talking about genres in a discourse community

 this is an edited transcript of a Gmail chat conversation i had with a lawyer i am friends/go dancing with, who asked me what's the difference between a discourse community and a genre. because our two fields have a lot in common (law, and rhetoric), we actually have more than a few of these conversations looking for the places where the different things we do all day intersect.



me: discourse communities use genres, but the two are not the same thing.
P: alright, that makes sense. like a star wars fanfic DC uses the genre of fanfic.
me: sure.
P: actually there the genre kind of defines the DC.
me: not really. fan fiction has subgenres. and most of those people gather in communities of some sort. which means fanzines, print or electronic, are in their orbit. so are forum posts, blog posts, workshop-style responses.
P: which are all also genres.
me: and as fans they probably participate in critique or review of books and movies involving their particular fandom.
P: so this is what you want your students to do tomorrow?
me: no. i want us to be able to identify a genre, and identify features of the genre. although that genre may share features with other genres.
the first question is what are we reading/seeing/listening to?
the second question is how do we know that?
if we can get there, next week we'll get into what are the values built into those features?
P: what kind of values are there in a genre like fiction or fanfic? I'm not used to thinking about values embodied in forms.
me: what is a genre you use?
P: I use legal persuasion... I guess that's a genre.
me: what on earth is legal persuasion?
P: I write a thing that talks about facts, and statutes, and old court cases, and what seems fair/commonsensical, all to try to persuade the judge to rule for my clients.
me: no, what is the thing you write?
P: legal brief. that's the title of the thing.
me: drawing on old court cases is a logos/ethos move. what seems fair is a pathos move. legal brief is a genre.
what are the features of that genre? how do you know you're reading a legal brief and not a rental contract?
P: hm. a number of features.
there's a pretty set format.
there's a stated audience.
there's a case caption at the top.
the lawyer asks for something from the court, and signs it at the bottom.
and of course the content is particular to that genre.
there's a statement of what's being asked for, then a statement of issues, then a statement of facts and procedural history, and then the legal argument/analysis.
me: those features saying something about what the genre privileges, and what the community that uses it values. that formality is important here, that it's better to be redundant and overstate than risk something going unsaid, that the history of a thing must be part of the current decision, that similar decisions should be a factor in making this one.
i will wager there's more ethos and logos than pathos in this, so emotion is not valued as much. or only certain kinds of emotions.
P: pathos is very devalued, except in certain kinds of legal claims that are specifically about "what's fair."
me: and fair is supposedly a rational thing, not a compassionate thing.
P: I don't know. that's an area where the appeal is really to an innate sense of right and wrong. I'm not sure logic really penetrates that far. I'm also not sure it's simply emotion.
me: i know it's not simply emotion because it's a male-dominated field.
take a legal brief in comparison to a commercial asking people to donate for children who need medical care, or victims of a world disaster. they both urge people to make a just decision, but one is laden with compassion, and the other is not. there are obviously other differences. but still.
P: oh yeah. no pictures of crying children in (most) legal briefs.
you'd better believe that a jury trial has that though.
me: a jury trial is lawyers speaking to average people. maybe there's a sense that the average person is duped and swayed by emotion. and sensationalism.but lawyers don't use that with one another.
P: duped =/= swayed
me: okay.
P: but yes, emotion gets used less when it's just the judge on the bench.
me: it says something about how the speaker views his audience.
and the point isn't specifically how the legal community views emotional appeals. it's that genres are value-laden.
P: common=emotional. legally educated=rational.
me: well and that legal briefs are matter of fact things, and jury trials are performances.
if you understand these things about a genre, you don't accidentally misuse it.
P: I'm starting to see how the different genres there could incorporate value preference.
me: which is the point for a writing class. good writing is not a static, all-purpose thing.
P: so that you don't start a monologue in the middle of a business letter. or something.
me: or write a biology article as if it's a anthropology article.
or invite people to your traditional muslim wedding through facebook.
P: that last one might be fun/tense.

