scholarly journals Scenes from Graduate School: Playing in the Smooth Spaces of Academic Writing

Author(s):  
Nancy Bray

In this essay, I describe how I have experienced difficulties writing in particular academic genres. Finding spaces to play in these genres has helped me to ease these difficulties and negotiate the conflicts and contradictions of the academy. To explore and explain innovative spaces within genres, I extend Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of smooth and striated spaces with work in rhetorical genre studies. I conclude that opening smooth spaces in striated academic genres is not only important for students like me but may also help us better respond to the changing realities of graduate studies and academic work in Canada. I offer some suggestions as to how writing studies scholarship could support these efforts.

Author(s):  
Shurli Makmillen ◽  
Michelle Riedlinger

AbstractThis study contributes to research into genre innovation and scholarship exploring how Indigenous epistemes are disrupting dominant discourses of the academy. Using a case study approach, we investigated 31 research articles produced by Mäori scholars and published in the journal AlterNative between 2006 and 2018. We looked for linguistic features associated with self-positioning and self-identification. We found heightened ambiguous uses of “we”; a prevalence of verbs associated with personal (as opposed to discursive) uses of “I/we”; personal storytelling; and a privileging of Elders’ contributions to the existing state of knowledge. We argue these features reflect and reinforce Indigenous scholars’ social relations with particular communities of practice within and outside of the academy. They are also in keeping with Indigenous knowledge-making practices, protocols, and languages, and signal sites of negotiation and innovation in the research article. We present the implications for rhetorical genre studies and for teaching academic genres.


2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Carbonell-Olivares ◽  
Luz Gil-Salom ◽  
Carmen Soler-Monreal

Since the 1990s written academic genres have received considerable attention in discourse and rhetorical studies, especially texts written in English. Although few studies describe PhD theses as a genre, some work has been carried out on their macrostructure and the rhetorical moves of certain sections. In the Spanish literature, genre studies on academic writing are scarce relative to those in English, especially in the case of doctoral theses. We analyse the introductions of 21 doctoral theses in computing written in Spanish using Bunton’s model (2002) for thesis introductions in English. The results indicate that most of the steps in this model are applicable to our corpus, but several new steps and sub-steps have been distinguished to account for the observed moves of Spanish PhD thesis introductions. The complexity of the thesis introduction is related to the scope and depth of the research carried out for a doctoral thesis, the need to display extensive knowledge of the field and to justify the relevance of the research.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-120
Author(s):  
Vera Lúcia Lopes Cristovão ◽  
Natasha Artemeva

Theoretical foundations of the Swiss School of Socio-Discursive Interactionism (SDI), North American Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) and the Brazilian School of SDI are reviewed, compared, and contrasted, and the similarities and differences in their key features and perspectives on genre analysis and pedagogy are discussed. The Brazilian School of SDI is identified as an expansion of Swiss SDI. The reviewed approaches are shown to be somewhat complementary. The recommendations are made for the future hybrid use of the Brazilian School of SDI and RGS in pedagogical applications.


2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley Rose Kelly ◽  
Kate Maddalena

This article explores the intersection of Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) and Actor-Network Theory (ANT). These two traditions are particularly important in the Canadian research context. We examine genre and ANT to uncover what we believe is a complementary relationship that promises much to the study of science, especially in the age of the internet. Specifically, we see RGS as a way to account for how objects come to “be” as complex wholes and so act across/among levels of network configurations. Moreover, the nature of these objects’ (instruments’) action is such that we may attribute them to a kind of rhetorical agency. We look to the InFORM Network’s grassroots, citizen science-oriented response to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster as a case that exemplifies how a combined RGS and ANT perspective can articulate the complex wholes of material/rhetorical networks.Cet article examine Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) et Actor-Network Theory (ANT). Ces deux modes d’étude sont importants dans les contextes de la recherche Canadienne. Nous prennons genre et ANT, pour retrouver une perspective que nous croyons puisse contribuer beaucoup aux études de la science dans l’âge de l’internet. On comprend les genres de textes comme une moyenne de rendre compte de la façon dont les objets deviennent des ensembles complexes et donc agir entre les différents niveaux de configuration réseau. En plus, la nature des actions de ces objets (ou instruments scientifique) est telle qu’on puisse attribuer a eux une sorte d’agence rhétorique. Nous voyons le citizen science reponse de l’InFORM Network a la disastre au Fukushima Daiichi comme une example de la puissance d’un perspectif RGS/ANT pour articuler les “entieres-complexes” des networks qui sont material/rhetorical au meme temps.


2016 ◽  
Vol 30 (74) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Ølgaard Nyboe

Jacob Ølgaard Nyboe: “Genre Signature. A Rhetorical Neologism ”The article introduces the notion of genre signature defined as a creative, unique or deliberately misguiding genre label. It is argued that the genre signature holds a great rhetorical potential in negotiating the position as well as the interpretation of a literary work. The phenomenon is examined through analyses of contemporary Danish literature and is viewed in the context of Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS), new literary tendencies and media reception.


Res Rhetorica ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Łukowska

Celem niniejszego artykułu jest analiza retoryczna współczesnego teatru improwizowanego. Oś, wokół której osadzone są rozważania, to elementy charakterystyczne dla tradycyjnej budowy mowy oratorskiej oraz dla strategii jej wygłaszania. Badanie opiera się na opracowanej przez Agnieszkę Budzyńską-Dacę metodzie, na którą składa się opis czterech wymiarów gatunku. Podstawowe założenie współczesnych retorycznych studiów genologicznych (ang. Rhetorical Genre Studies, RGS), czyli uznanie gatunku za działanie społeczne, umożliwia spojrzenie na improwizację jako na dwupodmiotowe zdarzenie, wewnątrz którego tworzony jest kod o określonych celach. Krytyka oparta jest więc na kluczowych aspektach: celu, audytorium i działania. W tej perspektywie analiza gatunkowa skupia się na sytuacji retorycznej oraz jej kontekście. Materiał badawczy stanowią dwa przedstawienia w formacie reprezentatywnym dla impro – Haroldzie.


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