The Power and Politics of Genre

Abstract

Generic knowledge plays an important role in the packing and unpacking of texts used in a wide-ranging institutionalized socio-rhetorical context. If, on the one hand, it imposes constraints on an uninitiated genre writer to conform to the conventions and rhetorical expectations of the relevant professional community, on the other hand, it allows an experienced and established writer of the genre to exploit conventions to create new forms to suit specific contexts. Unfortunately, however, this privilege to exploit generic conventions to create new forms becomes available only to those few who enjoy a certain degree of visibility in the relevant professional community; for a wide majority of others, it is more of a matter of apprenticeship in accommodating the expectations of disciplinary cultures. This paper reviews current research to investigate the way the power and the politics of genre is often exploited by the so-called established membership of disciplinary communities to keep outsiders at a safe distance.

Obscurity in the Micropolitics of English for Legal Purposes: Towards an Anthropological Framework

“…This , Anne-Marie BARRAULT-MÉTHY -72 -is exemplified by the fascination of research for the ritualistic elements of law such as courtroom attire (see, for instance, Isani, 2010c) and by the fact that ELP research may partake in such ritual, with such recurring themes as legal genre analysis and legal fiction. It is tempting to suggest that genre analysis in a legal setting, after Bhatia (1997aBhatia ( , 1997b, has become a part of the ritual of ELP research. The image of the fall is also manifested through the fact that legal writing is grammatically incorrect (Gadbin-George, 2010), so can be considered as a degraded form of a language.…”

O gênero acadêmico em questão: uma análise sociorretórica de resumos de dissertações de mestrado do projeto Teletandem Brasil

“…Essa constatação evidencia a complexidade das práticas sociais que engendram e são engendradas pelos gêneros. Bhatia (1997) entende que a dinamicidade, definida como uma tendência à manutenção de sua integridade e, concomitantemente, à busca por renovação, é indício dessa complexidade de que são constituídos os gêneros. (BHATIA, 1997, p. 360).…”

“…Ora, percebemos que existe um diálogo fundamental entre as reflexões de Bhatia (1997), as reflexões de Demo (2008) e os indícios que destacamos nesta análise ao compararmos os resumos de dissertações de mestrado vinculadas ao projeto TTB, um diálogo que aponta para a complexidade das 9 "The need to re-establish in the eyes of the discourse community the significance of the research field itself; the need to situate the actual research in terms of that significance; the need to show how this niche in the wider ecosystem will be occupied and defended. It follows that the amount of rhetorical work needed to create such a space depends on the existing ecological competition, on the size and importance of the niche to be established and on various other factors such as the writer's reputation."…”

“…Para realizar a análise, teremos como elementos norteadores dois pressupostos principais a partir dos quais Bhatia (1997) tece considerações importantes: a) as formações discursivas existem mediante negociação social, e b) os gêneros, em sua discursividade, são tanto socialmente construídos quanto controlados por práticas sociais.…”

Lenguas con Propósitos Específicos: Perspectivas cambiantes y nuevos desafíos

“…Uno de los mayores desafíos que enfrentamos en la práctica de LPE, es -más allá de ayudar al aprendiz a tomar conciencia de la complejidad en los géneros profesionales-ayudarlo a adquirir suficiente experticia y poder discursivo (Bhatia, 1997b) para construir, interpretar y sacar provecho a la gama de géneros asociados a su contexto disciplinario e incluso interdisciplinario. Este tipo de variedad de géneros agrega una nueva dimensión al análisis de género, introduciendo tanto un excelente recurso pedagógico como un desafío potencial para la práctica del LPE.…”