Factual Genres Research Articles

Right and Wrong Ways of Knowing

This article explores how the eighteenth-century ‘dictionary craze’ – the explosive proliferation of alphabetically organized reference works – can be understood as part of a wider conflict of learning. Drawing on a wide mix of sources, I show that dictionaries, more than any other factual genre of the time, challenged established conventions about what constituted right and wrong ways of reading, learning, and ultimately knowing, and that this was a crucial reason for both the controversy and success of the genre. After an overview of early modern norms of learning, the article examines how eighteenth-century disagreements about factual dictionaries challenged, reproduced, and reconfigured older views. By encouraging readers to follow their own curiosity, read in whatever order they liked, form their own opinions, remember temporarily, forget, and return when needed, dictionaries deviated from established ideals of disciplined study and ‘digestive’ reading, which held that ‘true’ knowledge was deeply incorporated in the individual. The dictionary’s claim to be a ‘shortcut’ to learning also fueled discussions about the very meaning of ‘knowing’, and how much the road to learning could be shortened without missing the goal.

Arabization or Domestication? Case Study of Information Structure Shift in Aphorisms

Al-Hikam aphorism is a descriptive factual genre in which the patterns of the text structure are distinctive and aesthetic. The structure of the information facilitates the linear pattern to be arranged in any micro manner. The structured information may have various themes (topical, textual, and interpersonal). The aphorisms, which are originally Arabic, have been translated into English. This study investigates the techniques, methods, and ideology of al-Hikam English translation and the impact of the shift in thematic structure on the quality of translation. Using a qualitative design by utilizing Spradley model data analysis modified by Santosa (2021), this study suggests that al-Hikam aphorism translation has the tendency towards the target language with the ideology of domestication as seen from the translation techniques being used. The application of translation techniques also causes the phenomenon of thematic structures shift that affects the quality of translation. Therefore, textual competence must be understood by a translator.

Экзофикшн и энактивистские нарративы в современной французской литературе

The proliferation of hybrid genres is a notable trend in contemporary French literature. Alongside autofiction, new hybrids are emerging in French literature, modelled on a mixture of fiction and factual genre. One of them is exofiction (“ex” + “fiction”), which implies a narrative about fictitious events from the life of a historical character or an attempt to introduce fiction into someone else’s biography. The neologism, belonging to the writer Philippe Vasset, is rapidly entering scholarly and critical discourse, but no systematic attempt to describe the phenomenon has been made. According to Vasset, exofiction can be defined as any narrative that “blends the reality with the phantasms that accompany its representations” (Ph. Vasset); in other words, exofictitious writing practices form the space of “enactivist literature” in the cognitive sense. Exofiction reveals itself in the search for a connection between inner narrator’s experience and the other subject’s experience — including traumatic — through the language. This article attempts to identify the main features of exofiction, according to the enactivist approach in cognitive science and narratology, and to propose an analysis of the genre characteristics of exofiction by the exаmple of the novels by Pascal Quignard, Jean Echenoz and David Foenkinos.

»Es liegt eine aktive Blutung vor«

This article explores the expert genre ›medical report‹ from a narratological point of view, and is divided into three parts: the first part deals with the history of this widely unknown factual genre that develops, as is shown in patient files from the Inselarchiv Berne, in the 1940s as integral part of the file. The medical report transforms clinical actions and events into a fundamentally linear sequence and is initially marked by a substantial degree of narrativity, including a first-person-narrator, eventfulness and emotions. The second part of the article deals with the epistemology of the contemporary medical report: it is shown that the event-sequencing in medical reports becomes ever more selective, reductive and actionless as clinical medicine becomes over-complex, highly specialized and technicized. The third part explores the aesthetic potential of the medical report for post-modern German literary prose: In David Wagner’s autobiographical novel Leben, the medical report appears three times, thus structuring the whole plot and marking poetological turning points.

Continuity and Change in British Public Service Television’s Engagement with Mental Health

This article explores factual television coverage of mental health by British public service broadcasters (PSB) from the post-war period, examining continuity and change by highlighting the range of voices given airtime, the variety of programme formats and stylistic presentation. It argues that British television has had a long commitment to educating the public about mental health, periodically examining mental health policies, and providing air-time for a range of perspectives. In addition, mental health conditions are now featured more widely, however newer factual genres emphasise experiential accounts and self-accountability over critical investigation. By situating televisual representations of mental health within a historical framework of UK broadcasting and mental health policy, it contributes to the history of health and television, demonstrating the ways in which policy, broadcasting practices and cultural constructions of mental health are interrelated.

