Strategies, Tactics and the Politics of
Literacy:
Genres and Classroom Practices in a Context of
Change
Colin Lankshear and
Michele Knobel
Plenary Address
Third National Conference on
Academic Texts.
Puebla, México 15 April
2000
Introduction
This paper will draw on
research we have undertaken during recent years, especially research
involving students in classrooms in Australia. It will focus on some
examples and issues of educational practice occurring in a context
where 'genre theory'-along with other theories and concepts
concerning language and literacy-have been used as a foundation for
the English syllabus in Years P-10.
The paper will have three
parts, and in each part we will use concrete examples drawn from our
research as much as possible. The first part will consider some
aspects of the politics of genre as applied language educational
theory. The second part will use concepts of 'Use,' 'Tactics' and
'Strategy' based on the work of Michel de Certeau to understand some
differences between the literacy practices of one student in school
and his literacy practices out of school. The final part will raise
some issues about established genres in the current context of
changes accompanying the large-scale adoption of new Information and
Communications Technologies.
1. Politics
of Genre as Applied Educational Theory
The Queensland English
syllabus aims 'to develop students' ability to compose and comprehend
spoken and written English fluently, appropriately, effectively and
critically, for a wide range of personal and social purposes'
(Department of Education, Queensland 1994: iii). It is based on a
text-context model of language, according to which texts are
structured in conventional ways to realize people's purposes within
particular social and cultural settings. The Syllabus is based on
five organizing principles, known as 'growth and development',
skills, cultural heritage, genre and critical literacy. Two key
assumptions underlie the organizing principle of genre. They are: (i)
that knowing and understanding genres enables members of all cultural
groups to operate effectively and usefully in society; and (ii) that
'people who understand how genres work can be powerful instruments of
critical review and change in any culture' (Department of Education,
Queensland 1994: 5).
This reflects one particular
application of Hallidayan systemic functional linguistics-known as
'genre theory.' According to this perspective, language and the ways
it functions or is used in cultural and situational contexts can be
described or 'realized' by means of a systematic framework comprising
cultural context, situational context and text (or linguistic)
features (known collectively as the 'text-context model'). Thus, this
theory of language focuses on the ways in which language comes to be
and is used, and not on the traditional goal of linguistics, which is
concerned with identifying language structure and universal grammar
rules.
In Australia particularly,
genre theorists have adopted and adapted Halliday's sociolinguistic
theory of language use and put it to work in constructing what they
call an 'explicit writing curriculum' (c.f., Kress 1999). That is,
the ways in which successful texts are written in school are made
explicit to students who hail from marginalized social groups. Genre
theorists regard language as a tool or resource that is used to
construct meaning, and stretches of language only become meaningful
by means of their socially recognized purposes and the contexts in
which they occur (Christie 1989: 74, Cope and Kalantzis 1993, Martin
1985). Thus, the cultural context of language is configured by genre
theorists as a system or set of general, agreed upon social processes
and actions, used by people to achieve their purposes in everyday
life (Collerson 1997, Martin 1984: 21, 1993). This includes, for
example, applying for work, maintaining relationships, managing a
bank account, going to the movies, negotiating who makes coffee in
the morning. These sets of social processes and practices are labeled
genres, and are characterized as staged, goal oriented, social
processes:
They are referred to as
social processes because members of a culture interact with each
other to achieve them; as goal oriented because they have evolved to
get things done; and as staged because it usually takes more than one
step for participants to achieve their goals (Martin, Christie and
Rothery 1987: 59; original emphases).
The situational context 'is
concerned with identifying precisely such general categories which
are always active in exercising pressures on our acts or
communication, shaping every discourse in any speech variety
whatever' (Hasan and Perrett 1994: 186). Thus, analysing the
situational context is much more particular in scope than analysing
the cultural context of an interaction or text. Accordingly, the
situational context is described by genre theorists in Australia in
terms of three categories of semantic resources; that is: field,
tenor and mode (which are known collectively as the 'register' of a
text).
