Genre Analysis Research Articles

A hidden population: A rhetorical genre analysis of the posts in the Baidu depression community

Since its beginning in the 1980s, the mental health rhetoric research (MHRR) has explored the rhetorical construction of mental illness from a genre perspective. Despite a growing body of research on the rhetorical study of mental health in the West, the discourse of depression has been rarely explored in the Chinese context. This study investigates a corpus of 3217 posts in the Baidu depression community in China with an attempt to identify typical rhetorical features of the posts in the depression community as a genre. We intend, through an exploration of the exigences, social actions, and consequences of the posts, to facilitate a better understanding of the depressed population in China. We argue that the social exigences for the posts in online depression communities can be regarded as a failure of the rhetorical environment in real life and that expressing emotions, exchanging information, establishing interpersonal relationships, and communicating across spatiotemporal boundaries are the typified social actions performed by the posts in the Baidu depression community. Moreover, as a genre, the posts have successfully created an ambience of collective intimacy. Taken together, the findings shed light on the rhetorical study of depression in China.

Character Convention of The Heist Film Subgenre in “Stealing Raden Saleh” (2022)

<p class="8Abstractcontent">In terms of genre study, film critics have engaged in lengthy discourses to figure out a consistent determining variable. Heist film is one of the genres that has also gone into overdrive due to the many variations that arise from the flexibility of its genre conventions. “Stealing Raden Saleh” (2022) is therefore chosen as the object of this research because it reflects the similarity of patterns with many films in the heist film subgenre. Furthermore, the film also markets itself as an action-heist film. This prompted the author to investigate how the characters in “Stealing Raden Saleh” (2022) are related to the heist film subgenre conventions. This study uses a qualitative method, particularly observation and literature studies, in which several sources discussing the conventions of the heist film are used as supporting theories. Through thorough comparison and analysis, it can be concluded that the characters in “Stealing Raden Saleh” (2022) are related to the conventions of the heist film subgenre, especially in terms of character roles and motivations. These aspects are instruments of social criticism that are generally contained in heist films, including class resistance and power relations.</p>

Tyrannical Characters by A. N. Ostrovsky in View of the Primary Speech Genres

The author of this article applies the theory of speech genres of M. M. Bakhtin, developed by A. D. Stepanov, to analyze the plays of A. N. Ostrovsky. In particular, she considers the tyrannical characters through the prism of primary speech genres. According to the author’s point of view, a completely definite and stable set of primary speech genres defines such characters. There prevail imperative speech genres, which are associated with influencing the will of another person, namely, an order, a demand or a threat. The article briefly describes each of these genres showing that they are used by the tyrannical characters to impose their own whims on the interlocutors. The author confirms this conclusion by the examples (the behavior of Bruskov, Akhov, Karkunov). What is more, the tyrannical characters resort to didactic speech genres, which mainly demonstrates their opinion of themselves as “knowledgeable” (this distinguishes, for example, Kabanikha). At the same time, the tyrannical characters often use the speech genre of complain, which shows the weakness of their nature and lack of strength when facing resistance (for example, Bolshov, Akhov). The author makes a conclusion that there are wide possibilities of applying the theory of speech genres in the study of Ostrovsky’s plays.