Analysis of Errors in Conjunction in Factual Genre Essay Middle School Students (SMP) in West Lombok Regency

Conjunction is a very important linguistic element in writing as a bearer of the total meaning of the ideas of a writing. The purpose of this study is to describe the errors of the use of conjunctions in the factual essays of junior high school students in West Lombok Regency, mainly related to the use of conjunctions at the phrase, sentence, and paragraph level. The research data was obtained through listening, documentation and introspection methods. The data that has been collected is analyzed using the matching method and the aggregate method. The results of the data analysis show that the use of conjunctions between sentences and between paragraphs are incorrect. However, based on the use of conjunctions in syntactic behavior can be classified into five types, namely; (a) mistakes in the use of coordinative conjunctions, (b) errors in the use of subordinative conjunctions, (c) errors in the use of correlative conjunctions, (d) errors in the use of conjunctions between sentences, and (e) errors in the use of conjunctions between paragraphs.

Penerapan Metode Pembelajaran Talking Stick dalam Upaya Peningkatan Hasil Belajar Pokok Bahasan Iklan, Sarana Komunikasi Pada Kelas VIII SMPN 1 Singosari.

Scope of the Indonesian Language Subject to the basic education level (VII-IX) is as follows. The text-forming language units: language sounds, phonemes, morphemes, words, word classes, phrases, clauses. The language marker in the text. Paralinguistik (pronunciation, abbreviation, intonation, tempo, gesture, and mimic). The text structure of the story genre (text eksemplum), factual genre (text recording experiment) and response genres (challenge text, critical responses). The cultural context, norms, and social context behind the birth of the text type.The results of this study indicate that the learning outcomes in the second test meeting cycle I showed an increase. The first increase is the grade value of the previous grade is 67.63. At the second meeting the first cycle increased to 76.94. Furthermore, in the range of values 76 - 100 has a percentage of 31.25% increased to 62.5%. that the learning outcomes in the first meeting test in the second cycle showed a significant increase. In the second cycle as a whole mastery of students on the material review patterns, structure and linguistic rules of advertising reached 84.38%.

Factuality and interpretation in the Serbian daily press

Interpretation is an integral element of daily press and, as theorists believe, in the era of the Internet it is one of the ways how printed media can remain competitive and keep their readers. Providing a deeper analysis, shedding light on the background of the events which are reported, detecting hidden items by answering questions why and what next are actually the characteristics of a well done interpretation which 'forces' the reader to think and take a critical attitude, which makes the reader an active subject of public communication. However, the crisis that has affected the media in Serbia in recent years, and which has led to the commercialization and tabloidization of the media, has influenced, among other things, the quality of interpretation in the press. This paper investigates the presence of interpretation in factual genres (news, reports and interviews) in three daily newspapers in Serbia - Politika, Blic and Kurir, with a particular emphasis on the quality of interpretation and the existence of significant elements that a complete interpretation should contain.

Style, Key and the New Poetics of TV News

This article addresses the phenomenon of intertextuality as part of the shifting norms in current discourses of broadcast news. Using approaches from stylistic theory and multimodal discourse analysis, I examine the increasing use of intertextual features more usually associated with fictional genres in contemporary television news, and the effect of this ‘artfulness’ on the production of meanings in the factual genre of news reports.

Early Literacy Practices go Digital

The aim of this study is to contribute to an understanding of how digitalization affects early literacy practices in terms of literacy teaching (methods, materials, routinized activities, etc.) and the use of literacy genres in digitalized writing. The study has an overall ethnographical design, where we as researchers, over the course of two years, follow a group of first grade teachers when they “go digital” in their literacy teaching. The study is theoretically influenced by New Literacy Studies, genre theory and multimodality. “Going digital” here includes both the new digital tools that the classrooms have been equipped with (e.g. computers, smart boards, projectors, etc.) and the use of a specific early literacy method, learning to read through writing on computers – without using a pencil. The method involves a change from children learning to read and write by using textbooks for reading and pencils for writing to using computers from the start. The children’s own texts are used as important reading material. When children use digital writing tools their texts become longer and they also use a wider range of literacy genres, specifically more factual genres.