Briefly, 'field' is used to
describe the subject matter of a social activity or process, and
indicates the nature of the activity or process. 'Tenor' is used to
describe the social roles and relationships amongst participants.
Finally, 'mode' is used to identify how language is being used; that
is, whether the channel of communication is spoken, visual, or
written, and so forth. Each of these variables impinges on
meaning-making; subtle shifts in any or all of these variables bring
about corresponding shifts in meaning.
Third, from a systemic
functional linguistic perspective, texts are both processes and
products (Halliday 1985: xxii; see also Gerot and Wignell 1994).
Thus, in keeping with Halliday's theory of language use, genre
theorists focus on the meaning and function of a text (e.g., how does
this text make sense by mean of cohesive ties? how does this text
signal its audience? How does this text hide causal relationships?).
This 'level' of analysis is known as 'discourse semantics'. More
specifically, when analysing the products of a text genre theorists
focus more deliberately on clauses and their construction and role in
a sentence, and on the role of verbs, nouns, adjectives (or
processes, participants or actors, attributes), in order to better
understand the ways in which information is delivered in the text and
what effects these have on meaning. This approach to text
analysis-also known as lexicogrammatical analysis-uses grammatical
items to form the 'nuts and bolts' of the systematic framework that
plays a key role in systemic functional linguistics.
To summarize, Halliday's
goal was to develop a linguistic system of analysis that would
describe the ways in which English language functions as social
practice. Accordingly, he developed a system of language analysis
that accounted for social purposes as well as for cultural and
situational contexts. Genre theorists have taken up Halliday's theory
of language and applied it to educational purposes by proposing a
'model' of how all texts are 'realized' (i.e., by means of cultural
context, social or situational context, and text or linguistic
context).
Genre theorists differ from
Halliday on another front. They deliberately and explicitly invest
their version of systemic functional linguistics with socially
transforming possibilities (e.g., Cope and Kalantzis 1993,
Cranny-Francis 1992, Martin 1992, 1993, Christie 1987, 1990, Macken
1990, Martin et al. 1987, Williams 1993). For example, Jim Martin
(1993: 161) claims that 'teaching powerful discourses expands a
student's meaning potential'. Elsewhere, Mary Macken links genre
mastery with access to social power:
Not all members of society
hold equal power. One means towards attaining greater power-greater
degrees of freedom in action-is to have competence in the use of
powerful kinds of texts in a society (Macken 1990: 7).
Indeed, genre theorists
claim that 'genres of power' can be identified and taught explicitly
to students in ways that are (potentially) socially transforming. For
example, Martin (1993: 165) equates teaching powerful discourses and
genres with personal empowerment:
It is the view
of genre-based researchers and teacher trainers that subjectivity
changes by evolution, not revolution, and that teaching powerful
discourses expands a student's meaning potential; language learning
is simply not a question of new discourses coming in to replace the
old. Beyond this, powerful discourses are not regarded as so
ineffable that they cannot be taught; and in Australia there is
plenty of evidence that mainstream discourses can be commandeered-and
used by women, by Aboriginal people, or by Irish Catholics to change
their world.
Thus, key genre theorists in
Australia appear to endow genres with autonomous capabilities and
properties that enable genres to 'do things' for-and to-people. These
key ideas, as we indicated earlier, are embodied in the Queensland
English syllabus for Years 1 to 10.
Three points arise from
these matters. One is that the syllabus appropriation of genre
theory, which is in turn an appropriation from Halliday's work,
builds on good intentions with respect to social justice and equity
matters in education. The second is that educational developments and
applications of genre theory in Australia have been critiqued by
people (notably, Gunther Kress 1993, 1999, Jay Lemke 1995 and Barbara
Kamler 1994, 1995) who themselves build strongly on systemic
functional linguistics, and who have aimed to promote its educational
applications. The third is that at the points where it is taken up in
classroom practice things often go wrong.
