Briggs/ Baumann "Genre Intertextaulity & Social Power"
From 2/28 - genre is intertextual - links it
Intertextual gaps



149
"We would now
like to suggest that it becomes evident that these intertextual relations are
not simply automatic effects of immanent properties of texts when the
focus is shifted to the way that generic intertextuality simultaneously
produces the obverse of these properties. Turning first to the synchronic
dimensions of this problem, although generic intertextuality may help
imbue texts with order, unit, and boundedness, it also draws attention
to the lack of self-sufficiency and autonomy of the formal-functional configuration
of the discourse at hand-recourse must be made to other discursive
formations to interpret its patterning and significance."
Starting with Once Upon a TIme....bounds the text to audience expectation - not in text!

"The process of linking particular utterances to generic models thus necessarily
produces an intertextual gap. Although the creation of this hiatus
is unavoidable, its relative suppression or foregrounding has important
effects. One the one hand, texts framed in some genres attempt to
achieve generic transparency by minimizing the distance between texts
and genres, thus rendering the discourse maximally interpretable
through the use of generic precedents. This approach sustains highly
conservative, traditionalizing modes of creating textual authority. On the
other hand, maximizing and highlighting these intertextual gaps underlies
strategies for building authority through claims of individual creativity
and innovation (such as are common in 20th-century Western literature),
resistance to the hegemonic structures associated with established
genres, and other motives for distancing oneself from textual precedents." (Jazz/ Improv)

143
Genre classification
144
"The use of genre as a classificatory concept does not necessarily imply
self-conscious attention to classification itself as an intellectual problem.
Indeed, much work in the field tends to treat each generic category atomistically.
Some significant work, however, has been devoted to the systemic
organization of generic classifications, from the vantage point of
either scientific taxonomy or the ethnographic investigation of locally
constructed classification systems."

"Definitional efforts in linguistic anthropology,
however, arc distinguished by the centrality of formal patterns, whether
as the sole basis of definition or in relation to function, content, or context.
The most significant dimension of contrast among formal perspectives
on genre distinguishes those approaches that identify the formal
organization of genre as an immanent, normative, structuring property
of texts from those that view generic form as a conventionalized but flexible
and open-ended set of expectations concerning the organization of
formal means and structures in discursive practice. The latter view tends
to raise the emergent properties of discursive organization to parity with
the socially given, normative dimensions of generic structure."

"Finally, we would register the very broad contrast between those approaches
to genre that treat genre as a problem in its own right and those
that explore the interrelationships that link genre to other terms, concepts,
and sociocultural factors. Within linguistic anthropology in particular,
one line of inquiry has concerned itself with the relationship between
genre and other sociolinguistic organizing principles, especially
speech acts, speech events, speech styles, and frames. In broader anthropological
compass, investigators have analyzed dimensions of interrelationship
between genres or genre systems and other cultural domains,
such as ethics and cosmology, or other social structures, such as
institutions or systems of soda! relations."

145
"and culture from those that contend with the
elements of disjunction, ambiguity, and general lack of fit that lurk
around the margins of generic categories, systems, and texts. In the section
that follows, we offer in exploratory terms a perspective on genre
that brings the fuzzy fringes of genre to the center of the intellectual enterprise."

Aristotle/ Genre

"His characterization of genre is particularly rich in that it sees linguistic
dimensions of genres in terms of their ideologically mediated connections
with social groups and "spheres of human activity" in historical
perspective (1986:65). By drawing attention to "complex" genres that
"absorb and digest" other generic types, Bakhtin challenged the notion
that genres are static, stylistically homogeneous, and nonoverlapping
units (of which more later)."
146
Jakobson - poetry/ performance

"Two facets of this characterization are crucial. First, structure, form, function,
and meaning are seen not as immanc~t features of  discourse but as
products of an ongoing process of producing and rece1vmg discourse."


INTERFACE
147
"Like reported speech, genre is quintessentially intertextual.
When discourse is linked to a particular genre, the process by which it is
produced and received is mediated through its relationship with prior
discourse. Unlike most examples of reported speech, however, the link
is not made to isolated utterances, but to generalized or abstracted
models of discourse production and reception. 3 When genre is viewed in
intertextual terms, its complex and contradictory relationship to discourse
becomes evident. We suggest that the creation of intertextual relationships
through genre simultaneously renders texts ordered, unified,
and bounded, on the one hand, and fragmented, heterogeneous, and
open-ended, on the other. Each dimension of this process can be seen
from both the synchronic and the diachronic perspective."