PERIPHERAL WRITING AND WRITING ON THE PERIPHERY IN TRAVELOGUES BY JAY NORWOOD DARLING

The article is devoted to the little-known literary work of the American cartoonist Jay Norwood Darling. The current study was conducted on the travelogues “Ding Goes to Russia” (1932) and “The Cruise of the Bouncing Betsy. A Trailer Travelogue” (1937). This article aims to reveal and contextualize the features of J.N. Darling’s travel texts as peripheral genres. The main objective of this work is to analyze the deep structures of the travelogues chronotope, based on which the hypothesis will be put forward. Its essence is that the intensity of the crisis time experience in different spaces and through these spaces modifies the involved genre clichés, giving rise to a tragic (for Soviet space) and optimistic (for American space) premonition. The research methodology is based on the study of the interaction between the centre and periphery of the literary system, in particular, the concept of “semiosphere” formulated by Yu. Lotman. Genre analysis includes comparative and contextual methods of studying texts. The cultural-historical method deepens the understanding of the context of Darling’s literary work. Particularly, it is used to discover the historical and social factors that impact the peculiarities of others and one’s own world perception and image reconstruction. Genre analysis of travelogues with various graphic components, including caricatures, involves an intermedia method of studying the semantic connections between visual and verbal in travelogues. The examination of Darling’s travelogues “Ding Goes to Russia” and “The Cruise of the Bouncing Betsy. A Trailer Travelogue”, which inherited different genre traditions, revealed their conceptual and poetic affinities. In both texts, the author investigates the common issues of civilization and its advancement, as well as the significance of technological progress for a human being. The features of the unmanifested future or hidden phenomena of the present are felt more strongly at a distance from the centre, at the intersection of transit paths. Geography in these travels is perceived through anthropological optics, implemented, among other things, through the concepts of the mutual influence of society and space in an unstable world. The experience of alienation is constructed through images of places displayed identically in both travelogues. In Darling’s travelogues, places outside of symbolic meaning come to the fore of the spatio-temporal structure. According to the concept of M. Auger, their features can be attributed to non-places. The key features of the chronotope of both travelogues are the peripheralization of space, the transformation of places into space, and the related process, the representation of non-places. The caricaturists’ texts exhibit genre peripherality through the dual nature of their poetic codes. Behind the secondary nature of the genre constructions of both texts, one cannot help but see individual searches reflected in the unique role and methods of spatial metaphors and imaginary topoi explication. Their semantic and visual density force us to recall and re-estimate the factual writing of the cartoonist in the context of future genre development.

Cyborg Skin

We are pleased to present an excellent collection of articles that represent the newest directions in what Barbara Stafford called “body criticism.” The authors in this issue of Screen Bodies work in diverse fields and employ a wide range of methods, but all share a concern with spectatorship and the ways that the effects of screen-based technology are mediated by the body. This research centers women and offers advancements in feminist film theory, posthumanism, and studies of the horror genre.

Values in the protocol genre in the official business substyle of the religious functional style

The subject of the study is the specificity of values in the official business protocols used in the religious documents. The object of the study is the protocols of the religious style. The author examines in detail such aspects of the topic as the category and compositions that form the valuable potential of the protocol genre in the religious sphere, focuses on key axiologems reflecting traditional religious attitudes. Special attention is paid to the category of composition of the protocol genre, which reflects the development of the topic and, accordingly, assessments in a religious functional style. The composition of the protocol in the religious style almost completely coincides with the explication of the composition in the secular version of the official business style and includes the following parts: a statement, or substantive (listened to), in which the topic is stated, and a final, or certifying (decided). The difference between the compositional structure of the protocol genre in the official business substyle of the religious functional style consists in the presence of a variable stating part of the judgment. The research is carried out using the categorical-textual method developed at the Ural Scientific School of Linguoculturology and Stylistics. The textual categories of composition and evaluation are explicated in the studied texts in a certain specific way, which makes it possible to attribute these texts to the genre of protocol. The main conclusions of the study are that the protocol genre reflects axiological religious attitudes in a religious style, including gratitude, respect for life, care for vulnerable groups of the population, the spirit of self-sacrifice, anti-discrimination ideas, mercy, forgiveness, etc., which are concentrated in the compositional stating and final parts of the text. The novelty of this study largely lies in the lack of knowledge of the genre of protocol in the religious functional style. The Church, as a public organization, needs to record information about key events and decisions taken. To this end, the church uses the protocol genre as a tool to ensure the completeness of the stored information. However, there are practically no studies devoted to the genre of protocol, which to a certain extent limits our knowledge of the religious functional style. The present study aims to eliminate this shortcoming and fill the existing gap in the description of the protocol genre in the religious sphere. The study of the protocol genre in the religious sphere on a categorical-textual basis is being carried out for the first time.