An Example
from Year 7
The Year 7 English program
includes literary and non literary genres. The literary genres
include narrative-e.g., stories (yarn, parable, adventure story)
story board, biography, ballads, personal diary entry and plays-and
non narrative text types-e.g., caricature, personal journal entry,
lyric poem, formula verse (e.g., cinquain, tarquain, limerick), and
public speech. Non literary genres include transactional genre-such
as apology, interview, display advertisement, film poster, letter of
application-procedures-such as meeting agenda,
instructions-reports-including graphs/tables, learning log entry,
information report, newspaper/television news
report-expositions-including explanation and complaint.
To help teachers implement
the syllabus the Education Department and individual authors writing
for commercial companies had published books of genre 'proformas' and
other practical resources (e.g., Christie et al 1990, Macken 1990).
Teachers would commonly show examples of a particular genre-e.g.,
narrative-photocopied from 'pro forma books' and model it to the
class using an overhead projector. Together, the class and teacher
would collaboratively construct a narrative using a photocopied
proforma on the OHP. These proformas set out the main structural
features of the genre being learned-e.g., Orientation, Conflict,
Resolution, and Coda: the four main generic structural features of
narrative as defined in the Syllabus. Following this the students
each would be given a copy of the same proforma and instructed to
complete it (e.g., producing their own story, making sure they write
something in each section of the proforma. In our experiences of
watching new genres being introduced to students in Years 6 and 7,
this process generally takes only an hour or so.
Our example concerns an
Asian immigrant student (Tony, age 12) for whom English was his
second language. He had been working for a month to produce a
narrative. One day during the research period his teacher, in
frustration, showed us Tony's draft narrative (more than 20
handwritten pages). She said it was too long for her to spend time
correcting and that 'anyway it isn't even a narrative and it doesn't
make sense'. We made a copy and took it home for analysis. The
following fragment is from the Orientation phase of Tony's story and
is representative of the character and quality of the text as a
whole.
Doom: Part 1
In the dark
Ages, Europe was broke into many different countries.
In the Kingdom of Khimmur,
King Little, the ruler of Khimmur gave a mission to one of the brave
warriors, Jake Simpson.
His mission was to defeat
Shang-Tsung. Shang-Tsung was an evil person. He tried to rule the
whole china, but he never did it, so he went to Europe. Now he is
planning to take over the whole Europe. And he has three warriors.
Kung-Lao, before he was a
dragon, then Shang-Tsung made him \into a/ human Raiden, God of
Thunder.
Gora, a 2000 year old
giant with four hands.
Shang-Tsung also took
control of lots of things. He has a vast number of
soldiers.
Snow Witch, Lizard King
and Baron Sukumvit were also Shang-Tsung's helpers, because
Shang-Tsung promised to Share the power with them.
And the Warlock of Firetop
Mountain, was the guard for Shang-Tsung's Rich.
"So, I will send you to
attack Shang-Tsung" said King Little.
"Isn't there anyone going
with me?" asked Jim.
Oh, I nearly forgot to
tell you about this" said King Little "There will be two Martial Arts
Master from the great Empire of Han, Chung-Hi-San-Wu and Lee-Quan-Lin
will go with you. They were send by the Emperor of China."
His text as a whole contains
some more or less systematic errors with tense, plurals and some
prepositions (but no worse than several English as a First Language
students in the class). At the same time it is evident that at the
surface level he has a sound grasp of a range of important writing
conventions. These include compiling lists, paragraphing, direct
speech conventions, punctuation, and controlling the genre structure
of a narrative. His use of '\ /' marks show that he has mastered the
convention for inserting text into a sentence already handwritten.
When we look beyond the surface features of school literacy, anyone
with relevant insider knowledge of adventure narratives and video
adventure games can easily see what a complex intertextual narrative
he has produced. Taking the excerpt provided above, we can readily
identify a range of other texts woven into his narrative.
