake on particular ocialroles andrelate to one anotherin particularways (tenor), andwithin which certainrhetoricalstrategiesand styles are used (mode). In our culture,for example,we have elegies, eulogies, obituaries,epitaphs,requiems,even greetingcards, just to name a few. Each of these socially sanctioned and typified rhetoricalresponses is not just a form or tool we use to express our feelings about death as anexigency; instead,each comes to constituteone of the various wayswe make sense ofand treat death in our culture.The obituaryand the elegy, for instance, rhetoricallyrespond to death differentlybecause each genre treats death as a slightly differentexigency,servinga different social function and requiringa different type of imme-diate attention andremedy.Thus the genres we have available o us become directlyrelated to the wayswe construct,respondto, and makesense of recurringsituations,even similarsituations.At the sametime, as we sawin the PMHF example, genresaredirectlyrelated to the identitiesorsubjectpositions we assume aswell as the relationswe establishbetween ourselves andotherswithin these situations.We recognize obituaries, for example, as notices of a person's death, usuallyaccompaniedby a short biographicalaccount.They serve to notify the generalpub-lic andso do not play asdirect a role as, say,the eulogy does in helping those who aregrieving deal with their loss. The purpose of the obituary, then, is not to console


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those closest to the deceased or to help them maintain a sense of continuity in theface of loss, but to ascribe the deceased with a social identity andvalue, one that isrecognizable to others within the community. So the obituary'spurpose is not, likethe eulogy,to assess andpraisethe meaning of the deceased's ife anddeath; rather, tis to make the deceased'slife publicly recognizable, perhaps even to celebrate thevalue of the individual-as-citizen.Rhetorically,therefore, the obituaryoften beginswith an announcement of death, often without mention of the cause,and a notice ofwhere the funeral services will be held. What is most telling about the obituary,though, is how it biographicallyrepresentsthe deceased. Unlike the eulogy, in whichthe deceased'spersonal accomplishments, desires, even disappointmentsare cele-brated,the obituarydescribes the deceased's ife in terms of its social value: who thedeceased'sparentsare;who his or her spouse(s)and childrenare;where the deceasedwasborn, lived, anddied;what jobs the deceased held over the spanof his or her life;what organizationsand clubs the deceased belonged to; and so on. In other words,the obituary constitutes a certain public identity for the deceased, one that makeshim or her recognizable to the general public in terms familiar to them: as a fellowcitizen. As a genre, the obituaryconstitutes death as an exigence that requiresus toreaffirm,using the occasion of someone's death, the publicworth of that individual.The obituaryconstitutes the deceased as a public citizen, whose life is told in termsof the public institutionsin which he or she participated.In short, the obituarycon-stitutes death as a different kind of exigency and hence a different social realityrequiring a different rhetorical action, a different relation among the participants,anddifferentsocialroles than does the eulogy or other similargenres.

Carolyn Miller, in "Genre as Social Action," argues that because "[s]ituationsare social constructs that are the result, not of 'perception,' but of definition," thevery idea of recurrence is socially defined and constructed (156). What we recog-nize and experience as recurring, then, is the result of our construing and treatingit as such. Moreover, the way we recognize a recurringsituation as requiring a cer-tain immediate attention or remedy (in short, an exigence) is also socially defined.Over time a recursive relationship results, in which our typified responses to a sit-uation in turn lead to its recurrence. In all this, exigence plays a key role, at onceshaping how we socially recognize a situation and helping us reproduce it. AsMiller explains, "Exigence is a form of social knowledge-a mutual construing ofobjects, events, interests, andpurposesthat not only links them but also makesthemwhat they are:an objectifiedsocialneed"(157). So exigence becomes partof the waywe conceptualize andexperiencea situation, and, as a result,how we respond to andmaintain it.

Becausegenre andexigence arerecursively inked,we oversimplifygenreswhenwe define them only as the typified rhetorical ways in which individualsfunctionwithin socially defined and a priori recurrentsituationsor, the current buzzwordin


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composition, discourse communities (see Swales, for example,who relegates genreto one of six characteristics haredby members of a discoursecommunityin ordertohelp them achieve their goals). Actually, genres play a critical role in helping usreproducethis recurrence.Ratherthan being rhetorical actions "based" n recurrentsituations,genres are both rhetorical actions and recurrentsituations. That is, genreshelp communicantsconstruct the veryrecurrentsituationsto which they rhetoricallyrespond(see Devitt, "Generalizing"andMiller,"RhetoricalCommunity").Exigence,as such, is not only a form of social knowledge but also specificallya form of genreknowledge. We rhetoricallyrecognize and respond to particularsituationsthroughgenres becausegenres arehow we sociallyconstructthese situationsby definingandtreatingthem as particularexigencies.A genre is thus both the situationand the tex-tualinstantiationof thatsituation,the site at which the rhetoricaland the socialrepro-duce one another in specific kinds of texts. Genre is what it allows us to do, thepotentialthatmakes the actualpossible,the "con"and the "text"at the same time. Assuchgenreallowsus to studythe social and the rhetoricalastheywork on one another,reinforcingand reproducingone anotherand the social activities,the roles, and therelations that takeplacewithin them. This recursiveprocessis what genre is.

