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Genre Theory and Language Change in a Community of Practice

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Genre Theory and Language Change in a Community of Practice Genre Theory and Language Change in a Community of Practice by Paul R Weldon BA (Hons) Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Deakin University January 2007 DEAKIN UNIVERSITY CANDIDATE DECLARATION I certify that the thesis entitled Genre Theory and Language Change in a Community of Practice submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy is the result of my own work and that where reference is made to the work of others, due acknowledgment is given. I also certify that any material in the thesis which has been accepted for a degree or diploma by any university or institution is identified in the text. Full Name: Paul Richard Weldon Signed ..................................................................................………………. Date......................................................................................………………. Acknowledgments Completing a thesis is a long, involved and often lonely process. It takes a lot of time and effort, and I could not have finished it without support. I would particularly like to express my gratitude here to my supervisor, Dr Ron Goodrich. His enthusiasm for the project, his encouragement and knowledgeable insight were invaluable and greatly appreciated. Thanks also to my associate supervisor, Prof David Birch, for insightful comments and useful references. This project owes its existence to the agreement and support of the loyalty service centre whose work practices I studied while working in the office as an employee in several roles. My confidentiality agreement prevents me from naming the company, its managers and employees, however I would like to express my sincere thanks to the writing teams, their team leaders and the management team for allowing me carry out my research and for participating in it. Their interest, flexibility and attitudes simplified much of what could otherwise have been a complicated and frustrating process. I would also like to thank Dr Ishtla Singh, who acted as a mentor during my undergraduate study at Roehampton Institute London, and whose teaching and enthusiasm fuelled my interest in language and sociolinguistics. I also appreciate the opportunity Dr Singh afforded me to present some early findings at an informal seminar at King’s College London, where she is now based. Finally, I wish to thank my wife, Dr Liz Weldon, my family and friends in Britain and Australia, and my colleagues in China, without whose support and encouragement this project would have remained unfinished. Abstract At the service centre of a large loyalty program in the travel industry, writers in the correspondence department reply to incoming requests and complaints. As a community of practice (Wenger 1998), the writers have formed a practice around their primary focus of identification: the business letter-of-reply genre. The genre is institutionalised and highly stable, yet it also requires constant negotiation and reification. Writing is situated and operationalised, repetitive and dynamic. When the writers first heard of an intentional change to the style in which they wrote their letters, they argued that the genre had changed and was no longer a business letter. This research critically examines textual (e.g. Swales 1990, Lewin et al. 2001) and social aspects (e.g. Miller 1984, Dias et al. 1999, Beaufort 1997) of genre theory to analyse the social context, reactions and learning strategies of the community, and to provide a comparative and contrastive analysis of the textual changes. Findings suggest that the notion of communicative purpose tends to foreground the provision of information over relational purposes, and that the moves and acts of genre analysis appear unable to account for changes in register or style where purpose remains the same. Genre theories that see writing as a situational activity provide no specific methodology for textual analysis. This dissertation argues that, in this instance at least, the learning involved in mastering a genre cannot be separated from the socialisation and learning involved in becoming a full member of a particular community of practice, and the perception of the nature of a genre is also linked to this socialisation. Thus, the meaning of the term ‘business letter’ may need to be negotiated, and depends on issues such as its prestige and the extent to which a given community identify with it. The change in writing register or style was successfully learned primarily due to a replacement intertextual history. Table of contents List of Figures viii List of Tables ix Introduction xi PART 1 ......................................................................................................................... 1 1 LITERATURE REVIEW: GENRE THEORY ................................................. 3 1.1 INTRODUCTION............................................................................. 3 1.2 GENRE OVERVIEW ....................................................................... 3 1.2.1 Textual features versus social action?............................................ 3 1.2.2 The development of genre: Textual conventions.............................. 9 1.3 SOCIAL ACTION AND SHARED GENRE KNOWLEDGE ............. 14 1.3.1 Names, labels and purpose ........................................................... 14 1.3.2 The notion of communicative purpose .......................................... 16 1.3.3 Aspects of role: Social role, writing role................................... 20 1.3.4 Content and intertextuality ........................................................... 22 1.3.5 Contextualising genre theory........................................................ 23 1.4 GENRE AS SOCIAL ACTION: LOCATION AND UNITS OF ANALYSIS..................................................................................... 26 1.4.1 The discourse community............................................................ 27 1.4.2 Communities of practice............................................................... 31 1.4.3 Structuration theory..................................................................... 36 1.5 GENRE, MEDIA, PARATEXT AND BODY TEXT ......................... 38 1.5.1 Genre and media........................................................................... 40 1.5.2 Genre, paratext and body text....................................................... 42 1.6 GENRE, STYLE AND REGISTER ................................................. 42 1.7 CONTEXTUALISING GENRE THEORY........................................ 46 i 2 SOCIAL ACTION IN PRACTICE ...................................................................49 2.1 INTRODUCTION............................................................................49 2.2 METHOD .......................................................................................49 2.2.1 Questionnaire 1 .............................................................................50 2.2.2 Questionnaire 2 .............................................................................52 2.3 THE LOYALTYONE BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT: AN OVERVIEW ... .......................................................................................................53 2.3.1 Floor 9...........................................................................................55 2.3.2 Floor 8...........................................................................................56 2.3.3 Floor 7...........................................................................................56 2.3.4 Floor 6...........................................................................................57 2.3.5 Floor 5...........................................................................................57 2.3.6 Floor 4...........................................................................................57 2.3.7 Floor 2...........................................................................................58 2.3.8 Other floors ...................................................................................58 2.4 WRITING CORRESPONDENCE AT LOYALTYONE .......................59 2.4.1 The Correspondence department environment.............................59 2.4.2 Vignette: An employee’s perspective.............................................61 2.5 THE LOYALTYONE COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE ........................66 2.6 PRACTICE: WRITING ROLES.......................................................71 2.7 THE LOYALTYONE CORRESPONDENCE DEPARTMENT: COMMUNITY OR CONSTELLATION OF PRACTICE? ..................80 2.8 SO, WHAT IS A ‘BUSINESS LETTER’?.........................................83 2.8.1 Correspondence department perspectives....................................83 2.8.2 Reflections on genre labelling in practice.....................................85 2.8.3 The purposes of LoyaltyOne business correspondence.................87 2.9 WRITING AS OPERATION: REPETITION, REGULARITY AND CONTEXT-SPECIFIC KNOWLEDGE .............................................89 2.10 SITUATED RHETORICAL ACTION AND THE LETTER AS A REIFIED BOUNDARY OBJECT......................................................94 2.10.1 Negotiation of meaning and reified boundary objects ..................94 2.10.2 Text hierarchies and situated rhetorical action ............................96 ii 2.11 FIXED AND UNCHANGING, FLUID AND DYNAMIC: A DUALITY?..................................................................................... 99 2.12 MEDIA: SOCIAL CONSTRAINTS, FORMALITIES AND CHOICE .... ...................................................................................................
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