The characters
"Shang-Tsung", "Raiden" and "Kung Lao" are all characters in Mortal
Kombat, an adventure game from the early 1990s produced originally by
Nintendo (and now available as a computer game as well). King Loa is
described on the Mortal Kombat official website as: "a troubled young
warrior from the Order of Light Temple. He is a skilled Mortal Kombat
fighter with incomparable focus and strength. Kung Lao was raised
alongside other children from the temple and trained from birth to
fight in the Mortal Kombat wars
" (see <http://www. mortalkombat.
com>). Similarly, the character "Gora-Gora" can be found in the
Nintendo game, The Ultimate Evil. Subsequent references in Tony's
narrative to a skeleton army echo skeleton armies found in a range of
Nintendo games including Dungeon Keeper II. Later in Tony's text,
characters from the Nintendo (and computer) DOOM games appear in the
adventure, such as "Demon Queen" and "Barons of Hell". The Warlock of
Firetop Mountain who makes an early appearance as a character is
actually the title of the first Fighting Fantasy Gamebook produced in
the 1980s by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone (1982, Allansia). The
reference to "Snow Witch" echoes another Fighting Fantasy Gamebook
titled, Caverns of the Snow Witch (Ian Livingstone, 1984, Penguin).
This series of books-60 in all-were "quest games" that came with dice
and maps and required role playing and a large amount of reading to
plot and navigate the adventures written into them. The books were
extremely popular in the 1980s, and were distributed in English-in
England, Australia and Canada-and in Japanese-in Japan.
Tony's text builds on his
membership of the 'Video Action Games' Discourse, where he is an
'insider'. The knowledge of characters evident in his work comes only
from commitment and proficiency as a games player and, of course,
from having adequate command of the considerable textual requirements
for playing the games successfully. These games are saturated in
text. In addition, entire genres and 'libraries' of print texts
(books, magazines, comics, 'cheats', manuals, etc.) circulate around
this games Discourse. The Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks are one
instance. Tony's narrative suggests close familiarity with these
texts as well as with the text-mediated electronic games
themselves.
Comment/critique-Counterproductive Politics of
Genre
Despite promoting the
text-context model, Australian genre theorists (for example, Martin,
Rothery, Macken and Christie) have nonetheless emphasized the
structural and linguistic features of texts at the expense of the
social and cultural contexts of language use (as have teachers in
their interpretations of the Queensland English syllabus). According
to Kress (personal communication) this "focus on 'textual features'
is misplaced" because it diverts attention from what is important.
For Kress, genre features are everywhere in the text and cannot
easily be isolated into grammatical components. They are present in
every aspect of a text so that genre is for Kress less a matter of
the overall shape and grammatical features of a text, but of the
social relations that are coded everywhere in it. Kress explains what
he means by using an example: "if you cut out the middle bit (or any
bit) of any text you will know what the genre of the text is". This
is because, according to Kress, text-making is generated by social
practices that embody genres, making everything about the genre or
genres in a text predictable and recognisable (Kress
1999).
Instead of focusing on
structural and linguistic features in the way the genre theorists do,
Kress emphasises the social as being the generative force in all text
making, and the individual as the agent, acting out of her his own
interest (ibid., Kress 1993).
Moreover, Kress rightly
points out that all texts-including those in genre proforma books-are
composed of a multiplicity of genres. For example, Kress discusses
how an interview can be a genre within the larger text of an
issues-based documentary, which also contains, say, a panel
discussion, a documentary film segment, and so on. Thus, genres are
not stable in terms of a having a fixed and immutable use.
Nevertheless, genres appear to become almost text archetypes in the
hands of most genre theorists in Australia and in many ways this
risks doing students a disservice by oversimplifying genres and their
successful production.
A second and related
problem, as we see it, is evident in what we call the 'proforma
syndrome'. Genre theorists' emphasis on the structure and linguistic
features of genres promotes decontextualized classroom practices.
Books of genre proformas are among the worst examples of this
decontextualisation and completely miss the discursive nature of
genres (cf., Kress 1993, 1999, Lemke 1995). Our argument is that if
genre approaches to literacy education are to work, genre needs to be
conceived more like Discourse (Gee 1991, 1996). And it needs a
properly contextualized pedagogy.
