Journal 3/15/12
Genre can be ideological because it is constructed within a culture. A particular genre has its conventional formats and themes based on the script that a culture or subculture has constructed. For example, hip hop music is a genre. It has a culture: hip hop culture. It emerged in an effort to form solidarity within the African American community and to resist a dominant ideology. It originated as highly political and it was constructed in a specific dialect (AAVE) for a particular discourse community who spoke this dialect. There are some cultural norms, patterns, and practices that are exemplified by hip hop, and some of them are against society norms. For example, hip hop can condone smoking drugs and violent or criminal gang activity. Does this mean that all hip hop is like this? No. But if you heard a rap song about a fairy tale or perhaps about being a personal banker, it might sound strange because it would contain ideological content that was contrary to the discourse conventions. The five paragraph essay is a genre within a larger community of practice: the world of education. Does it have content? No. But it does have a dialect or register that is formal and academic in nature, and it is founded on certain assumptions that make the genre a product of ideology. When generic borders are crossed and new forms of discourse emerge, then it enables new ideological constructs to emerge along with them. Just as genre is a manifestation of ideology, it is also used to construct and reconstruct the ideology that it subscribes to. Question for class? What is your favorite genre of music? What type of person listens to that type of music and what are common ideologies that go along with this genre of music Genre Miller, Carolyn R. “Genre as Social Action” Quarterly Journal of Speech 70 (1984): 151-167. -Genre as a set of textual features is formalism. -Text features still prominent in expressivism; form is still taught, but individual voice comes out of form. -Social constructivism- social milleui of texts becoming actions in world. Relationships with people in social situations; stuff around writers and text Chapter 2 Genre as Rhetoric pg 13 -Genre redefined as social action -legitimization process when you cross genre borders---a memo to academic writing? -genre as social action; is a memo still a memo if it is published in an academic journal. -From a formalistic pt it is still a memo -From a social standpoint it is no longer a memo (when serving the function as an academic article. -Teaching genre hard because you pull it out of context -Authentic text (in rhet comp) a text that really does something instead of simulation of activity (as most writing in class) -Genre as having “a distinctive profile of regularities across 4 dimensions”: 1. text 2. process used to compose the text 3. the practices readers use to understand the text 4. the social roles of the text (Dean 11).
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TCE Seed for Revamping Resume Idea
I have been studying Writer's Block for another project, and I think that students can become blocked only in certain genres. Miriam Axel-Lute wrote an article about contextual writers block and how a student can be blocked because of the content of the material, issues with the professor, or the discourse itself. Let's say a student is in a business class and is required to write a resume. This is pretty simple, right? It is a genre for sure. So, the student may know the genre: resumes, but he may not know what to fill in the form. He may not have any experiences. He may not really want to go into business and be taking the class to please his mother... Long story short, he sits down to write a resume for a job and he has no idea what to write. The blank screen consumes him. A fear that his life is not reportable consumes him. He has nothing to report. The generic resume may be a sort of block in and of itself, because it assumes a person can be summarized in list format. It assumes that one can be understood without using complete sentences. It assumes that the quality of one's word can be interpreted from a list of action verbs and context-specific nouns. It assumes that one's history and past makes the person a professional, and most students don't have a professional past, so where do they begin in writing a resume, when there is nothing there to summarize? Dean also wrote about resumes as a problematic genre for some writers: "By downplaying the voice and persona of resume writers, the resume depersonalizes job seekers, portraying them as commodities that can be sold” (31). So, anyway: let's say we revamp the resume and include visuals or other types of materials. The MacArthur Foundation is soliciting help from programmers to form an online badge-making system that future "resume writers" could use as hyperlinks on their resumes. These badges could be for non-traditional or non-professional accomplishments, like having designed a website or organized a fundraising event. While these activities might not have happened in a business context and therefore would not be reportable on a typical resume or on the top of the resume where one lists professional experiences, the badge system could be a standardized way to receive an honor for hard work and valuable experience which has no specific tangible definition, certification, or label. It is an attempt at labeling new 21st century skills (such as YouTube video making or social media developing) and putting them into a format that could be accepted by a new sort of 21st century resume system (perhaps a conventional resume with hyperlinks to the online badge portfolio). Later, I decided to require students to make a Writer’s Resume as a Writing to Explore (WTE) Assignment. I am teaching genre first, and I think discussing resumes as a social construct and all of the implications will be helpful to discuss resumes as genres in action. I will probably discuss the badge-making system and challenge them to “revamp their resume.” At the end of the course, Section 5 of the portfolio will be a creative assignment labeled something like “Myself as a Writer.” Because of contextual writer’s block, the writer’s resume does not have to be written about the student or life experience. It can be entirely invented for a fictive person, or a made up resume for a fiction writer. It can also be researched and put real bibliographical information about a writer, but I don’t really expect that. In the Writing Summer Institute, I may use “revamping the resume” as my demonstration project in order to preview the idea before I implement something similar in the classroom. Resumes are so threatening to people, and I think we should explore them as a genre. I have already been thinking how to implement this in a teacher workshop. I will probably ask if I can do this as a 15 minute presentation on a Monday (for example). I would show them my revamped resume, and challenge them to do the same. Also, I would discuss resumes as a genre and how they could work as a genre in action, even though they are so rigidly formatted. Then, on the following Monday (for example), we could all show our revamped resumes. My personal revamped resume will be a digital story, which would probably take me a week to make. I am not going to teach the technology of a revamped resume, but challenge people to explore new digital literacies to reformulate their resumes to be more multidimensional (or multi-modal). *Axel-Lute, Miriam. “Consciousness, Frustration, and Power: the Making of Contextual Writer’s Block. Podis, Leonard A. & Podis, JoAnne M. (Eds.). Working with Student Writers. (2nd Edition). New York: Peter Lang. 2010. Dean, Deborah. Genre Theory: Teaching, Writing, and Being. Urbana, Illinois: NCTE. 2008. **The Badge-making System; http://www.macfound.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=lkLXJ8MQKrH&b=6479569&ct=11641493 TCE Moodle Discovering Genre in Action
Although genre theory is not new and teachers have been teaching genre for a long long time, Dean (Genre Theory) has invited us to think of genre as action. I think genres, being naturally unstable, do not have to be intentionally destabilized by a teacher. We just have to explore the natural instability and mix it up creatively (not for the purpose of disruption but rather new constructions). Students will often resist attempts at destabilization, believe it or not. A lot of them want that five paragraph rigidity because it is comfortable and easy. The challenge is...how do we teach it that way? It is so easy to talk about genre in English class and let a genre settle into a solid form that students follow. Students often want a form to fill out, and teaching genre the old fashioned way encourages them to follow society's prescribed models. I think the easiest way to teach genre is to talk about how it is changing due to digital technologies, to talk about genre, not as a solid form, but as a living breathing organism (in "action"). Of course there is nothing wrong with following a format to achieve a goal, but mostly these goals are bureaucratic ones. |