Rationality of Genre.docx

1、Rationality of GenreRationality of GenreZongjie Wu Zhejiang UniversityAbstract: This paper elaborates the notion of rationality of genre with a concrete research focus on an instance of innovative curriculum talk. It shows how various social reasons situated in the network of social practices are re

2、contextualised as the local pedagogical discourse through recombining different disembedded genres. The paper starts from a discussion of the relationship between situated knowledge and its language: heteroglossia, in the belief that the language of heteroglossia conceptualises a complex web of inte

3、rrelated meaning across time and space in the process of discursive hybridity. Drawing upon Habermas theory of communicative action and Faircloughs understanding of genre, the study explores the notion of rationality of genre by giving a critical interpretation to the category of genre developed in

4、systemic functional linguistics. Rather than seeing genre as merely a staged, purpose -driven communicative plane, it is argued that there is a more abstract and fundamental level of social reason or rationality, which underpins the construction of genre, including its hierarchy of purposes. Rationa

5、lity of genre is seen as a high order of dispersed social knowledge that is brought into practice through mixing and combining existing genres or genre elements in the networking of social practices. The study also attempts to demonstrate how specific forms of reasons are comprehended in an instance

6、 of student dormitory talk, contributing to the transformation of a curriculum practice.Key words: rationality genre pedagogical discourse argument Habermas communicative actionI. Distributed Knowledge, Social Reason and Its LanguageHow human understands or learning takes place in different types of

7、 talk either in the workplace or in the classroom has attracted prominent attention in the studies of discourse. The notion of rationality of genre comes into focus primarily with an interest in knowledge construction. The author regards knowledge, or understanding as a matter of activity system, wh

8、ich extends beyond the person to include and enclose the world. This view could find its roots in Heideggers (1962) philosophy, and in some way is implicated in Wengers (1998) and Engestroms (1987) works. Knowing is seen as a mode of practical activity which is spread over a space. Knowledge is the

9、language embodiment of social reasons immanent in the network of social practices. But how is the social knowledge or reason that is distributed in the network of social practices localised and realised in the language of a particular practice? This could be explained by Bakhtins notion of dialogism

10、. According to him, all living utterances are in constant interaction with an environment of others. Everything is understood as a part of a greater whole (Bakhtin, 1981).Thus the spread social reasons are settled at the moment of any utterance through the dialogic orientation in discourse. In dialo

11、gism, the very capacity to have consciousness is based on otherness (Holquist, 1991:18). This dialogic imperative ensures that there can be no speaking persons own words, no purely personal meanings. All utterances mix different consciousnesses, ones own and others. Bakhtin uses the notion of hetero

12、glossia to conceptualise the complex web of the interrelated meanings in discourse. The language of heteroglossia is also stratified into various social dialects. Each community of practice at any given moment has its own language, its own vocabulary, representing a particular point of view, a body

13、of knowledge in relation to the community. The author could thus assume that any learning community has their particular language of heteroglossia, which makes them unique, and conceptualises their practice in words by their own goals, meanings and values through their joint enterprise. But at the s

14、ame time, this language is in dialogue with others, representing the co-existence of various social reasons and ideological conjunctions.Knowledge is thus a matrix of social reasons that is not possessed by individuals but dispersed in the network of social practices. It is embodied in the language

15、of heteroglossia, and is settled down in the concrete utterances. The analysis of language could disclose both the social reasons of a practice and the specific features of a communitys knowledge; both are seen as something spread, distributed in the trajectory of activity, but embodied in the concr

16、ete utterance. Now this paper will explore how such knowledge or reason can actually be investigated through the analysis of language, or genre in particular.II. Rationality of GenreIn systemic functional linguistics, a genre is defined in terms of a hierarchical set of communicative purposes (Marti

17、n 1992). For instance, Christie (1997) defines a particular curriculum practice as a macrogenre, where staged, purposive activities are hierarchically ordered to teach new understanding or new forms of consciousness. It may be argued that the rationality of a social practice could be understood as t