The speech genre specifics of educational audio podcasts

In the modern media field, new formats implemented in the Internet space are gaining more and more popularity. Convergent processes generate new forms of media content. One of these phenomena is the audio podcast, which is currently not sufficiently studied, many aspects need scientific reflection. In particular, the speech-genre specificity of audio podcasts is of research interest. The object of the undertaken research is educational audio podcasts presented on the platform Smotrim.ru ("100 Minutes" – 26 issues, "Literary squabbles" – 11 issues, "Conversations about literature" – 14 issues, "Diary of his Wife" – 11 issues) and Polka.academy ("Between the lines" – 17 issues), published from 2021 to 2024. The purpose of the article is to identify and describe the basic secondary speech genre, representing its primary speech genres objectified in the media texts under study. To achieve the stated goal, both general scientific research methods and private techniques used in media linguistics and media stylistics are used – comparison and interpretation of linguistic facts, speech-genre analysis of media texts. The study of media texts in the context of speech genre studies is relevant and promising, since this research paradigm allows us to identify and describe the basic structural elements of the genre, communicative specifics, intentions and roles of the addressee, to determine the linguistic and stylistic originality of the represented texts. The article presents various points of view on the phenomenon of audio podcasting, formulates its definition, which takes into account not only the technical properties of audio podcasts, but also their content specifics, provides classifications of audio podcasts, systematizes approaches to understanding and researching speech genres, identifies and characterizes the basic secondary speech genre of informative conversation, as well as dominant primary speech included in its structure genres.

Digital Frontiers and Traditional Boundaries: The Transformation of Genre Studies from 1995 to 2023

Digital Frontiers and Traditional Boundaries: The Transformation of Genre Studies from 1995 to 2023

Is Genre Enough? A Theory of Genre Signaling as Generative AI Rhetoric

ABSTRACT OpenAI’s ChatGPT is a large language model (LLM) that excels at generating text and public controversy. Upon its release, many marveled at its ability to author intelligible and generically responsible texts (Herman). Writing about his students’ experiences using artificial intelligence (AI) writing assistants, S. Scott Graham remarks that the results were “consistently mediocre—and usually quite obvious in their fabrication.” Why might this be true? How can an LLM succeed in some respects and fail in others? We argue that the discrepant reactions to human and AI rhetoric are a question of genre, specifically that AI rhetoric is only generic; AI rhetoric represents a new enactment of “writing degree zero” (Barthes) that is disengaged from immediate rhetorical situations and knowledge bases. AI text generators (currently) have a more difficult time simulating the positioned perspectives that human writers bring to situations and communicate to audiences through their genre usage. Drawing on the work of Bakhtin, we treat this problem as a question of generic form and audience addressivity. We describe the interplay of form and addressivity as genre signaling and offer it as a construct for the analysis of AI rhetoric and genre as a cultural form (Miller). Genre signaling (Hart-Davidson and Omizo) describes a feature of communicative behavior as it occurs over time that can help both humans and machines evaluate written discourse as it exhibits certain stabilized formal features. When texts contain specific genre signals at expected frequencies and intensities, it may be recognized as being generally accurate, reliable, trustworthy. Without these signals, a text with a similar topical focus might fail to be taken as credible or useful. In this essay we propose to quantify genre signaling based on three measures: (1) stability, (2) frequency, and (3) periodicity.

Genre of “Promise” as a Reflection of Intentional and Linguistic Organization in Virtual Pedagogical Discourse

This research is situated within the context of contemporary discourse studies. It examines the genre of “promise” functioning within virtual pedagogical discourse. The study explores the genre features of a speech act, considering their potential determination by the pragmatic properties of discourse. Drawing on existing models of speech genres in contemporary genre theory (models by Т. V. Shmeleva, N. B. Lebedeva), two types of genre features of promises are identified. The first type includes invariant characteristics of the genre “promise”: a) the communicative goal of the utterance, linked to a voluntary commitment by the subject to fulfill something; b) linguistic markers of the genre — syntactic constructions containing performative “I promise,” predicates “I swear” / “commit” / “give (<my word>)” with direct objects or explanatory clauses indicating the object of the promise. The second group of features comprises genre characteristics of the text, determined by its discursive nature: a) the dictum content of the genre (theme of “Education”), b) the status roles of participants in institutional-pedagogical discourse; c) properties of the speech act determined by the structural-functional features of the messenger (interactivity, media files). Ultimately, a promise emerges as a genre realization of shared and simultaneously adapted speechthinking intention and discursive means.

