Emphasis On Formal Features in Speech Genres
The first group of rhetorical critics, following the example of theorists like M. M. Bakhtin, used formal features to analyze texts. For these critics, language is formed through a series of utterances that reflect specific conditions and goals of certain linguistic aspects. These aspects include thematic content, style, and compositional structure which form speech genres. Speech genres are diverse because of the various possibilities of human activity. In "The Problem of Speech Genres" (1986), Mikhail Bakhtin draws attention to the very significant difference between primary (simple) and secondary (complex) speech genres. According to Bahktin, primary speech genres form secondary speech genres and examples of secondary speech genres include novels, dramas, all kinds of scientific research, and major genres of commentary. Since these secondary genres involve complex and comparatively highly developed and organized cultural communication that is artistic and scientific, they absorb and digest various primary genres that have taken form in mediated speech communion. Bakhtin continues to explain that there are three factors of the whole utterance which include semantic exhaustiveness of the theme, the speaker’s plan or speech will, and the typical compositional and generic forms of finalization. The first factor refers to the way utterances are used within speech which is linked to the second factor of how the speaker determines to use the utterance.The third factor explains that all our utterances have definite and stable typical forms of construction, but that these forms can change when needed. As Bahktin writes, "These genres are so diverse because they differ depending on the situation, social position, and personal interrelations of the participants in the communication".
Read more about this topic: Genre Criticism
Famous quotes containing the words emphasis on, emphasis, formal, features and/or speech:
“Coming to terms with the rhythms of women’s lives means coming to terms with life itself, accepting the imperatives of the body rather than the imperatives of an artificial, man-made, perhaps transcendentally beautiful civilization. Emphasis on the male work-rhythm is an emphasis on infinite possibilities; emphasis on the female rhythms is an emphasis on a defined pattern, on limitation.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)
“Conversation ... is like the table of contents of a dull book.... All the greatest subjects of human thought are proudly displayed in it. Listen to it for three minutes, and you ask yourself which is more striking, the emphasis of the speaker or his shocking ignorance.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)
“There must be a profound recognition that parents are the first teachers and that education begins before formal schooling and is deeply rooted in the values, traditions, and norms of family and culture.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)
“Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy his similes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“And hereby hangs a moral highly applicable to our own trustee-ridden universities, if to nothing else. If we really wanted liberty of speech and thought, we could probably get it—Spain fifty years ago certainly had a longer tradition of despotism than has the United States—but do we want it? In these years we will see.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)