genres across the curriculum chapter 11, “writing in emerging genres” a brief look at the...
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Genres Across the Curriculum
Chapter 11, “Writing in Emerging Genres”
A brief look at the chapter by Cindy Nichols
Palmquist’s 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.
“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).
“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…
While electronic and Web writing may or may not cause anything as significant as the Protestant Revolution…
…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
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).
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
Likewise, a number of traditional print genres have been successfully remediated for the Web:
• The scholarly journal article• The press release• The opinion column
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.
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.
Certain Web elements in particular, according to Palmquist, work to keep emergent genres unstable and in flux:
•Navigational Tools•Structure or “Shape”•Illustrations
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).
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.
The structures of scholarly articles on the Web, for example, may be:
•Linear•Hierarchical•Interlinked•Combined
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 documents—such as news articles—than 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).
Illustrations
“Illustrations” is Palmquist’s rather limited word for….
Pictures
Video clips
Java applets
Rollovers Popups
Hot spots
Sounds
“Behaviors” or triggers
AnimationsAll of these things together andintermixed
“The expanded choices concerning document
structure, navigation tools, and illustrations have worked against the quick emergence of genre conventions” (224).
However…
Some Conventions Appear to be Emerging…
in page design.
“Page design typically reflects the social
and commercial purposes of a Web site…”(224).
The Elemental
“[S]earch sites such as Google and AllTheWeb.com [opt] for designs that highlight their primary function...”(224).
My own homepage
Mark Aune, also at NDSU
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
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
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 1Salon 2
Me again
Other NDSU English Dept. Sites:
Betsy Birmingham
Kevin Brooks
Dale Sullivan
How, using Palmquist’s categories, would you describeeach of these sites?
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
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.)
Palmquist’s 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).
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.”
“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…
…tended to refer to Web sites as an undifferentiated set of documents—as though one Web site might be much like another despite differences in site structure, design, navigation tools, purpose, and audience” (230).
Palmquist’s students…
Turned to other web sites for page design ideas.
They also remediated print designs with which they were already familiar.
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 student’s 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.
“What is certain, from a writer’s point of
view, is that the rules of writing have
changed” (219).
The End
Or is it the beginning?Ella Rupiper-Taggart,now 1 year old
Faculty meeting at NDSU
Notes and Works CitedThis brief look at Palmquist’s 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.