Генрогенные ситуации (на примере болтовни)

The article deals with genrogenic situations (GgS), i.e. situations marked by speech genres, indicative of the representation of a particular speech genre in a given national culture. The G gS as a cognitive image corresponding to a speech genre in the human mind includes, on the one hand, a set of components of a communication situation, necessary and sufficient for the generation of this genre, and, on the other hand, the memory of the GgS, real or reconstructed (by writers, psychologists), in which this genre was generated and developed. These factors determine the theory and practice of speech genres methodology based on GgS: it, unlike the theory of speech genres in general, has a more distinct applied focus: namely, it is focused on GgS and the compilation of an anthology/encyclopedia of GgS. This technique includes two aspects: firstly, a model according to which GgS are isolated from the speech continuum and systematized (GgS as a model of article structure); secondly, a model according to which speech genres are studied using the material of the GgS and taking into account their characteristics (model of filling the «body» of articles with the material). Much attention is paid to reflection (by communication specialists, word artists, journalists, bloggers) on G gS and genres themselves. The article also considers more general aspects of the GgS, their place in speech genres theory and linguistic pragmatics in general: GgS and the integral description of speech genres, GgS and genre role scenes, G gS and speech genre primary-secondary nature, GgS and the relationship between invariant and prototype approaches to the study of text and genre, GgS and speech genre variantology. As an illustration of the discussed approach the author offers GgS for speech genre boltovnya ‘≈chatter’.

Интернет-комментарий как сетевой жанр: общая характеристика, диалогический потенциал, проблемы классификации

The article deals with current problems of modern communicative linguistics and network genre studies. The author presents general characteristics of such a relatively new network genre as Internet commentary. The research emphasizes dialogical orientation of this genre, which meets the urgent need of Internet users for feedback and represents a media embodiment of the addressee factor that is in demand and meets the spirit of the times. Internet commentary is characterized as a reactive (responsive) Internet genre, the texts of which are thematically, structurally, semantically and pragmatically closely related to the original (root) message (post) and form a kind of dialogic unity with it. The author offers a multi-level classification of Internet comments, taking into account the following characteristics: 1) attribution to the Internet resource; 2) discursive affiliation; 3) the nature of the stimulus that caused the reaction (text or polycode stimulus, video content with verbal accompaniment, video content without verbal accompaniment, etc.); 4) place in the information and commentary block; 5) structural characteristics (linear length; mono-code / poly-code); 6) content and thematic features; 7) the degree of dependence on the original (root) message.

К вопросу о жанре эпистолярного произведения

The purpose of the article is to characterize a letter to the editor as a separate genre in terms of its structure, function, relationship between the author and the addressee, specific content and linguistic means that make up the scope of this form of communication. The Introduction draws attention to the anthropological dominance of modern philological research. References to the writer’s archive, the rendition of the epistolary heritage both as a fact of their creative biography and as a historical and literary phenomenon is proposed. The theoretical part is devoted to the understanding of the most important approaches to the theory of genre, including writing as a special genre of documentary prose. The problem of research analysis and perception of letters is updated. The content and formal indicators of the genre are characterized. The analytical part is presented by a model of historical-functional analysis and interpretation of a letter to the editor. The attention is focused on its functional specificity. It is proved that the genre of a letter to the editor can be removed from the sphere of journalistic genres to a literary genre with its historical and literary significance. In the Conclusion a letter is presented as a separate genre in terms of its form and function; the main genre characteristics are given. It is emphasized that motivation, purposefulness, dialogism as genre signals allow a letter to the editor to be classified as a work of literature.

Granice historii języka

Granice historii języka

Toward the transnational memory of Holodomor: The famine commemorative genre and the Ukrainian diaspora

This article traces the emergence of the public memory of Holodomor by focusing on the history of Famine commemorations outside of the Soviet Union from 1933 till 1983. By following Jeffrey K. Olick’s call for a dialogical analysis of memory genres, it attempts to unravel the complex cultural mechanism through which commemorations of the Famine evolved not only through their interactions with immediate political context but also in response to earlier commemorations. Two Famine commemorative genres informed this process: that of national mourning and that of anti-Soviet protest. Drawing on my multi-sited and multilingual research, this article argues that the process of creating the public memory of the Holodomor has been transnational, multidirectional, and path-dependent. The framing of the Famine as the Holodomor, a genocide against Ukrainians, was an outcome of negotiations that occurred across time and space. Ukrainian diaspora members, it is further argued, played a prominent role in this process.

Reading between the lines: exploring the unwritten rules of letters of recommendation in the Canadian resident selection process.