reflecting on dissertation

this afternoon i have a meeting (i think?) scheduled with my dissertation director. he's kind of minimalist at the best of times, so i'm honestly not entirely sure i've had this meeting confirmed. nonetheless, in the expectation of spending an hour justifying the fact that i missed my deadline for the next chapter, i spent part of the weekend going over what i've written and trying to make sense of it.

the last time dr. M and i spoke, he said i needed to lose the citizenship stuff, because it was too confusing. i had given him drafts of my first two chapters, and a page or so of what i thought might be chapter 3. originally, when he said lose the citizenship stuff, i thought he meant go in another direction entirely, so i spent what must have been 2 weeks reading Iris Marion Young, Martha, Nussbaum, Ahmed, and City of Rhetoric. then i spent another week or so in despair because i couldn't figure out how to answer one of the questions dr. M asked ("what do you want people to do?") without using the citizenship thing.

then i went back and read the stuff i originally thought would be chapter 3. and it's got to go. it's an overview of How We Define Citizenship, but it relies heavily on Marshall's definition, and it's driven by categories of citizenship. in retrospect, i'm not actually sure how i was going to get from there to talking about anything. if i'm talking categories of citizenship, i've basically promised to either 1) propose a NEW category (which i'm not doing) or 2) use those categories to argue for something (which i'm also pretty much not doing). so now here's what i don't know: did dr. M mean get rid of the citizenship question entirely, or is he a genius who already knew that what i had written wouldn't fly, but i can still talk citizenship in other ways?

then i did some writing, because if all else fails, get words on paper. i stopped worrying about where this was going, and just tried to do some writing based on the research i had already done. and when i sat down and looked at that this weekend, i realized my writing so far falls under 4 umbrellas.

A - How things get sticky
B - We normally see citizenship as national or individual. One is too large, the other two small.
C - Buy-local movements would seem to solve the problem of a citizenship that's too big, but they don't, entirely, and they definitely don't solve the problem of one that's too small.
D - How Nussbaum and Young are in conversation with one another.

as might be obvious, some of those things fit together, but not all of them. i think i can get from A to B pretty easily, and the transition from B to C is obvious. but how do i get from C to D? and if i'm talking about both Young and Nussbaum, how does that change my project as a whole? i know what Young's solution to the citizenship question would be. and i know Nussbaum's possible objections to it. what i don't know yet is what would Nussbaum's solution look like? is it better than Young's? and if i can figure out what Nussbaum's would be, is it going to mean i can no longer write my 4th chapter on Occupy Detroit?

3 possible ways to start project 1

i told myself i was going to start early on this draft, which i then (of course) didn't. i started thinking it over yesterday, and did some writing this morning. i told my classes that i find introduction the hardest, although it wasn't as difficult with this project as it often is. possibly this is because we talked wednesday about ways to start the paper, although it seems just as likely that it's because this is a topic near to me personally and i find it easier to write about. 

i even made a couple different starts, just to see how they felt. 

there's the "Look How Scholarly I Am" approach, where you drop some names: 

 When scholars like James Gee and John Swales talk about discourses or discourse communities, they have a tendency to focus on language use, which might lead those new to the concepts to think that highly physical activities –like soccer, yoga, or dance- don’t really qualify. As a dancer of four years experience, however, I can say definitively that this isn’t the case. …

i like this okay, although it feels a little abrupt. it probably needs something at the beginning -why am i even telling people about gee and swales? i need something to get me from zero to discourse. and probably some of what this paper would need to do is keep talking about how gee and swales defines DCs and make sure that i'm making a case for dancing being included.

 or the "This Paper Is Obviously Aimed At My Classmates and Teacher" approach:

The community I chose to write about is the swing dancing community, which I have been a member of for four years now. A friend showed me the basic step and two turns for East Coast Swing at a wedding in Kentucky, and I was immediately hooked. As soon as I could, I found the nearest group of swing dancers and started taking lessons. ...

in spite of my somewhat smirky title for this approach, it works fine, i think, for this paper. it won't work for later ones, obviously, but i think it can work for what is essentially a chance to introduce yourself, and explore language use, in front of classmates.

