Genres Across the Curriculum

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Genres Across the Curriculum

• Chapter 11, Writing in Emerging Genres

A brief look at the chapter by Cindy Nichols
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Palmquists initial thoughts

• The beginning of this chapter (by WAC Clearing
  House editor Mike Palmquist) reaffirms the now
  familiar realization that
• we are living in a language revolution not
  unlike
• the one heralded by the invention of the printing
  press.

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Not since the fifteenth century, when Gutenberg
perfected a workable system of movable type, has
there been such a change in how information and
ideas are exchanged" (219).

• While electronic and Web writing may or
  may not cause anything as significant as the
  Protestant Revolution

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Its Impact is Already Clearly Seen and Felt In

• Everyday communications
• Changing notions of publication
• Broader range of expression
• The emergence of new genres as well as the
  remediation of old ones

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Of course, these emerging genres are far from
stable or clear yet.

• "Although attempts have been made to define
  genres among Web documents, the pace of
  technological change works against their
  definition.
• It remains uncertain whether the conventions that
  are beginning to emerge will withstand the
  continuing pace of technological development
  (226).

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Is Anything New Under the Sun, Job?

• However, we can certainly see some new Web forms
  resulting from recurring social situations
• The home page
• The digital broadsheet
• The resource list
• The discussion list page

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• Likewise, a number of traditional print genres
  have been successfully remediated for the Web
• The scholarly journal article
• The press release
• The opinion column

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RE-mediating the familiar

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Anticipating the new

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Caddy Concept Car
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• Recall too how the credits in early films looked
  very much like play bills or the table of
  contents for books.
• Film makers finally realized that initial credits
  could appear very nonlinearly and even dispersed
  among opening scenes.

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• My own first web pages looked almost exactly like
  the title pages of books (and some still do).
• I was obviously drawing on familiar PRINT genres
  as I approached ELECTRONIC genres.

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• Certain Web elements in particular, according to
  Palmquist, work to keep emergent genres unstable
  and in flux

• Navigational Tools
• Structure or Shape
• Illustrations

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Navigation Tools

• These include
• Menus (both side and top)
• Tables of contents
• Navigation headers and footers
• Site search tools
• Graphical site maps
• Over the past several years, navigation tools
  have become somewhat conventionalized (222).

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Structure or Shape

• Structure is closely allied with organization,
  but is nonetheless distinct.
• Palmquist identifies THE LINK as key to the
  instability of web genres, since it is linked
  (har) to the possiblity of so many divergent
  structural patterns.

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• The structures of scholarly articles on the Web,
  for example, may be

• Linear
• Hierarchical
• Interlinked
• Combined

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• For Web readers, these highly varied structures
  can be difficult to internalize and predict.
• However, some shapes (structures) may be more
  appropriate for specific types of documentssuch
  as news articlesthan others. If so, and if some
  consensus can be arrived at concerning
  appropriate document shapes, we might find that
  certain shapes will become associated with
  emerging Web genres (222).

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Illustrations

• Illustrations is Palmquists rather limited
  word for.

Video clips
Hot spots
Pictures
Behaviors or triggers
Java applets
Sounds
All of these things together and intermixed
Animations
Rollovers
Popups
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• Used to be
• Hypertext was the big thing.
• Now new media is the kicker.

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The expanded choices concerning document
structure, navigation tools, and illustrations
have worked against the quick emergence of genre
conventions (224).

• However

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Some Conventions Appear to be Emerging

• in page design.
• Page design typically reflects the social
• and commercial purposes of a
• Web site(224).

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The Elemental

• Search sites such as Google and AllTheWeb.com
  opt for designs that highlight their primary
  function...(224).
• Google
• My own homepage
• Mark Aune, also at NDSU

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The All or Nothing

• Web portals, such as Lycos, Yahoo! and MSN.com
  favor a design that literally crams as much
  information as possible into a page
• Yahoo

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The Digital Broadsheet

• The digital broadsheet, according to Waters and
  Shepherd, mimics the front pages of newspapers
  and table of contents of many magazines
• CNN.com
• Microsoft
• Sears

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The Framed or Bordered

• This type of site shows material placed in
  columns and bordered by lists of links. Content,
  in other words, is framed.
• Salon 1
• Salon 2
• Me again

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Other NDSU English Dept. Sites

• Betsy Birmingham
• Kevin Brooks
• Dale Sullivan

How, using Palmquists categories, would you
describe each of these sites?
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• Were obviously in a period of experimentation
  and adaptation.

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Reader and Writer Issues

• Web readers
• may experience frustration (somewhat like readers
  of early Modernist works)
• Web writers (oldsters)
• report creative freedom
• Web writers (newbies)
• tend to struggle with templates, code, and Web
  editor software

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Educator Issues

• How are teachers and students faring with these
  emergent Web genres?
• Even good students may perform much like basic
  writers when struggling to acquire computer and
  Web literacy skills.
• (Note that students described in Chap. 10
  apparently did better.)

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Palmquists work with students

• Palmquist examines the efforts of students in
  three writing and writing-intensive classes to
  create Web sites. He charts the efforts of
  these students to understand the constraints
  and possibilities of emerging Web genres (220).

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What He Found

• Even after completing their courses, the idea
  that documents published on the Web might be
  classified into discrete genres would likely come
  as a surprise to the undergraduates who
  participated in the study.

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• In their interviews, they refer to Web sites in
  a fairly monolithic sense. Even the two writing
  majors, who had more than a passing familiarity
  with the notion that print genres can be
  classified by genre

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• tended to refer to Web sites as an
  undifferentiated set of documentsas though one
  Web site might be much like another despite
  differences in site structure, design, navigation
  tools, purpose, and audience (230).

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• The grad students showed a more nuanced
  understanding of genre in Web documents (230).

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Palmquists students

• Turned to other web sites for page design ideas.
• They also remediated print designs with which
  they were already familiar.

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They used illustrations

• for unity, mood, and communication.

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Other Findings

• The lack of genre conventions in this new medium
  problems for teachers, who had to decide which
  would come first coding or writing.
• The lack of conventions also complicated the
  students task, forcing her to contend in
  particular with navigation, page design,
  structure, and illustrations.
• If teachers emphasize the emergent nature of web
  genres, their students are more likely to
  appreciate Web assignments as experiments and
  adventures.

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What is certain, from a writers point of view,
is that the rules of writing have changed (219).
Faculty meeting at NDSU
The End
Or is it the beginning?
Ella Rupiper- Taggart, now 1 year old
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Notes and Works Cited

• This brief look at Palmquists chapter of the
  Herrington-Moran anthology was part of a summer
  2006 course in Writing in the Disciplines at
  North Dakota State University. The course was
  lead by Dr. Dale Sullivan.
• Any quotations, information or paraphrases which
  do not include a citation are from the Palmquist
  chapter and should be easily found there.
• Palmquist, Mike. Writing in Emerging Genres.
  Genre Across the Curriculum. Eds. Anne Herrington
  and Charles Moran. Logan, Utah Utah State
  University Press, 2005.