Re: genres in activity

Judy Diamondstone (diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu)
Tue, 23 Jul 1996 13:10:07 -0400

I have just read some (but probably not all) recent messages in this
thread. The computer system at my institution has been down and I am on
the opposite coast, calling in by modem. But I can't resist putting in
two cents now - more later.

I like Chuck Bazerman's and Paul Prior's discussion of genre as
script-like in the generative sense and discussion of voice as
the echo, so to speak, of actual voices. Ana also emphasizes
the dialogism of Bakhtin' notion of utterance.
What I am a bit concerned about, however, is that the constraining
sociohistorical relations are getting written out of the theory; the
sociolinguistic "facts"/probabilities of occurrence and
dominance of certain types of voice, etc. I can appreciate a move
away from determinism, but I sense a tension developing here between
productive foci of genre theory. That's good - A productive
tension and not a dichotomizing one. I'll say more later....

Judy