The games Discourse, for
example, has its own demanding and sophisticated discourse. Tony has
written his narrative out of the very kind of membership of and
participation in mature ('insider') versions of Discourses that are
increasingly identified as hallmarks of authentic learning and
effective social practice (cf. Heath and McLaughlin 1994, Rogoff
1990, 1995; Lave and Wenger 1991; see Gee, Hull and Lankshear 1996
for a larger discussion). Effective literacy is precisely about
having fluent mastery of the language uses of Discourses (Gee 1991,
1996). Powerful literacy is about having fluent mastery of the
language uses of Discourses that carry high status in social
settings. Mastery of the kind of literacy inchoate in Tony's
narrative undoubtedly carries high status and attracts attention
(Goldhaber 1997) as well as other social rewards in a range of social
contexts within youth/popular culture and the (adult) work world
alike (Bennahum 1998; Rushkoff 1996a, 1996b). The same holds for
Jacques. The brute fact is that school generally, and Tony's and
Jacques' (see next section) classrooms specifically, are not among
these contexts!
In summary, there must be
more to genre than simply structure, linguistic feature and text
stereotypes. Indeed, if 'genre theory' is to remain faithful to
Halliday's original goal of developing a theory of language use, then
it needs to be more than an abstracted linguistic form of language
study. We need to ensure that genre production is richly
contextualized within everyday practices and language uses. Likewise,
we need to avoid diminishing the socially just effects of making text
production strategies explicit to students by having them believe
that genres are monolithic and unchanging.
2.
'G/genre', 'Strategy' and 'Tactics': A frame for re-presenting
generic practices
Another student, Jacques,
provides an interesting perspective on genre-based literacy education
at the point of learning in the classroom. His teacher saw him as
having serious difficulties with literacy, and in class Jacques did
not understand at all the 'templates' and 'proformas' used by the
teacher during the research period to introduce the class to 'compare
and contrast' and 'expository argument.' Jacques himself told us:
'I'm not keen on language and that. I hate reading. I'm like my Dad,
I'm not a pen man.' He found it difficult to concentrate, pay
attention, and to understand the teacher's efforts to 'make the form
and structure of genres and other language concepts
explicit.
In class the teacher had
developed a corner of the room as a 'Writing Center', where students
could go to work on the generic text types they had to produce.
During one two-day period we observed that he spent several hours in
the Writing Center making a tiny book (6cm X 4 cm) containing several
stapled pages. On each page he wrote 2 or 3 words producing a
'narrative' of 15-20 words. (For example. 'This is J.P.'s truck. J.P.
is going on holiday in his truck. J.P. likes going on holiday n his
truck.') Other students found these hilarious when he read themout
loud to them, and he eventually produced a series of six 'J. P.
Stories.' His teacher, however, was not impressed and saw his
activities as 'very childish' and as a means of avoiding writing and
of not taking too seriously something he could not do.
When he was out of school,
however, his approach to language and literacy in the context of
larger social practices in which texts were embedded was very
different. And his activity was much more like that of an adult than
a child. For example, he enjoyed working with his father in the
family's earthmoving and road construction business. He had learned
to drive work vehicles at 7 years of age, and operated them under
supervision regularly when working in his holidays. Jacques
understood and valued learning in relation to being able to perform
well as a worker. 'If you want to put gravel on a road you have to be
able to work out how many meters you need.' His concept of learning
failure was when a person could not apply learning and knowledge in
practical contexts.
His immersion in a business
culture in the home and his orientation toward work produced a very
interesting literacy outcome. Prior to the summer holidays, and with
some assistance from his mother and brother, Jacques produced on his
father's computer a flier that he used to establish and advertise his
own lawn mowing service. It contained a drawing of a man pushing a
lawn mower and, beneath the picture, the following
information.
J.Ps
Mowing
Service
- Efficient, reliable
service.
- Grass clippings
removed.
- All edging done.
- First time lawn cut
FREE! (only
regular customers)
- For free quote Ph.
