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6 J. Contemp. Legal Issues 115 (1995)
Genre as Institutionally Informed Social Practice

handle is hein.journals/contli6 and id is 123 raw text is: Genre as Institutionally Informed Social Practice George Kamberelis* In this article I rehearse and integrate recent theoretical and empirical work from a variety of different disciplines on the character and function of discourse genres. The ostensible purpose of such an exercise is to construct a prolegomena to a theory of discourse genres. In constructing this prolegomena, I suggest that genres are best understood as constitutive articulations of extant or residual structural tendencies, everyday social practices and the changing contexts of communicative activity. Central to this view of genres are several key themes or insights, including the following: Genres are constituted as productive syntheses of discursive and material practices. Genres are both durable and dynamic forms/processes of communication and social interaction. As such, genres fuse form, thematic content and everyday practice. Genres index social formations, their purposes and their ideologies. Because of their embeddedness in practical activity, genres are learned in and as social practices rather than as sets of rules or discursive maps. Finally, rather than being faits accompli, genres are more like premises for arguments or metaphorical starting points for ongoing rhetorical work. They initiate but never complete text-making and meaning-making activities because they simultaneously over-determine and under-determine such activities. Speaking of metaphors, it was suggested in the Introduction to this special issue on the Crisis of Text that highways and highway travel might serve as useful metaphors for understanding the arguments presented in this and other articles in the volume. I am thus driven to explore, in at least a cursory way, the power and saliency of these metaphors for advancing our understanding of discourse genres and their functions. I will do so by posing and attempting to answer a couple of the many questions suggested by the metaphors. One question is: Do genres arbitrate the articulation of linearity and speed of accomplishment in a way analogous to highways? Yes and no. Knowledge of the constellations of rhetorical features, practices and effects of certain genres automates the processes of communication to a considerable degree. For example, knowing the structure of the conven- tionalized four-part research article allows me to generate research reports fairly quickly. However, genres hardly seem to be governed by principles of linearity and presuming that they do seems to involve certain epistemological and pragmatic risks. One risk seems to be a depression of generativity, of finding new ways for seeing and understanding. * Assistant Professor of Speech Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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