Genre Criticism - Rhetorical Approaches To Genre

Rhetorical Approaches To Genre

The word “genre” is derived from the Latin term genus, to mean “kind”, “class” or "sort".

Aristotle was one of the first scholars to develop a rhetorical approach to genre. He divided the art of rhetoric into three genres: deliberative, forensic, and epideictic. The deliberative genre of rhetoric involves speeches or writing meant to persuade an audience to take action. Deliberative rhetoric thus includes rhetoric that is used for political persuasion, discusses matters of public policy in order to determine what is advantageous or disadvantageous, and is usually concerned with the future. Rhetoric of the forensic genre questions guilt or innocence, is concerned with legalities, and concentrates on events that occurred in the past. The epideictic genre of rhetoric encompasses all rhetoric used for ceremonial and commemorative purposes. Epideictic rhetoric praises and blames, acknowledging that which is noble or shameful, honorable or dishonorable.

The rhetorical situation is a concept important for understanding rhetorical approaches to genre and the creation of new genres. Campaign speeches are an example of how rhetorical situations recur, producing sedimented genres. As a result of the institutions that execute the U.S. Constitution, every four years at the time of presidential elections, candidates deliver campaign speeches. Campaign speeches have become a distinct genre because they respond to highly similar situations that recur because of a structural or institutional basis.

U.S. rhetorician Karlyn Kohrs Campbell refers to genre as a “constellation of elements." She says, “A genre is a group of acts unified by a constellation of forms that recurs in each of its members.” Genres are formed when examined constituents are similar. The metaphors of genres as “constellations” serves to explain how genres, like constellations of stars, are constructed of individual members, but are under the influence of each other and outside elements. As a result they move together and remain in a similar relation to each other despite their ever-changing positions. According to Campbell and colleague Kathleen Hall Jamieson, “when a generic claim is made, the critical situation alters significantly because the critic is now arguing that a group of discourses has a synthetic core in which certain significant rhetorical elements, e.g., a system of belief, lines of argument, stylistic choices, and the perception of the situation, are fused into an indivisible whole".

Many contemporary scholars refer to the fusion of traits from different genres in speeches and texts as a "generic hybrid". These generic hybrids can be formed from a blend of the three rhetorical genres. This concept can be explained through an example of a generic hybrid of deliberative and epideictic elements, in which a newly-elected President delivers an inaugural address. The President is speaking at a formal ceremony recognizing the current state of the nation (characteristic of the epideictic genre), while simultaneously announcing his policy plans for the upcoming four years.

U.S. rhetorician Carolyn R. Miller is the author of the article "Genre as Social Action" (1984). She argues, “Rhetorical criticism has not provided firm guidance on what constitutes a genre” and a “rhetorically sound definition of genre must be centered not on the substance or the form of discourse but on the action it is used to accomplish.” Miller also argues that new media genres may develop and formalize more quickly than traditional, written genres. She is among other rhetoricians who have expressed concerns about the appropriateness of traditional genre theory for new media communication. They argue that because genre theory originally was developed for describing written texts, the theory should be modified to account for nonlinguistic communication. Miller and colleague Dawn Shepherd illustrate an example of applying socio-cultural theories to genre studies in "Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog". They explain how the weblog may be establishing a new genre because of its integration of current social and cultural trends.