CONCLUSION

I have been arguingthat the genre function rhetoricallyconstitutes our social reali-ties-both literaryandnonliterary-including howwe recognize andenactthesereal-ities, others, and ourselves in particular pace-time, ideological configurations. Thegenre function,in fact,becomes in key waysour situated andtypifiedrhetoricalreal-ity, a reality we enter into and reproduce as we enact it. The actors in theMarplethorpeexamplewe discussedearlierareconstitutedby it; D. H. Lawrence as aliterary "author" s constituted by it when he recreates different memories of hismother'sdeath in one genre (a novel such as SonsandLovers) nd then in another(apoem such as "The Bride"),each genre in partsocializinghim to experience andnar-ratehis memory of her in ways made possible by the genre's rhetoricalconventions;George Washington and Congress were constituted by it; patients and doctors areconstituted by it; even afterwe die, we are constituted by it in our obituaries.Thegenre function is the social and rhetoricalscene within which we enactvarious socialpractices, relations, and identities. We all, not just literaryauthors, become socialactors within the genre function, endowed with certainsocial status and value. Rec-ognizing this,we in English Studies can bringtogether our various inguistic,literary,and rhetoricalsubfields in orderto recognize and study all kinds of texts-technical,business, legal, literary,expository-as complex rhetoricalactionsthat socializetheirusers into performingsocial roles and actions,roles and actionsthat help reproducethe realitiesthey describe andenact.


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Charles Bazerman, in his recent "The Life of Genre, the Life in the Class-room," reinforces what I am calling the genre function when he writes, "genresarenot just forms. Genres are forms of life, ways of being. They are frames for socialaction.... They are locations within which meaning is constructed. Genres shapethe thoughts we form and the communications by which we interact"(19). Indeed,genres play a role in helping us organize, experience, andultimatelyunderstand thesituationswithin which we communicate;they are not just the effect of what we dowhen we communicate (the resultingnovel or obituaryor play or lab report or syl-labus or state of the union address)but what we actuallydo when we communicate,the activityitself, or what Foucault calls its "mode of being." Basically,genres shapeus as we give shapeto them, which is why they constitute our activitiesandregulatehow and why we perform them. In this way,we can attributeto the genre functionmany of the claims Foucault makes for the author-function,except that the genrefunction accounts for all discursiveactivities,not just those endowed with a certainliteraryvalue. The genre function,assuch,allows us in English Studies to expandandsynthesize our field of inquiry to include the constitution of all discourses and theidentities implicated within them, thereby helping us to rethink our at timesunhealthy distinctions between literaryand nonliterarytexts, poetics and rhetoric,author and writer, literatureand composition, and focus instead on how all texts,writers,and readers areconstitutedby the genres within which they function.WORKS CITEDAustin, John L. How to Do Thingswith Words.Oxford: OxfordUP, 1962.Bakhtin, M. M. "The Problem of Speech Genres." SpeechGenresand OtherLateEssays.Ed. Caryl Emer-

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Christie, Frances,andJ. R. Martin. Genres ndInstitutions.London: Cassell, 1997.Coe, Richard."'An Arousing and Fulfillment of Desire':The Rhetoric of Genre in the Process Era and

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Cohen, Ralph."Do Postmodern Genres Exist?"Perloff 11-27.Croce, Benedetto. Aesthetic.Trans.Douglas Ainslie. New York:Noonday, 1968.Derrida,Jacques. "The Law of Genre." Glyph7 (Spring 1980). Rpt. in Critical nquihy7 (Autumn 1980):55-81.

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---. "Intertextualityn TaxAccounting:Generic, Referential,andFunctional."TextualDynamics ftheProfessions: istoricaland Contemporartytudiesof Writingin ProfessionalCommunities.Ed. CharlesBazermanandJames Paradis.Madison:U of Wisconsin P, 1991. 335-57.Dias, Patrick."InitiatingStudentsinto the Genres of Discipline-BasedReadingandWriting."FreedmanandMedway,Learningand TeachingGenre193-206.Dubrow,Heather. Genre.London:Methune, 1982.Fishelove, David. Metaphors f Genre:TheRoleof Analogies n GenreTheory.Pennsylvania:PennsylvaniaStateUP, 1993.Foucault,Michel. "WhatIs anAuthor."ContemporaryiteraryCriticism. rd ed. Ed. Robert Con Davis andRonald Schleifer.New York:Longman, 1994. 342-53.Freadman,Anne. "AnyoneforTennis?"ThePlaceofGenre nLearning:CurrentDebates.Ed. Ian Reid. Gee-long: Deakin University, 1988. 91-124.

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Documents

The Genre Function