and then there's what i think i will call the "Anthony's Sink Or Swim" Approach:

We came to an awkward stop on the floor and my practice partner, Rich, said, “That’s not working.” “Yeah,” I agreed. “We’re losing the tension we’d normally get on the one-two, so there’s nothing to carry the swing-out. We need something else.” Rich considered this, and nodded, “Okay. I’ll throw in a couple crazylegs to get us situated.” Four years ago, the first time I went to a dance lesson, I could never have imagined a time when this would be a normal conversation for me. But although language might not be the first thing you’d think of when someone mentioned swing dancing, it’s become like a second language for me.

In some ways, I mean this literally. There are many dances under the umbrella of “swing” –the Charleston, East Coast (the Jitterbug), West Coast, Carolina Shag, Lindy Hop, Balboa, Boogie-Woogie- but for the most part they share a common set of terms that refer to specific moves, or types of moves. Most dancers will understand what a basic, a whip, a swing-out, a sugarpush, a tuck turn or a pop turn mean, even if we don’t always do these moves in the same way. Similarly, most of us know things like crazylegs, tacky annie, and shorty George, very specific moves from the swing tradition. But when I say that swing dancing –or, to be more specific, Lindy Hop, has become a second language for me, I mean something more subtle.

this is the introduction i ended up finishing. reflecting on it, i'm realizing a couple of things. 1) i'm not sure how well i've thrown people into my group. the incident i'm trying to recreate for them might be too long. am i going to lose everyone's attention in the 5 sentences i'm taking? is there anything i can do about that? could i just shorten it somehow to rich's sentence about the crazylegs (not one of my favorite moves)? and then 2) i'm at the end of my second paragraph and not a thesis statement in sight. does this matter? i'm not convinced it does. i think this paper can be a place where the rules are a little more relaxed. and i've done some of the major work, right? DC identified. language mentioned. one example given. i think as long as i don't leave people in suspense too much longer i can get away with it. 

BUT. i don't think delaying as long as i have with this third example would have worked with the first two. those introductions lent themselves to more formal statements of argument. which might be why i liked this one so much -i don't usually get to write a casual, let's-see-where-things-take-us sort of argument. if i can tighten up the very beginning, and get rid of some of my scene setting, this is probably the one i'll go with.

reflections on project 1

i was very pleased for the most part with the responses my classes gave to picking their own discourse community to write about. most people, even those who were confused after the first reading, seem to have a good grasp on what a DC is. people also seem to be able to able to articulate the values or goals of their communities.

the problem comes, for most people, when trying to show how language use expresses those goals. it's much easier (for me, as well) to either talk about my group and how we use language, or talk about my group and its values. it's getting those two things in the same room, so to speak, where the problem comes.

whatever else we do next week, this aspect needs to be addressed. and this needs to be included on the rubric for scoring this paper as well.

lots of work. lots to think about. but in spite of that i'm more excited about this bunch of papers than i normally am, faced with the prospect of reading 50 ad analysis papers. not sorry to see that paper go.

"he's okay, but he's not leading with his body"

it's not really all that easy to narrow down a single discourse community i would want to write about. DCs are about recognition, but they're also about how i see myself. which community would i choose to best represent me? various people know me as a teacher, a student, a southerner, a born-again detroiter, a baker, a homebrewer, a comic book collector, a sci-fi fan, a runner, a dancer, a foodie, a feminist, an advocate of class issues, a sometimes-member of Occupy Detroit, a critical theory fan, etc. it's not that often that someone knows me as all of those things. and it's a little paralyzing to have to choose just one.

i still think, maybe, that dance is probably the thing that i think of most (after teacher and student) when i want to describe who i am. it takes up the most of my free time. it certainly takes up more of my disposable income than other communities i belong to. and in terms of dance, i would probably say not just dancer, or even just swing dancer (because that's actually a lot of different dances) but lindy hopper. i *can* Charleston, Balboa, East Coast Swing, Blues Dance, etc, but i do Lindy Hop the most, and i get most excited about learning new things for it.