147
"Viewed synchronically, genres provide powerful means of shaping
discourse into ordered, unified, and bounded texts. As soon as we hear
a generic framing device, such as "once upon a time," we unleash a set
of expectations regarding narrative form and content. Animals may talk
and people may possess supernatural powers, and we anticipate the unfolding
of a plot structure that involves, as Propp (1968[1928]) showed us
long ago, an interdiction, a violation, a departure, the completion of
tasks, failure followed by success, and the like."

"When viewed in diachronic or, as Bakhtin put it, vertical perspective,4
generic intertextuality provides a powerful means of ordering discourse
in historical and social terms. Genres have strong historical associations--
proverbs and fairy tales have the ring of the traditional past,
whereas electronic mail (E-mail) is associated with the ultramodern. Genres
also bear social, ideological, and political-economic connections; genres
may thus be associated with distinct groups as defined by gender,
age, social class, occupation, and the like."

148
 "To draw on the terminology we used earlier, generic
features thus foreground the status of utterances as recontextualizations
of prior discourse. Even when the content of the discourse lacks a dear
textual precedent, generic intertextuality points to the role of recontextualization
at the level of discourse production and reception. Genre thus
pertains crucially to negotiations of identity and power-by invoking a
particular genre, producers of discourse assert (tacitly or explicitly) that
they possess the authority needed to decontextualize discourse that
bears these historical and social connections and to recontextualize it in
the current discursive setting."

"Even writers who are
particularly interested in the way speakers and hearers and writers and
readers resist these rules and conventions generally see the nature of the
entailed intertextual relations as relatively transparent and automatic.
The fallacy of this assumption is evident when one realizes that genres
are not road maps to particular texts. Invocations of genre rather entail
the (re)construction of classes of texts. Specific features are then selected
and abstracted, thus bringing into play a powerful process of decontextualization
(see Bauman and Briggs 1990). As scholars in a number of
fields have suggested, the power of genres emerges from the way they
draw on a broad array of features-phonological, morphological, lexical,
and syntactic, as well as contextual and interactive (see, for example,
Ben-Amos 1976[19691; Leitch 1991). By choosing to make certain features
explicit (and particularly by foregrounding some clements through repetition
and metapragmatic framing), producers of discourse actively
(re)construct and reconfigure genres. Note the great similarity between
the discourse practices associated with the use of genre in shaping extextualization,
on the one hand, and the scholarly practices of linguis tic anthropologists,
literary critics, and the like, on the other: both entail creating
classes of texts, selecting and abstracting features, and using this
process in creating textual authority."



"Binding"
149
genre can create order and chaos

"When viewed diachronically or vertically, the fit between a particular
text and its generic model-as well as other tokens of the same genreis
never perfect; to paraphrase Sapir, we might say that all genres leak.
Generic frameworks thus never provide sufficient means of producing
and receiving discourse. Some elements of contextualization creep in,
fashioning indexical connections to the ongoing discourse, social interaction,
broader social relations, and the particular historical juncture(s)
at which the discourse is produced and received. In short, other pragmatic
and metapragmatic (d. Silverstein 1976, 1992) frameworks must be
brought into play in shaping production and reception."

"The process of linking particular utterances to generic models thus necessarily
produces an intertextual gap. Although the creation of this hiatus
is unavoidable, its relative suppression or foregrounding has important
effects. One the one hand, texts framed in some genres attempt to
achieve generic transparency by minimizing the distance between texts
and genres, thus rendering the discourse maximally interpretable
through the use of generic precedents. This approach sustains highly
conservative, traditionalizing modes of creating textual authority. On the
other hand, maximizing and highlighting these intertextual gaps underlies
strategies for building authority through claims of individual creativity
and innovation (such as are common in 20th-century Western literature),
resistance to the hegemonic structures associated with established
genres, and other motives for distancing oneself from textual precedents."

