Thanks, Judy, for the report on the conference.
I wonder if there is any difference between "genre" and "discourse"? Bakhtin
used the term "genre" but people now (e.g., Jim Gee) use "discourse". This
is not my area but I can't see difference. Does it exist?
Eugene
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Judy Diamondstone [mailto:diamonju@rci.rutgers.edu]
> Sent: Sunday, January 25, 1998 1:30 PM
> To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: Genre symposium - compilation #1: general impressions
>
>
> Mid-January, a number of xmca-ers attended the "2nd International
> Symposium on Genre" in Vancouver, BC. I solicited their notes &
> comments afterward to compile a report for xmca. This (and
> the next message or two) is it.
>
> Xmca-ers attending the conference were Chuck Bazerman, Carol
> Berkenkotter, myself, Patrick Diaz, Russell Hunt, Peter Medway,
> Anthony Pare, & David Russell. Those who were able to contribute
> notes/thoughts are cited below. The others I hope will add
> their own impressions where they see sig. omissions or differences
> with their own views.
>
> I've organized the report into a few "general impressions" and
> more specific "comments on presentations"
>
> General impressions --
>
>
> RUSS (the full text of Russ's comments is available at his
> website:
> http://www.stthomasu.ca/hunt/sfu/genrerfl.htm)
>
> For me the central idea -- the one that kept coming up as I listened to
> presentations and talked with people over lunches and dinners -- was
> introduced in the opening talk by Anne Freadman: uptake. This notion
> draws from, and invokes, speech act theory, a take on language which has
> been a good deal less salient in recent years than it once was.
> Freadman was clear that she's at least as concerned with the limitations
> of speech act theory as with its relevance to a concern with
> understanding the role of genre in our semiotic co-construction of
> social reality. But she also reminded all of us, right off the top,
> that we need to think of genre as a verb, rather than a noun, as an act
> rather than a thing, and that this way of looking at language was one of
> the principal contributions of Austin and Grice and Searle....
>
>
> CHUCK:
> Almost uniformly throughout the conference genre was perceived as
> a form of activity rather than a set of textual conventions. There was as
> well substantial attention to the ways genred utterances were embedded in
> activity systems. Both activity theory and structurationist theories were
> regularly invoked. In the discussion following Patrick Dias' plenary
> paper explicating activity theory, it became evident that there were a
> number of very knowledgable activity theorists in the audience. There was
> some discussion of the relationship of activity theory to other
> situational, utterance based approaches and whether there was a danger of
> some terms coming to dominate over other equally useful terms.
> ....
>
> ANTHONY:
>
> It's difficult to identify the chief impressions left on me by the
> Symposium. Like many contemporary conversations (xmca being a prime
> example, in my experience), there was plenty of cross-disciplinary
> exploration going on, with rhetoricians, literary critics, linguists,
> educators, and others seeking common ground, defining terms, elaborating
> conceptions. There were moments when "genre" seemed to mean everything,
> followed by moments when it lost meaning altogether. Is there such a
> thing as "genre theory," or is "genre" simply a helpful unit of
> analysis, a useful lens for researchers? How does it fit into AT? What
> are its educational applications/implications? Are rhetorical, literary,
> and linguistic notions of "genre" the same/different? Do they overlap?
> Interested xmcaers might want to check at
> http://www.sfu.ca/english/genre.htm for the Symposium program (and other
> stuff).
>
>
> Judith Diamondstone (732) 932-7496 Ext. 352
> Graduate School of Education
> Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
> 10 Seminary Place
> New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1183
>