in terms of what we value or believe in. we believe in learning new stuff -a lot of us go to exchange dances all over the country. when we do this, we usually end up sleeping on the floor or couch of a total stranger. we let people sleep on our floors when the exchanges are near us. we're big into being social. we say hi to new people, we ask new people to dance. we try to be welcoming, because that's important to us. some groups, like tango, are really hard to break into. not lindy. we value people who can fit their dance to the music. we value style. styling is really important. you can be a technically very good dancer, but it'll be your styling that makes you great. i'm sure there are other things, but those come to mind first. 

i'm not sure what all i could use to talk about this community. maybe my DETLX shirt from a couple years ago, which is funny...but only if you dance. i also crack up *every time* i watch this video, which i suspect is incomprehensible to a lot of people, and uses a lot of the terms that LH dancers use. i want to use something other than the etiquette page i showed in class, because that's sort of designed to help new people become part of our group, and these two examples are more things you'd have to be in the group to "get."

oh, Gee

My first thought, on assigning Gee, was that he's easier than Swales. Of course he is! He's easier!

Okay. But now when I go back and read him again, I'm actually unsure about that. I think he is easier in terms of being more readable -vocabulary and stuff. And I think his project is more interesting. But I'm no longer convinced that this makes him "easier" in the sense that my students might understand it.

Swales is pretty straightforward. We've got this term, discourse community, which he feels is being thrown around willy-nilly (awful phrase) and he wants to clear up two things. 1. Are discourse communities really just the same as speech communities (or whatever he calls them)? and 2. What are the characteristics of a discourse communities. Once we get past the posturing, the lit review, the setting up his project, Swales boils down to a list, and I have no doubt that most people can latch onto that and let the rest go.

But Gee. When he says Discourses are "ways of acting, interacting, valuing, feeling, dressing, thinking, believing with other people and with various objects, tools, and technologies, so as to enact specific socially recognizable identities engaged in specific socially recognizable activities" my brain is like "Right? Right???"
But I wonder if that's my grad school showing. What I do want people to get out of him, though, is that idea. That Discourses use language, obviously, but they are more than language. They are ways of valuing/doing/believing.

Gee can also be kind of long, but I like his examples. He talks about his own experience as a teacher, bird watcher (seriously, who bird watches?) and video gamer. I think it's a clear example that is helpful for people struggling with these ideas. The Indian and Law School examples are longer, more complicated. But they can maybe still assist. The point is that being part of a Discourse is a way of recognizing and being recognized. I am reminded of a guy who danced with me at a blues event in Chicago -he said, "You're a lindy hopper, right? I can always tell." There was something in how I moved, the way I responded to his leads, and the way I improvised, that "spoke" to him and allowed him to "recognize" me. Lindy Hop has ways of doing and ways of valuing that are similar to, but not the same as Blues Dancing.

I told students they didn't need to bother with the acquisition and learning section, although part of me hopes they do. I realize that's me beating my own dead horse though. Gee needs those terms to talk about his ending (perhaps major?) point, which is about Discourse and schooling and social class. He is arguing ultimately that some families (largely middle/upper-middle class families) that prepare their children to speak the Discourse of education, of schooling. By the time those kids are in school, they're comfortable with it, and that Discourse is reinforced at home as they move forward. But Discourses are ideological, and a secondary Discourse (like academia) might be at odds with (one of) our Primary Discourses. How can we teach students to get by, he seems to be asking, without colonizing them, forcing them to adopt the importance of what this secondary Discourse values, although it may disagree with what they value at home?

Gee's Discourses, in spite of what he says, are usually not about being a video gamer or a bird watcher. They're about my social class, my religion, my ethnicity, etc. I think that's good to know. I think it's useful for us to discuss how Discourses are ideological (in the sense of determining my imaginary relationship to the world). But, long story short, I suspect I owe everyone an apology tomorrow morning for having told them (and myself) that this was easier.