5.21 Reading Response

Texts:
Berkenkotter, “Genre Systems at Work”
Killoran, “Self-Published Web Resumes”

Genre Systems and Context/Text:
Berkenkotter comments thatgenre systems enable us “to characterize actors’ specific discursive practices in the context of chains of interrelated genres” (327). Thus using genre systems to examine contextual influences affecting genres in the workplace or the professions can be very helpful.

Professions/Workplace
Institutional genres are the genres of the professions (Berkenkotter 327).  Professions directly connect to genre systems – they can be organized by genre systems and their work is carried out through genre systems (327). It is these genre systems that “play an intermediate role between institutional structural properties and individual communicative action” (329).

Genre Change & Medium Migration
Because of new changes in technology and media, how we look at genre is changing. These changes help shape genres and motivate genre change (Killoran 427). Killoran points out that “scholars have turned from defining genres by their textual characteristics to defining them by contextual characteristics” (426). We no longer look at text and form, but also context and purpose. We need to do this because the expectations and other factors of genre systems change when mediums change.  It is the genre system that provides participants with expectations of communicative interaction (449). When genres change, communication and expectations change and completely change the context. For example, Killoran examines the resume on the web versus its traditional place. He finds that the viability of a genre system influences a genre’s success in its migration to the Web (450); when transplanted it needs to situate itself into a genre system that is viable and corresponds to the expectations of its participants (449).

Research Methodology
Using both genre systems and activity systems in research and exploration of new mediums and new media and even the workplace and professions seems very promising. Killoran points out that “the Web and other new media may also be laboratories for researchers exploring the extremes of genres’ dynamism” (453). Genre and activity theories may be a useful for examining influences in the workplace, even addressing the micro-macro level shift in perspective (Berkenkotter 342). Berkenkotter argues that “concepts such as genre systems, intertextuality, and interdiscursivity are useful tools for understanding complex, historically mediated text/context relationships” (343). Seeing context as an activity system makes it multidimensional, and more open to variety of interdisciplinary approaches and methods (343). Additionally, using genre systems “enables the analyst to foreground the discursively salient component of human activity systems” (330). In terms of the workplace, Berkenkotter states that we should conceptualize institutional speech genres as “one cluster of interrelated core concept, including generic intertextuality and interdiscursivity, recontextualization, genre systems, and activity systems” (329). 

Questions & Comments:
1. Berkenkotter comments that classification is one of the most basic of human cognitive activities (328). I’ve heard this before and although I feel that it is true, we do have this kind of innate need to categorize and organize everything, I wonder why that is? I think this is something we might have explored a few semesters ago in rhetoric. Do we need to classify the things around us to make sense of the world? Without this organization can we understand and recognize everything or would it be just too chaotic? Would it be even possible for us not to classify things?

2. Killoran talks about how people tend to rely on familiar norms and established communication habits and that also, employer’s expectations of the resume have not really changed as far as in its genre system (427, 450). Like, for example, they might not be willing to make the effort to connect the web resume to traditional systems. However, the web is a fairly recent development in comparison to how long society has been looking for employment. The web is still developing and could potentially have a greater impact in the future. So will this change as technology progresses? Will employers begin to alter their expectations to include the web resume into their traditional system? Will the web resume, or even other items in the web medium, become more commonplace and serve as norms and habits?

3. While this is more of something I noticed than a question or critique, I found it interesting as well. Killoran talks about genre dumping and how people will transfer print documents to the computer or web without making changes to accommodate the medium (425, 448). This sounds a lot like what we called “shovelware” in my journalism experience. Shovelware is a big no-no. It’s where you dump a print story directly onto the web without changing anything. And web and print articles are very, very different! So I totally understand this genre dumping idea he brings up, it’s very interesting!