>>Isn't the degree of malleability one of the most important issues?
The degree of malleability is certainly one of the important issues. I have
been interested in this notion for a while, but haven't done much with it.
Critical race legal scholarship is perhaps the prototypical example of
deliberate genre stretching/busting. What it really achieved, I suspect,
though I haven't checked, is a subgenre of legal scholarship that hasn't
made a dent in what counts as legal scholarship overall. On the other hand,
Ivanic's study of writing and identity shows that writers often resist the
(alien academic) genre they write within, drawing deliberately on different
voices/discourses/interests they identify with, for particular discursive
moves, so they are not really co-opted by the dominant genre. Changed, yes,
but not simply in terms of the alien voice.
Individual bodies are affected by the individual's actions; if enough
individual bodies change, over time they collectively can change the genre.
I'm not sure what you were getting at re: research on cops. If you 'sound
like' a cop when you write, is that because you've BEEN a cop? It's not
because you're writing what cops write about. It's an appropriation of a
style, a voice, a stance toward others that is more or less typical of
genres of cop talk....
Or have I misunderstood the point, entirely?
Judy
One can
>think of obvious genres that are beyond the possibility of adopting (say me
>selecting genre's appropriate to a chinese gangster in San Francisco). True
>one can be a good cop or a bad cop but a lot of research on cops shows them
>to form a very closed community--cops socialize with other cops primarily,
>etc.
>
>My concern about calling a genre a tool has to do with the subject of that
>tool. From a Bakhtinian perspective, insofar as all genres presuppose
>audiences, that subject is clearly not an individual. Individuals adopting
>a certain genre are shaped by the use of that genre and become part of that
>genres collective reproduction. It's a two (or more?) way street.
>
>Paul H. Dillon
>
>
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
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