888 8888
|
Jacques delivered copies of
his flier to all the homes in his area and soon he had a successful
and profitable enterprise for earning money on weekends and in his
holidays and spare time. When asked about the language in his text
(the flier) Jacques explained that he had used 'First time lawn cut
free' to attract clients. 'So that they will all got 'Oh yeah, this
is great' (imitating a 'double take'). 'What was that number again?'
(imitating someone frantically dialing a phone number). In the same
way, his use of smaller font for 'Only regular customers' imitates
commercial advertisements. It was obvious that Jacques understood the
way language works in business discourses of this kind.
Similar differences between
his classroom and wider world literacy practices were obvious in his
literacy practices associated with his being a Jehovah's Witness. His
family attended Theocratic School each week where Jacques regularly
had to read and explain and give commentaries on texts from the Bible
to groups of up to 100 people. These reading, speaking and exegetic
performances are scrutinized and evaluated publicly by members of the
listeners. They use official criteria and checklists (that is,
templates and pro formas) provided in Theocratic School literature.
To prepare for his presentations Jacques worked with his mother.
Together they worked on writing Introductions and Conclusions, and
his mother would help him prepare for his actual presentation by
reading the text herself onto a tape recording for Jacques to follow
as he practices reading his presentation aloud.
G/genre,
Uses and Tactics: Some Implications for Conceptions of
Genres
There are various ways in
which the differences between Jacques' literacy practices in the
classroom and in his home and community might be understood. Our
interpretation here draws on a distinction between Genres and genres
(which parallels the distinction James Gee makes between Discourse
and discourse and draws on). It also draws on concepts of Strategy,
Uses and Tactics from the work of Michel de Certeau.
Gee uses Discourse to refer
to socially recognised ways of using language (reading, writing,
speaking, listening), gestures and other semiotics (images, sounds,
graphics, signs, codes), as well as ways of thinking, believing,
feeling, valuing, acting/doing and interacting in relation to people
and things, such that we can be identified and recognised as being a
member of a socially meaningful group, or as playing a socially
meaningful role (cf Gee 1991, 1996, 1998). To be in, or part of, a
Discourse means that others can recognise us as being a 'this' or a
'that' (a pupil, mother, priest, footballer, mechanic), or a
particular 'version' of a this or that (a reluctant pupil, a doting
mother, a radical priest, a 'bush' mechanic) by virtue of how we are
using language, believing, feeling, acting, dressing, doing, and so
on. Language is a dimension of Discourse, but only one dimension, and
Gee uses discourse (with a small "d") to mark this
relationship.
We suggest distinguishing
between Genre and genre in a similar way and seeing it as a
distinction falling within Discourse. By Genres we mean embodied and
contextualized practices that are inherent in but do not 'exhaust'
Discourses. Hence, within the Discourse of being a teacher, for
example, one will participate in/enact diverse Genres, such as
Explaining, Reporting, Interviewing, Persuading, Instructing,
Narrating, Arguing, etc. Within each of these one will produce texts
(oral or written or both)/use signs, employ semiotics, etc. These
textual productions-which may vary considerably within particular
Genre enactments depending on context and situation-may be thought of
as genre exemplars. They are like discourse is to Discourse: the
textual bits.
We would argue that people
produce/handle genres better or worse to the extent that they are
'insiders to' embodied and contextualized practices of Genres and,
furthermore, to the Discourses in which these Genres are embedded. To
try and teach genres divorced from contexts (embodied, material,
mentored, and motivated) of Genres is like trying to learn to play a
sport by only attending training or practice sessions.
Of course, what we are
proposing here is not the only way of looking at genres from a more
deliberately socio-cultural prespective. Gunther Kress, for example,
posits that " 'genre' and 'text' are not the same thing: the latter
includes the former, though there is no text or textual element that
is not generically formed" (1999: 5). On the other hand, some genre
theorists and commentators, as Kress also points out, see genres and
texts as identical. And others don't.
Nevertheless, for us, in the
case of Jacques' production of his flier, he was building on insider
knowledge of business Discourse to enact/participate in an
entrepreneurial Genre of advertising-informing-selling. And his
generic artifact was effective (powerful, in fact) and appropriate.
