Genre Expectations and Viewer Reaction to Our Planet: Are Audiences Motivated to Act More Sustainably?

As more people turn to documentaries to learn about environmental issues it becomes even more important to consider the ways in which genre and its representational patterns, such as the use of images, affect viewers. Re-examining the multiliteracies framework and grounded in rhetorical genre studies, this paper explores the first two episodes of Our Planet, a Netflix docu-series that catalyzed strong responses based on two jarring image sequences. The purpose of this paper is to examine how our familiar understandings of particular genres impacts our understanding of particular issues and what happens when the familiar patterns of a genre are challenged.

Retoryka współczesnego teatru improwizowanego. Krytyka gatunkowa formatu Harold

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.

Autistic university students’ accounts of interactions with nonautistic and autistic individuals: a rhetorical genre studies perspective

Um número crescente de estudantes autistas tem se matriculado em universidades ao redor do mundo. Esses estudantes são ensinados majoritariamente por instrutores não autistas que tentam auxiliá-los durante seu aprendizado dos letramentos acadêmicos, sem entender completamente esse grupo de alunos neurodiversos. A maior parte das pesquisas sobre o desenvolvimento de letramentos acadêmicos, inclusive sobre escrita acadêmica, até hoje não investigou a experiência de ser um estudante autista em uma universidade. Nesse estudo piloto qualitativo e exploratório com um pequeno grupo, nos baseamos nos Estudos Retóricos de Gênero (ERG) para investigar os relatos de 12 estudantes autistas de duas universidades canadenses em relação às suas interações com indivíduos não autistas e autistas na universidade. A partir da análise da perspectiva de ERG, nós fomos capazes de estabelecer e desvendar a natureza retórica dessas interações. Entender a natureza retórica dessas interações fornece um primeiro passo para desenvolver auxílio efetivo para estudantes autistas que estão aprendendo a falar e escrever academicamente em um predominante contexto universitário de não autistas.

On Genre as Social Action, Uptake, and Modest Grand Theory

Carolyn Miller’s (1984) “Genre as Social Action,” the primary topic—or target—of Anne Freadman’s brilliant and thought-provoking article, holds a special place in genre research. If I pick up an unknown piece of research on genre, the first thing I do is look for Miller’s article in the bibliography. If it is not there, the text in my hand will probably be of little of value to my work for lack of orientation. Moreover, as Freadman (2012) notes, convention in genre research suggests that when you mention the article, it is in good form to add a positive qualifier. It will often be framed as having “formative influence” (MacNeil, 2012), as a “landmark essay” (Feinberg, 2015), or as “seminal” (Andersen, 2008; Devitt, 2009a; Motta-Roth & Herbele, 2015; Møller, 2018; Paré, 2014; Tachino, 2012), “groundbreaking” (Bawarshi, 2000; Smart, 2003; Winsor, 2000), or “oft-cited” (Devitt, 2009b). More than just paying lip service to the greats in the field, adding this qualifier demonstrates that the author knows her way around Rhetorical Genre Studies and is mindful of Miller’s central place within it. This status as a classic text is in itself an example of the bidirectionality of uptake that holds a central place in Freadman’s work. “Genre as Social Action” could not be canonical when it was first published. A canon had to form, and the article’s central place within it had to be recognized by later researchers, before Miller’s text could be taken as oft-cited, seminal, or groundbreaking.

Exercising Genres: A Rejoinder to Anne Freadman

Anne Freadman’s engagement with Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) is informed, generous, illuminating, and provocative. She does us the service of placing into a broad intellectual context the recent conversations about genre within the developing RGS tradition. She has done me the honour of reading my work thoroughly and carefully, more carefully in some cases than I wrote it. She has taken up Rhetorical Genre Studies in her own way and given us much in return. And in response, I feel … well … compelled to reply, to take up the conversation, to add to the chain of semiosis.

Writing for Nonprofits in a Professionally-Oriented Institution: Using Rhetorical Genre Studies to Teach Flexibility

Teaching rhetorical flexibility within a nonprofit environment to professionally-oriented students can be challenging because the seemingly transactional genres of nonprofit communication, such as grant applications, do not appear to invite improvisation. This genre analysis assignment from a Writing for Nonprofits course asks students to reflect on the intersections of their own values as emerging communications professionals and the rhetorical choices they made while writing in a nonprofit genre of their choice. To complete the assignment described here, students created a "personal code" that describes their professional values and used the code to write a genre analysis that examines the rhetorical choices made in a nonprofit genre. This "reflective genre analysis" allows students to recognize their own agency in the negotiation of genre and reinforces the idea that professional behavior is rhetorical and situational.

Bridging Rhetorical Genre Studies and Ethics of Representation in Meeting Minutes

This essay describes a project that introduces undergraduate students in a technical and professional writing course to rhetorical genre studies, context, and ethics. In this project, students (1) study examples of meeting minutes and consider their functions within specific contexts, (2) take meeting minutes of a class session, and (3) analyze their minutes to abstract larger lessons on the rhetorical, epistemological, and ethical work of technical and professional writing. This project brings students' attention to the complex decision-making processes writers face as they seek to produce useful, ethical, recognizable professional documents.

Towads a hybrid approach to genre teaching: comparing the swiss and brazilian schools of socio-discursive interactionism and rhetorical genre studies

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.

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

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.