Writing Thresholds: A Website about Threshold Concepts in Writing Studies
Genre
Key Threshold Idea: Genres are useful ways to collect, organize, and disseminate knowledge. They stem, in part, from repeated themes and patterns and writing. They are dynamic and derive from how one acts in a specific social context. Knowing about genres can help writers adapt to new writing situations.
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Genres are defined by repeated textual patterns and themes. This is how we can classify a “type” of text.
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But they’re more complex than this. Genre is dynamic and flexible. It derives from the actions that people or groups of people take when constructing and using a genre in a specific social context (see Devitt, 2004; Miller, 1984, 2014).
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Genres help form common ground in communities, providing a means to store, preserve, construct, and share knowledge (see Giltrow & Valiquette, 1994).
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Knowing about how genres are constructed and how they shift from context to context can help students adapt their writing to new situations (Reiff & Bawarshi, 2011).
Audio Example
Quotes from the Field
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“When you encounter new writing situations and contexts, genres ensure that you aren’t completely on your own in a strange world. Genres are helpful but flexible guides for understand and approaching new writing situations” (Wardle & Downs, 2020, p. 36).
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“The textual structures [of genres] are akin to the fossil record left behind, evidence that writers have employed familiar discursive moves in accordance with reader expectations, institutional norms, market forces, and other social influences” (Hart-Davidson, 2015, p. 39).
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“I propose, then, that genre be seen not as a response to recurring situation but as a nexus between an individual’s actions and a socially defined context” (Devitt, 2004, p. 31)
Genre Set
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“The collection of types of texts someone in a particular role is likely to produce” (Bazerman, 2003, p. 374)
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For example: an employee for an environmental organization must write reports to donors, meeting briefs for the board of directors, press releases, and grant applications.
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Knowing what skills are needed to navigate each of these situations makes it easier to meet the demands of each and quickly shift between each genre.
Genre Systems
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Genre systems are how different genre sets come together as part of a collective to achieve an overarching goal
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The system derives from how genre sets, derived from different groups of people, come together in a given context and allow each group to contribute, be heard, and proceed towards their goal.
References
Bazerman, C. (2003). Speech acts, genres, and activity systems: How texts organize activity and people. In C. Bazerman & P. Prior (Eds.), What writing does and how it does it: An introduction to analyzing texts and textual practices (pp. 365-391). Routledge.
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Devitt, A. J. (2004). Writing genres. Southern Illinois UP.
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Giltrow, J., & Valiquette, M. (1994). Genres and knowledge: Students writing in the disciplines. In A. Freedman & P. Medway (Eds.), Learning and Teaching Genre (pp. 47- 62). Boynton/Cook Publishers.
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Hart-Davidson, B. (2015). Genres are enacted by writers and readers. In L. Adler-Kassner & E. Wardle (Eds.), Naming what we know: Threshold concepts of writing studies (pp. 39-40). Utah State UP.
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Miller, C.R. (2014). Genre as social action (1984), revisited 30 years later (2014). Letras & Letras, 31(3). 56-72.
Miller, C.R. (1984). Genre as social action. Quarterly journal of speech, 70, 151-167.
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Reiff, M. J., & Bawarshi, A. (2011). Tracing discursive resources: How students use prior genre knowledge to negotiate new writing contexts in first-year composition. Written Communication, 28(3), 312-337.
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Wardle, E., & Downs, D. (Eds.). (2020). Writing about writing (4th ed.). Bedford/St. Martin’s.