The opposite was true for most of his classroom generic production.
And where his 'narratives' proved successful was not within the Genre
of narrating, but of Joking.
In fact, Jacques' generic
productions provide an interesting perspective on the concepts of
Strategy, Use and Tactics, along the lines suggested by de Certeau
(1984). Our argument at this point is tentative and exploratory, but
we believe there is potential for further development of the ideas
here.
de Certeau develops these
concepts as part of his framework for investigating the nature and
politics of cultural production within, what he calls, the practice
of everyday life. He is interested, although not exclusively, in
redressing research that portrays consumers as passive effects or
reflexes of the practices of producers. Without in any way denying
the relations of differential power and advantage that play out
across social and cultural groupings everywhere and everyday, he
wants to identify, understand, and explain the power of the weak and
the 'wins' they gain in their everyday practice. They gain these
'wins' by using-making use of-the constraining order of the
regulatory fields in which they must participate (at work, in school,
at leisure, in domestic life, etc), and by employing
tactics.
de Certeau illustrates his
concept of 'use' by reference to a North African migrant being
obliged to live in a low-income housing estate in France and to use
the French of, say, Paris or Roubaix. This person may insinuate into
the system imposed on him "the ways of 'dwelling' (in a house or in a
language) peculiar to his native Kabylia". This introduces a degree
of plurality into the system. Similarly, the indigenous peoples of
Latin America often used
the laws,
practices, and representations imposed on them
to ends other than
those of their conquerors
subverting them from within
by many
different ways of using them in the service of rules, customs or
convictions foreign to the colonization which they could not escape
(1984: 31-32).
'Tactics' is construed by de
Certeau as 'an art of the weak.' It involves the art of 'pulling
tricks' through having a sense of opportunities presented by a
particular occasion within a context in which Others (subjects of
will and power; notably, the power to define and control Discourses)
have defined their own place from which to 'manage relations with an
exteriority composed of targets or threats.' These subjects of will
and power can develop strategies by which to identify and manage
relations with their 'targets' (customers, competitors, enemies,
others). Strategy is an art of the strong (e.g., a scientific
institution that defines and sustains knowledge by the power to
provide itself with its own place). All the weak can do is manoeuver
within the controlled and managed space, 'taking advantage of
opportunities' to get a win-albeit a win whose 'fruits' they cannot
keep.
We have not the space to
develop the argument here, but would suggest that established Genres
are involved at the level of strategy. Managing 'targets' involves,
among other things, subordinating them to the rule of Genres as part
of the order established within that place controlled by the
subject.
Interestingly, we find in
Jacques' textual productions elements of use, tactics and strategy.
He uses the constraining order of the place he is obliged to
inhabit-the classroom-and its language to enact/promote/serve other
values and ends (humour, gaining approval, etc.). Alternatively, we
can see him employing a tactic to pull a trick within the enemy's
field of vision and control: getting a 'win' from the 'writing
center.'
We believe pedagogy should
encourage development of a sense of tactics and reward tactics and
recognize them more than is usually the case. After all, people are
rarely powerful in all domains of practice, and most people have
limited power in almost every domain. An education in the interests
of all should encourage the weak in their command of
tactics.
On the other hand, Jacques
is able to enlist G/genre in something like the sense of a strategy
in developing his lawn mowing enterprise. His activity here conforms
to the logic of making something possible and at the same time
determining its characteristics by having a certain power in the
first place (de Certeau 1984, 36). He can constitute himself as a
subject and postulate a kind of place from which to manage relations
with an exteriority (future customers). He can do this as a result of
his command of a Discourse (and knowing that he can draw on some
economic and moral support from his business-oriented family) and the
Genre of advertising/ informing/attracting.
3. Attention
economy and new times and new technologies and new
practices.
We need to get beyond
research/study of familiar genres. New genres are emerging
continually as new practices and new technologies co-evolve.