Efforts to better understand and improve letters of recommendation (LORs) in the resident selection process have identified unwritten rules and hidden practices that may limit their effectiveness. The objective of our study is to explore these unwritten rules and hidden practices more fully in one Canadian academic medical community. We conducted semi-structured, discourse-based interviews with 18 faculty members from the departments of Internal Medicine and Psychiatry at the University of Manitoba, Canada. Interviews were guided by sample LORs and were focused on experiences with either writing or reading LORs. We analyzed interviews using key concepts from genre theory and Aristotle's appeals to ethos, logos, and pathos. Participants described how the practices surrounding LORs are guided by unwritten rules. These practices contributed to writers' use of visible strategies and textual silence to establish credibility, build a strong case, and appeal to readers. Readers rely on similar strategies, but not always as intended by the writers. The unwritten rules of one academic community can impede a nationally-facilitated resident selection process. Our findings highlight how critiques and potential improvements to LORs could benefit from considering the use of visible and invisible rhetorical strategies in specific contexts.

A Genre Theory Contextualization for Academic Writing in Chinese Higher Education

This paper explores new possibilities for teaching English for Academic Purposes (EAP) writing in the context of higher education in China. Using John Swales’ Create A Research Space (CARS) model, the paper demonstrates how genre theory can be integrated into undergraduate writing courses in China’s EFL settings. This method emphasizes teaching students to structure academic papers effectively, thereby improving their understanding and application of the genre-specific conventions of academic English. The paper illustrates how the CARS model aids students by delineating their research territory, identifying gaps, and positioning their studies within ongoing academic dialogues. Additionally, the teaching cycle guides students from modeling the text, to joint construction, and finally to independent writing. Furthermore, the paper highlights the comprehensive implications of this model, including enhancing intercultural communication skills and developing critical genre awareness among students. It addresses the challenges of adapting this model to the Chinese EFL context, such as linguistic and cultural barriers, and underscores the need for contextualized teaching strategies that meet Chinese learners’ needs. To conclude, it is recommended for further research to validate the practical usage of this genre-based EAP instruction in higher education and facilitate future curriculum development.

Negation in Research Articles Conclusions: Rhetorical Functions and Move Analysis

Extensive studies have been conducted in various sections of research articles, including the abstract, introduction, discussion, and other segments. Remarkably, the conclusion, a component of this academic genre, has received relatively scant attention in genre analysis. Conclusions, serving as the concluding segment, play a crucial role in recalling the previously addressed issues, highlighting key research findings, acknowledging limitations, and suggesting implications for further research. In light of this, authors employ an array of interactive resources to engage with their readership effectively. As an essential part of interactive resources, negation is used to be neglected in discourse analysis. Hence, this study aims to explore the relation between negation and moves in research conclusions. Furthermore, this study seeks to examine how negation contributes to rhetorical persuasion with a focus on its functions and distribution across disciplines. This study shows the rhetorical functions of negation and describes the distribution of negation across disciplines and moves. The findings not only indicate that authors from distinct disciplines exhibit varying preferences in the utilization of negation in their research article conclusions, but also provide some pedagogical implications.

Dynamicity of interaction in academic discourse: Evidence from a corpus-based study

Metadiscourse features are the rhetorical devices that serve to maintain the writer-reader and speaker-audience interaction. The way metadiscourse features are utilized in spoken and written modes may differ given the nature of these two modes of communication. For this reason, the present study set to unpack the distributional pattern of metadiscourse features as well as investigate the construction and maintenance of writer-reader and speaker-audience interaction in academic written and spoken English. To achieve this goal, two corpora of The British Academic Written English Corpus and British Academic Spoken English Corpus were utilized as the data gathering resources. To categorize the metadiscourse features, Hyland's taxonomy was selected. The quantitative analysis of the data showcased that the written corpus was more interactive oriented despite the fact that the spoken corpus showed a propensity towards the interactional category of metadiscourse features. On the other hand, the analysis of the concordance lines illustrated that academic conventions differed significantly in spoken and written academic English which resulted in a dynamic interaction between writer-reader as well as speaker-audience. The results of the study at hand may have implications in such lines of research as corpus linguistics, contrastive analysis and genre studies.

Editorial

The editorial introduces the second issue of the comparative yearbook POEMA. It deals with praxeological approaches within literary studies and their potential for genre theory. The aim of this issue is to encourage the use of such approaches, to give them a broader praxeological perspective and to explore their potential for poetry theory. In this sense, the majority of the collected contributions can be read as model studies, each of which explores and sheds light on different practices typical of poetry and works towards the project of a praxeography of poetry.