Media, Sexuality and Identity: Thoughts on the Role Text, Audience and Production Play in Cultural Discourse

The intersection of media, sexuality and identity produces a rich academic debate, spanning policy, politics, effects, and sexual representation. As a result, scholars employ numerous theoretical and methodological perspectives when asking questions about how media may inform sexuality and identity. Arthurs (2004) observes that media are primary public forums for the regulation of sexuality across fictional and factual genres, and address concerns such as sexual morality in public and private spheres (e.g., Brown 2002; Jaker et al. 1992), changing patterns of family life (e.g., Coontz 1992; Kundanis 2003), and the limits of sexual representation in a deregulated media market (e.g., Becker 2004; Gross 1994; Kim et al. 2007). While scholars in many academic disciplines agree this topic is important, fragmentation and disciplinary narrowing of the study of sexuality and media has often prohibited engaging in academic dialogue about the importance of studying mediated sexualities as meaningful components of individual and collective identity formation. The purpose of this special issue of Sexuality & Culture is for scholars to engage the topic of media and sexuality, with particular focus on the role media play in identity discourses of sex and sexuality. In his seminal work on encoding and decoding, Hall (1980) explains how linear models of media are flawed by the assumption that mediated messages end at passive audience reception. Instead, he argues that mediated ‘‘discourse must then be translated—transformed again—into social practice if the circuit is to be both completed and effective. If no ‘meaning’ is taken, there can be no ‘consumption’ ... the event must become a ‘story’ before it can become a communicative event’’ (pp. 166–167, emphasis original). Hall’s emphasis on communication turned critical scholarship toward interrogating media as a process of text, audience and production. In essence, media is created through a

Tobacco imagery on prime time UK television

BackgroundSmoking in films is a common and well documented cause of youth smoking experimentation and uptake and hence a significant health hazard. The extent of exposure of young people to...

A Research Agenda on Feminist Texts and the Gendered Constitution of International Politics in Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

This article starts from two interventions made at the 2008 Millennium Roundtable Discussion on Gender and International Relations: Vivienne Jabri’s suggestion that feminist IR might benefit from a closer engagement with the constitution of ‘the international’ and ‘the political’ in feminist texts and Christine Sylvester’s call for incorporating ‘difficult feminisms’ that challenge dominant understandings of which political and analytical perspective should be adopted. In response, this article lays out a more concrete research agenda focused on feminist texts that takes an empirically open view of what ‘feminism’ is and which incorporates factual genres and disciplines beyond political science and philosophy. To provide an example of a reading of ‘the international’ and ‘the political’ in a (difficult) feminist text, I turn to Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, a non-fiction genre-hybrid tome of almost 1200 pages published in 1941. Known to an IR audience mainly through its alleged impact on the Bosnian War, I draw upon works in literary theory and women’s studies to bring out West’s gendered vision of international politics, giving particular attention to her constitution of the relationship between national, international and women’s security. The analysis is divided into four parts which examine the gendering and embodying of empires, the politics of art and aesthetics, sacrifice and submission, and the feminist politics of writing.

Grade‐appropriate literacy and South African grade seven learners' classroom writing in English

This paper reports on the writing of grade seven learners in English as an additional language at four differently resourced schools in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. Because grade seven is the start of the senior phase of schooling, it is vital that learners achieve grade‐level competence in the language used as medium of instruction. Learning outcome five, which states that ‘the learner will be able to use language to think and reason, as well as access, process and use information for learning’, is particularly relevant. The primary research question asked what the writing practices in grade seven additional languages were, and how these contribute to the development of learners' writing. The findings were that literacy practices at all four schools privilege grammar exercises and personal, expressive writing. In terms of Cummins's constructs of basic interpersonal communicative skill and cognitive academic language proficiency, learners' written competencies are mainly conversational (basic interpersonal communicative skill). The personal expressive texts that predominate in learners' writing have done little to develop a formal, impersonal academic register (cognitive academic language proficiency). Learners need to become familiar with the more abstract impersonal factual genres associated with disciplinary‐based knowledge.

'Capitalising on the dullness of the data': A linguistic analysis of a Grade 7 learner's writing

The paper discusses the conceptions of language and literacy underpinning writing in current curriculum policy and analyses how the policy is instantiated in the writing of a Grade 7 learner across Afrikaans, English and isiXhosa at a well-resourced school with diverse multilingual learners and well-qualified teachers. This setting was selected in order to examine how language curriculum policy is realised in favourable circumstances. One finding was that literacy practices at the school, in all three languages, privilege grammar exercises and personal, expressive writing. In terms of Cummins's (1984) constructs of Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skill (BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP), learners' written competencies in all three languages (most strongly in isiXhosa) are conversational (BICS). The personal expressive texts which predominate in learners' writing have done little to develop a formal, impersonal academic register (CALP). Yet learners need to become familiar with the more abstract impersonal factual genres associated with disciplinary-based knowledge, as Grade 7 is the start of the senior phase of schooling. It is vital that learners achieve grade-level competence in national learning outcome five which states that 'the learner will be able to use language to think and reason, as well as access, process and use information for learning' (DoE 2002).

