I think you're probably right to object that
> The scientific neutralism of formalist descriptive discourse
> analysis tends to accept at face value every genre as fulfilling
> some normal social function (like every species being adapted to
> its niche -- but a lot of species are NOT well-adapted to their
> niches, they may have moved in recently, they may be about to go
> extinct, they may be living on borrowed time till a superior
> competitor arrives, etc.).
But if we get beyond thinking of genres as fixed entities (which,
I'm aware, much genre theory wants to continue doing) and think of
them as processes that can be categorized for various purposes, like
species, maybe (as your language here suggests), we don't exactly
have to see them as perfectly adapted functions of a social /
rhetorical situation.
On the other hand, they do exist as _some_ kind of function of a
situation, which may, as you say, include a lot more than the
obvious, immediate rhetorical demand. In a sense, one thing I'm
saying about textoids (and textbooks) is that because of the larger
situation, they _don't_ in fact respond very well to any immediate
rhetorical demand. They're synthetic constructions, created to look
as though they responded to that demand, but which don't quite do it.
Like bad dialogue in a play or a TV commercial ("I'll rush right
down the store and get one . . . today!").
So I think this is exactly right:
> Note the parallel peculiarity of textbooks to textoids: they
> purport to address an audience of students, but in fact they
> survive and flourish because of selections made by teachers,
> faculty, school boards, departments -- not students.
But the point I want to make is that the real rhetorical / political
situation textbooks purportedly address is one that, in fact, does
foster the kind of discourse we're talking about. Maybe this is a
way to think about it: a reference book is pull technology, a
textbook is push technology. Both are responses to the rhetorical
situation in which dialogue really isn't the aim: information
transfer is. But push technology is necessarily dialogic if it's not
to be a bullhorn, an announcement . . . and textbooks, trying to look
dialogic in a social situation where dialogue just isn't on, thus
become conflicted. And this is as much a function of the situation
it's in as of how the textbook's language might look outside that
situation. Take an article from _The New Yorker_ or a posting from
XMCA (not to mention an encyclopedia entry) and put it into that
situation and watch what happens to it.
> There may be many genres which ought not be analyzed by
> functionalist methods, i.e. on the assumption that their form
> follows their _avowed_ or apparent function, because of conflicts
> with or the dominance of covert functions, or because they are
> sheltered from the selection pressures of the nominal functional
> context by more remote social forces and interests. I think one
> could get a whole new dimension to genre theory by following up on
> such an idea.
Seems to me that the real issue here is whether "functionalist
methods" ought not to attend to functions beyond the avowed or
apparent. I do agree about the implications for genre theory. I
hope everybody's aware of the Simon Fraser Symposium on Genre coming
up in January in Vancouver.
-- Russ
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