Moreover, a lot of what we are told comprises powerful symbolic
production these days involves precisely the practice of deliberately
blurring and subverting genres, and breaking the rules. There are at
least two lines of argument here. One comes from Lyotard's account of
knowledge in the postmodern condition, according to which maximising
'performativity' depends increasingly on making new moves in language
games. This puts a new emphasis on 'style', creativity, 'originality'
etc. Possibilities for 'breaking rules' exist on a number of levels.
An exploratory taxonomy being developed with Michael Peters in
relation to a concept of 'performance epistemology' comprises the
following :
1. At the
most elementary level, a 'new move' within a language game (which
might be as minimal as generating an idiosyncratic phrase, a striking
sentence, and so on);
2. A new
'set of moves' in a language game which, collectively, add up to a
new strategy (e.g., new ways of using images or text fonts in web
page design)
3. A new
set of strategies
4.
Inventing a new rule in a language game (e.g., a new 'standard' for
checking validity of data within qualitative research);
5.
Inventing a set of rules which, collectively, amount to a new
language game. This might be done by applying various kinds of
principles in a context where there are no existing exemplars or
norms showing to proceed, but where all one has to go on is
experience of previous successful 'moves.' For example,
" 'Lifting' a
genre from one context and putting it in an other (lifting it out of
its 'proper' social context and inserting it in another) is an
innovative act, an act of creativity" (Kress 1999: 11).
Push 'raves' and social
commentaries like the SUCK website <www.suck.com> are actually
new moves in a language game-indeed. They may well be new language
games--because they challenge conventional conceptions and practices
of both texts and websites. SUCK, Stephen Johnson's FEED and Douglas
Rushkoff's MEDIASQUAT email newsletter and interactive commentary
that comprise mixtures of commentaries, reader input, comments and
feedback, links that enhance the meaning of the text rather than just
illustrate it and so on, all call for slew of Genre and genre
understandings (e.g., how to maintain tenor across webpages, how to
make cohesive ties work in an online environment and to know if
they're even needed, how to encourage readers to pay attention to
your website, how to best align the website with particular
Discourses).
A second line of argument
comes from the idea of an emerging 'attention economy'. This is
premised on the fact that the human capacity to produce material
things outstrips the net capacity to consume the things that are
produced - such are the irrational contingencies of distribution. In
this context, 'material needs at the level of creature comfort are
fairly well satisfied for those in a position to demand them'
(Goldhaber 1997) - the great minority, it should noted, of people at
present. Nonetheless, for this powerful minority, the need for
attention becomes increasingly important, and increasingly the focus
of their productive activity. Hence, the attention
economy:
[T]he energies
set free by the successes of
the money-industrial economy go more
and more in the direction of obtaining attention. And that leads to
growing competition for what is increasingly scarce, which is of
course attention. It sets up an unending scramble, a scramble that
also increases the demands on each of us to pay what scarce attention
we can (Goldhaber 1998).
Within an attention economy,
individuals seek stages - performing spaces - from which they can
perform for the widest/largest possible audiences. Goldhaber observes
that the various spaces of the Internet lend themselves perfectly to
this model. He notes that gaining attention is related to
originality. It is difficult, says Goldhaber, to get new attention
'by repeating exactly what you or someone else has done before.'
Consequently, the attention economy is based on 'endless originality,
or at least attempts at originality.'
Moreover, without even
considering the possible impact of consciously motivated
rule-breaking changes in pursuit of originality, change is well and
truly in process for familiar textual products and forms. As Kress
observes,
Forms of writing
(in English), at the moment, bear the traces or are the effects of a
social, economic, technological and political history of about 500
years. When writing will have become, (with that new technology),
speech displayed as graphic form on a screen, it will begin also to
display the effects of the new social, economic, and political
givens. Above all, speech displayed as graphic form on a screen, will
develop in co-existence with image displayed on that screen - perhaps
at times still reproduced as 'hard copy' on a page or even in a book!
(Kress 1999)
Our efforts as linguists
will increasingly be diverted toward documenting, understanding,
predicting and, perhaps, even projecting such changes.
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