minimizing/ maximizing gaps

150
Kuipera
151
"The maximization
of intertextual distance plays a central role in both the rhetorical patterning
of the discourse and its explicit framing by virtue of the way it
motivates point-by-point contrasts between life antes " in bygone days"
and the present. This is not to say that the discursive effect of such strategies
is to achieve some sort of complete separation of text and genreany
invocation of generic features creates both intertextual relations and
intertextual gaps. Such maximization is rather a rhetorical strategy that
foregrounds the latter dimension of generic intertextuality .

performance Warao
 151-153
prompter

154
tall tale

159
" These examples suggest that generic intertextuality cannot be adequately
understood in terms of formal and functional patterning alonequestions
of ideology, political economy, and power must be addressed
as well if we are to grasp the nature of intertextual relations. This discussion
thus opens up a much larger theoretical and methodological issue
that has emerged in linguistic anthropology and the study of discourse
in general. At first glance, it seems as if the number of scholars who have
aligned their work with the concept of discourse would have produced a
fruitful integration or at least an articulation of a wide range of approaches
and concerns. A closer look suggests that the highly divergent
conceptualizations of the nature and significance of "discourse" have
often widened the gap between research agendas. A great deal of recent
work in linguistic anthropology resonates with Sherzer's call for a "discourse-
centered" approach to the study of culture, one that focuses on
detailed analyses of "actual instances of language in use,"
160
"We would like to suggest that relations between intertextuality and
ideology can be read in both directions-in terms of the way that broader
social, cultural, ideological, and political-economic formations shape and
empower intertextual strategies and the manner in which ideologies of
intertextuality and their associated practices shape society and history.
The long-standing association between genre and order in Western
discourse provides a strong sense of the impact of changing ideologies
and social relations on intertextuality. The existence of a purportedly
clearly defined and elaborate system of genres has often been associated
with the social, political, and communicative value of national languages
and literatures."
161

" Recall Heath's (1982) analysis of the connection between "ways of taking
information from books" and educational success. The middle-class
white, working-class white, and working-class African-American communities
she studied were characterized by distinctive "ways of taking."
Although books were accorded great authority and reading was highly
encouraged in both of the predominantly white communities, the working-
class parents "do not, upon seeing an item or event in the real world,
remind children of a similar event in a book and launch a running commentary
on similarities and differences" (Heath 1982:61). Heath reports
that although bedtime routines were not common in the working-class
African-American community, participation in oral storytelling and
other forms of verbal art afforded children great acuity in creating intertextual
relations, particularly as based on metaphorical and fictionalized
links.6 Heath suggests, however, that classroom discourse discouraged
these types of intertextuality "because they enable children to see parallels
teachers did not intend, and indeed, may not recognize until the children
point them out" (Heath 1982:70). She goes on to argue that the compatibility
between the "ways of taking" inculcated by middle-class white
parents--even before the children were reading--and those rewarded in
the classroom fostered much greater success in school"

163
"In this article we have critiqued views of genre that draw on purportedly
immanent, invariant features in attempting to provide internally
consistent systems of mutually exclusive genres. We presented an alternative
view of genre, one that places generic distinctions not within texts
but in the practices used in creating intertextual relations with other bodies
of discourse. Since the establishment of such relations necessarily selects
and abstracts generic features, we argued that generic intertextua\ity
is not an inherent property of the relation between a text and a genre
but the construction of such a relationship. A text can be linked to generic
precedents in multiple ways; generic framings of texts are thus often
mixed, blurred, ambiguous, contradictory. We accordingly suggested
that generic links necessarily produce an intertextual gap; the strategies
used for constructing intertextual relations can seek to minimize this gap,
maximize it, or both. Choices between intertextual strategies are ideologically
motivated, and they are closely related to social, cultural, politicaleconomic,
and historical factors."

164
" produce disorder, heterogeneity, and textual open-endedness, as well as
order, unity, and boundedness, scholarly strategies for creating generic
links similarly involve arbitrary selections between competing intertextual
relations and are affected by ideological, social, cultural, politicaleconomic,
and historical factors. Therefore, no system of genres as defined
by scholars can provide a wholly systematic, empirically based, objective
set of consistently applied, mutually exclusive categories."