18、he overall purposes of a macrogenre and the sub-purposes as the means to achieve this. We may take the hierarchies of purposes as a representation of social knowledge. However, rationality of genre cannot be seen as purposes, rather it is a force of reason that dictates genre, including its purposes

19、.Fairclough (2003) recently warns that it may be misleading to over-privilege purpose in the sense that all genres are staged and purpose -driven. He explains the source of the problem in terms of Habermas distinction between communicative and strategic interaction interaction oriented to arriving a

20、t understanding, as opposed to interaction oriented to getting results. He argues that purpose-driven genres are a part of instrumental social systems, in which interaction is predominantly strategic. Many genres with predominantly communicative rationality may not be clearly purpose -driven, such a

21、s informal chat between friends. Van Leeuwen (2000:66) takes a similar view, arguing that discursive action is not inherently purposeful or at least, we cannot prove that it is. Askehave & Swales (2001:198) also remind us that, “genre analysts may have their duties to perform in ferreting out the un

22、derlying rationales of genres”.It is from this position that the autor assumes that there is a level of rationality underlying the hierarchies of purposes, which dictates or recontextualises the lower-level communicative plane genre. The author thinks of this as rationality of genre or embodiment of

23、 reason in genre, equivalent to Habermas concept of “rationality of action” . The author sees such reasons situated in the network of social practices, and embodied in the language of heteroglossia. The rationality of genre is the implicit assumptions, propositions, beliefs and values that underpin

24、the construction of genres, including, but not only, their purposes. In terms of the relationship between rationality and discourse, the author would see rationality as the epistemological aspect of discourse, which could be understood as the knowledge side of discourse. (The other side is power, as

25、 defined by Foucault.)The difference between purposes and rationality could further be understood in the way that the former is consciously possessed by individual persons, but the latter is attributed to structure (activity, genre, discourse), and subordinated to the form of life. Rationality is th

26、e historical reason of a particular activity, the kind of truth by which purposes of genre are justified and enacted. But such a sort of justification is not taken as a semantic explanation of legitimation such as those that are analysed by van Leeuwen & Wodak (1999), but are embodied in the form of

27、 life (or being in Heideggers term). Hence in some spheres of life we have no criteria of truth to justify the validity of speech. Rationality could be accounted for as a belief system, but is not possessed by individuals. Reason, says Habermas, is not to be situated in any one particular subject at

28、 all but rather in subject-subject relations (see Brand, 1990:10). Rationality may be stabilised as seemingly pre-existing social consciousness, but it takes form only in concrete actions, and hence has to be understood in the actual utterances. In terms of agents, we would draw upon Foucaults (1980

29、) philosophy of subject to see them as both an object of rationality (or knowledge) and of as a subject that knows. Thus an agent may have a particular purpose (or strategy) to speak, but at the same time he is driven, controlled or acted upon by it.A point needs to be raised in the distinction betw

30、een discourse and rationality of genre. Discourses are essentially social reasons embodied in the drifting language, which are an instrument as well as a product of System (in Habermas term). Social reasons in terms of formal frames, rule-governed consciousness, are instruments of social control whi

31、ch are situated and realised in the circulation of discourse. However, according to Habermas, in communicative action, the validity of reasons and the linguistic worldviews are not derived from drifting discourse but from “common definitions of situations” stored in the lifeworld. In such contexts,

32、“Language and culture are constitutive for the lifeworld itself. They are neither one of the formal frames, that is the worlds to which participants assign elements of situations, nor do they appear as something in the objective, social, or subjective worlds.” “The very medium of mutual understandin

33、g abides in a peculiar half transcendence.” (Habermas, 1987 ii: 125). The language actually in use cannot decide beforehand how we should live. Social life is thus naturally organised by unconscious, spontaneous adaptation to the changing environment through intersubjective consensus, rather than according to a rational exchange of reasons,