The Methodology of Architectonic Truth-Finding in Grass's The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel)

Stephan Schaffrath, in his paper Methodology of Architectonic Truth-Finding in Grass's The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel), discusses how Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum (Die negotiates the treacherous terrains that lie between positivism and nihilistic relativism by means of a truth-finding methodology. Schaffrath proposes that truth-finding methodology applies approximative, and therefore architectonic, approaches to conventional concepts of narration and history. Grass's novel breaks down and reassembles playfully the conventions of narration and history, not to negate or devalue them, but to reappraise them by means of an approximative truth-finding methodology, an approach that corresponds to Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of the architectonic. An architectonic historical narrative is achieved here by re-creating consciously recent German history instead of a conventional historical narration that claims a certain degree of objectivity. Grass shows us that the genre of the novel can indeed convey history in a fictitious format (an otherwise standard recognition in the humanities today), yet be a useful and insightful medium to those who wish to learn about history in the sense of a factual genre. Grass achieves this by educating his readers about the fine line between fact and fiction as he interweaves a most intricate epistemological commentary into the narrative of his narrator. Stephan Schaffrath, Methodology of Architectonic Truth-Finding in Grass's The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel) page 2 of 12 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 9.4 (2007):

“Lebensmärchen”: Goethes Dichtung und Wahrheit als poetischer und poetologischer Text (review)

Reviewed by: “Lebensmärchen”: Goethes Dichtung und Wahrheit als poetischer und poetologischer Text Catriona MacLeod Gabriele Blod, “Lebensmärchen”: Goethes Dichtung und Wahrheit als poetischer und poetologischer Text. Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann, 2003. 335. pp. Borrowing her title from Goethe's 1811 reference to the first books of his autobiography as "Lebensmärchen," a comment that is far from isolated among [End Page 223] Goethe's remarks on Dichtung und Wahrheit, Gabriele Blod argues in her excellent study that it is the product of a sustained literary co-operation between the genres of autobiography and fairy-tale. Both genres, as she points out, emerge as increasingly "literary" over the course of the eighteenth century, and interrogate, though from different standpoints, the following dualisms subtending Goethe's autobiography (as of course its title evinces): orality versus textuality, truth versus fictionality, femininity versus masculinity. Blod's central concern is to reread Dichtung und Wahrheit as a thoroughly poetic text, not as a poeticized rendering of a life. If Dichtung und Wahrheit began to receive sustained critical attention only in the 1970s, this is, as Blod shows, the outcome of a shift in definition of the autobiography itself, as a fictional rather than a factual genre. Blod's investigation opens with a chapter reviewing the history of criticism of autobiography in relation to questions of truth and authenticity, a tradition that has assumed Dichtung und Wahrheit's paradigmatic status. This book situates itself against earlier readings of the work that take referentiality for granted, such as that by Wilhelm Dilthey, and also takes issue with Philippe Lejeune's definition of the "autobiographical pact" made by an author with his or her reader to secure the book's meaning in the world. Lejeune anchors referentiality in the self-naming by the author: but Blod brilliantly shows the fragility of the pact by demonstrating the strategic evasiveness of self-naming (along with other apparently stable references such as dates, places and historical figures) in Dichtung und Wahrheit. As she points out, Goethe only inserts his name once, in the middle of the book, when it appears in a comic verse by Herder that identifies the origins of the name as "von Göttern," "von Goten," or "vom Kote." Another significant name for the work is Goethe's grandfather's name, Textor, with its connotations of weaving and textuality. (Blod herself refrains from referring to the autobiographical persona as Goethe.) Rather, in response to the school of autobiographical criticism inspired by Derrida, Blod argues that across several different levels of this work the notions of truth and authorship are under fictional construction: Goethe's is a poetic challenge to the reader, not a pact. Reviewing the place of the fairy-tale in Germany around 1800, Blod emphasizes the identity of the Kunstmärchen with aesthetic reflexivity. It is the fairy-tale, she concludes, that opens up the possibility of reading the autobiography as a fictional text. A particularly rewarding section of the book, which draws productively on Gérard Genette's narratological concept of the paratext, is devoted to Goethe's open-ended and reversible title; to the preface, in which Goethe stages himself as both sender and recipient of a letter occasioning the autobiography; and to the mottos. Close readings of several fairy-tale incursions into the text follow, with a focus on the role of the body, art, and ideology. The inset fairy-tale "der neue Paris," putatively the creation of a precocious seven year old, receives deserved attention and is positioned as Goethe's response to the contemporary debates on mythology. Far from a straightforward appropriation of the Homeric narrative, Blod suggests, the story of the "new Paris" blends elements of antique myth, biblical narratives, and oriental fairy-tales with references to Werther and the Farbenlehre and to artistic disagreements (with Heinrich von Kleist). Elsewhere, personal and historical events in Goethe's life are also conjoined under the sign of developmental phases termed "Märchen" ("Knabenmärchen," "Jünglingsmärchen," etc.) A second focal episode in the text, the Sesenheim idyll, is described in Dichtung und Wahrheit as a "Märchen" transforming art (The Vicar of Wakefield, [End Page 224] "der...

