Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication: Cognition/culture/power - Softcover

Berkenkotter, Carol

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805816127 ISBN 13: 9780805816129

Publisher: Routledge, 1994

Synopsis

Although genre studies abound in literary criticism, researchers and scholars interested in the social contexts of literacy have recently become interested in the dynamic, rhetorical dimensions of speech genres. Within this burgeoning scholarly community, the authors are among the first researchers working within social science traditions to study genre from the perspective of the implicit knowledge of language users. Thus, this is the first sociocognitive study of genre using case-study, naturalistic research methods combined with the techniques of rhetorical and discourse analysis. The term "genre knowledge" refers to an individual's repertoire of situationally appropriate responses to recurrent situations - from immediate encounters to distanced communication through the medium of print, and more recently, the electronic media. One way to study the textual character of disciplinary knowledge is to examine both the situated actions of writers, and the communicative systems in which disciplinary actors participate. These two perspectives are presented in this book.

The authors' studies of disciplinary communication examine operations of systems as diverse as peer review in scientific publications and language in a first grade science classroom. The methods used include case study and ethnographic techniques, rhetorical and discourse analysis of changing features within large corpora and in the texts of individual writers. Through the use of these techniques, the authors engaged in both micro-level and macro-level analyses and developed a perspective which reflects both foci. From this perspective they propose that what micro-level studies of actors' situated actions frequently depict as individual processes

About this title

About the Author

Carol Berkenkotter is Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Composition in the Humanities Department of Michigan Technological University.

Review

...shows that we have made great stides in our theoretical explanations of genre and in our applications of that theory to particular genres and to the classroom. Although differing somewhat in their theoretical bases, all of the writers in this book treat genres as dynamic actions that entail much more than form alone.
—College Compostion and Communication

This is a strong presentation with both meticulous accounts of research on academic and scholarly writing, and succinct summaries of relevant theories of discourse. The result is an impressive effort to integrate the heft of their empirical studies into a theoretical framework friendly to both the pedagogical and research interests of writing disciplines.
—Technostyle

This work on the genres of academic cultures is timely, scholarly and engaging. The authors' use of case study data, and their linguistic and content analyses are done with great skill, and these enhance their general argument. Berkenkotter and Huckin build a powerful case for a new, sociocognitive theory of genres.
—Vera John-Steiner
Professor of Linguistics and Education, University of Mexico

Your book has made a valuable contribution to the scholarship in technical and scientific communication and should influence the direction of the field -- what we think and what we value -- for years to come.
—Sam Dragga
Texas Tech University, Coordinator of the 1995 NCTE Awards

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0805816127
• ISBN 13: 9780805816129
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 204