Judy,
I really brought up cops as an example since the ticket giver/ticket
receiver is such a script (sort of a little fruit on a genre tree, or a
mushroom budding up from a genre mycelia). But the issue about cops writing
is interesting. You write:
"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...."
Once I was working with the Los Angeles Police Department on issues related
to continuing education. The biggest problem turns out to be cop "writing",
it's not one of the skills they stress. Especially in those area, like LA,
where you can be a cop or county sheriff with just a high school education.
The academy training and POST certification doesn't place a big emphasis on
writing either. This of course has pretty serious consequences insofar as
cop reports are quite influential over what happens in peoples lives. The
LA Community Colleges, at that time were doing a lot of contract ed to
improve cop writing. So cop genre writing is just generally bad writing
accordining to the LAPD educational liaison I worked with.
I wasn't under the impression that the discussion of genre was restricted to
writing however. Did I miss something.? Law enforcement genres would
radiates throughout our culture: it's a recognized genre in literature, cop
movies, cop tv shows -- geez, just the one called "Cops"--, etc. Anyone
who's old enough to remember "Dragnet" will certainly recognize the phrase,
"Just the fact m'am" as being as constitutive an element of a genre as the
phrase, "Just stick out your toungue and say 'ahh'". As a cop's community
of practice could be said to have a multiple related genres. My point is
that the genres of a cop's COP consist of fairly well defined and rigid
audience/interlocutor constructions that so strongly shape the communicative
patterns that cops have a hard time socializing with people outside their
COP. The choice of genre in this situation isn 't too malleable. That's
a half-baked idea, but I do know where the ingredients came from for the
batter.
Paul H. Dillon
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