Restyling Factual TV: Audiences and News, Documentary and Reality Genres

Annette Hill's Restyling Factual TV will be an influential book both in the sphere of television studies and beyond. It engages with the contemporary ‘restyling’ of factual television – a process which has seen hybridity emerge as the ‘distinctive feature of factuality’ (p. 212). As Hill explains: Restyling Factual Television is about understanding genres in relation to each other and in relation to popular audiences. It takes as a starting point the idea that factual television is being restyled, that various kinds of news, current affairs, documentary and popular factual genres are part of a turbulent time in broadcasting. … Popular factual genres are not self-contained, stable and knowable, they migrate, mutate and replicate. Significantly, they cross over into existing factual genres, with the cross-pollination of styles increasing the pace of change in news, current affairs or documentary (p. 2).

Worker Correspondents: Between Journalism and Literature

AAAiile journalism is often seen as the antithesis of literature, the two enjoyed close and productive relationship in the Soviet Union in the decade following the Revolution.1 The influence of the Bolshevik press was key to Red victory in the Civil War, and much of Bolshevik journalism's power stemmed from its application of literary methods to factual genres and harnessing of literary talents such as Vladimir Mayakovsky.2 Early Soviet journalism's innovative emphasis upon the presentation of factual material for political persuasion rather than information was the inspiration for remarkable 1920s cultural forms such as Dziga Vertov's revolutionary newsreel and the ubiquitous newspaper feuilleton.3 Yet this groundbreaking approach to propaganda was not the most unusual feature of 1920s Soviet newspapers. This honor belongs to journalists' active solicitation of readers' letters leading to a volume of mail probably unprecedented in world history.4 By 1922 such letter-writing had been christened the movement of worker correspondents (rabochii korrespondent, or rabkor). For writers Mikhail Bulgakov and Mikhail Zoshchenko the torrent of correspondence furnished source material for stories of disputes in restaurants,

Public and Popular: British and Swedish Audience Trends in Factual and Reality Television

The research in this article examines audience responses to a range of factual and reality genres. It takes as a starting point that television audiences do not experience news or documentary or reality TV in isolation but as part of a range of factual and reality programmes. Factual and reality programming includes a broad understanding of non-fictional programming on broadcast television, satellite, cable and digital television. The breakdown of factual and reality programming into specific genres includes news, current affairs, documentary, and reality programmes, with further sub genres applied within each of these categories. This article critically examines genre evaluation. The quantitative research in this article is based on two national representative surveys conducted in Britain and Sweden. In both Britain and Sweden, programme makers have moved towards a reliance on popular factual genres. In Britain this is across all channels, and in Sweden this is mainly concentrated on commercial channels. Whilst there is still a commitment to news, there is an increasing use of hybrid genres in an attempt to popularise factual output. The impact of this changing generic environment on audiences is that in both countries viewers have reacted by drawing a line between traditional and contemporary factual genres. It is precisely because of the redrawing of the factual map that viewers rely on traditional ways of evaluating genres as public and informative, or popular and entertaining. The data provides evidence that contributes to existing debate on television genre, public service broadcasting, and media literacy skills. The central argument in this article is that genre evaluation is connected with wider socio-cultural discourses on public service broadcasting and popular culture, and that these are common social and cultural values that are shared by national audiences in two Northern European countries.