University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Theses and Dissertations 12-2016 The oP wer Fantastic: How Genre Expectations Mediate Authority Angela Rose Cox University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd Part of the Communication Technology and New Media Commons, and the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Cox, Angela Rose, "The oP wer Fantastic: How Genre Expectations Mediate Authority" (2016). Theses and Dissertations. 1822. http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/1822 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. The Power Fantastic: How Genre Expectations Mediate Authority A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Angela R. Cox Ohio State University Bachelor of Arts in English, 2009 University of Arkansas Master of Arts in English, 2011 December 2016 University of Arkansas This dissertation is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Council. ______________________________________ Dr. David A. Jolliffe Dissertation Director _____________________________________ ____________________________________ Dr. Joshua Byron Smith Dr. Sean Connors Committee Member Committee Member Abstract This dissertation reconciles academic and popular uses of the term genre, concluding that genre is a transmedial, mutable, associative, recognized system regulated through tacit understandings of prestige and power in a given social space. The study employs a digital humanities method (dependent on digitally facilitated data analysis), conducting descriptive discourse analysis on collected online discussions from fan spaces concerning the fantasy genre and matters related to fantasy. In this way, I construct an image of the fantasy genre, and genre in general, as a multimodal space in which material freely passes between traditional and new media and participants actively negotiate their own authorities. Acknowledgments Special thanks to my committee, Drs. David Jolliffe, Joshua Byron Smith, and Sean Connors, who have been supportive, challenging, and patient throughout this dissertation process. I would also like to thank my colleagues Ashley Robinson and Eddie Ardeneaux, whose timely support and assistance has made this dissertation complete along with their own doctoral dissertations. Table of Contents 1.0 Why Genre: An Introduction .................................................................................................... 1 2.0 A Revised Definition of Genre ............................................................................................... 17 3.0 The Study ................................................................................................................................ 39 4.0 Theoretical Implications and Extensions ................................................................................ 61 4.1 Prestige Is Not Always Power ............................................................................................ 62 4.2 New Media Enters Old........................................................................................................ 84 4.3 Rules and Ludic Play in the Genre Space ........................................................................... 96 4.4 Genre and the Soundscape: Music in Fantasy Genre Spaces ........................................... 113 4.5 Fantasy and Historicity ..................................................................................................... 124 5.0 Practical Applications and Discussions ................................................................................ 143 5.1: Where Races Are Species, Where Is Race? ..................................................................... 144 5.2 Teaching the Genre Space ................................................................................................ 153 6.0 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................... 166 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................ 169 Appendix A: Sample Lesson Plan .............................................................................................. 172 Reflection Activity Worksheet ............................................................................................... 174 Genre and Rhetorical Situations Worksheet ........................................................................... 175 Appendix B: Research Approval Letter ...................................................................................... 176 Table of Figures Figure 1 - A Revised Definition of Genre ................................................................................... 18 Figure 2 - 30 Most Common Codes .............................................................................................. 43 Figure 3 - Distribution of Codes as Occurrences and Discrete Codes .......................................... 48 Figure 4 - 20 Most Common Attributions in the Corpus. Note that references to adaptations of significant texts have been listed separately, as attributions are often to the adaptations rather than the originating texts. .............................................................................................................. 50 Figure 5 - Distribution of fantasy convention codes. Numbers represent number of instances of each code. ...................................................................................................................................... 53 Figure 6 - Codes Cooccurring with Definitions of Fantasy, High Fantasy, and Epic Fantasy ..... 57 Figure 7 - The 20 Most Common Values in Order of Frequency in the Corpus .......................... 58 Figure 8 - Most common attributions with number of instances and frequency in corpus (1655 documents). ................................................................................................................................... 68 Figure 9 - Attributions of Authority classified by media and presented as rate of instances per 100 documents or instances of Authorial Query/Advice .............................................................. 72 Figure 10 - Comparison of a Movie Poster and an Album Cover .............................................. 121 Figure 11- Table of longest threads in the research board of Community A ............................. 131 Figure 12 - The Expanded Rhetorical Triangle .......................................................................... 157 1.0 Why Genre: An Introduction The word genre is problematic; it’s a word that most people understand intuitively, but it doesn’t seem to measure consistent variables as it is generally used. Many scholars in varying disciplines have attempted to define genre in ways that would resolve the contradictions inherent academic uses of genre. However, scholarly definitions of genre seldom have much basis in popular usages (and vice versa) and tend toward prescriptive rather than descriptive categories. There is, therefore, a need to reconcile the technical and popular uses of genre, ideally in a way that derives from analysis of how genre functions in popular discourse as well as from prevailing theories about genre in academic disciplines. This study fills that gap, combining an ethnographically-informed study of discourse concerning one popular genre with a synthesis of available academic definitions of genre to arrive at a descriptivist, utilitarian model of genre. The goal of this study is in essence what Lilie Chouliarki and Norman Fairclough argue is the motivation for critical discourse analysis, “to contribute to an awareness of what is, how it has come to be, and what it might become,” focused on the people involved, and ultimately interested in “questions of power” (4-5). Much recent research in rhetoric and composition has closely examined the relationship between discourse and power; genre, as a key feature of discourse, is no exception to this concern about power distribution. Indeed, the key to understanding genre's function in discourse and society seems to lie in understanding how genre and authority are intrinsically related, and how genre is a generative concept rather than a constricting category. However, although late 20th century definitions of genre such as Carolyn Miller’s “social action,” Thomas Beebee’s “use-value,” or Thomas Schatz’s “contract” (borrowing from Will Wright) rightly locate genre as an interactive system that governs rhetorical situation, there remains little in the way of clarity regarding how authority 1 relationships and genre limitations function, nor is there a sufficient definition that fully accounts for the use of genre in disparate fields. This study, through a careful examination of how participants in popular spaces where genre is relevant and synthesis of academic definitions of genre, arrives at a multifaceted definition of genre that comes with a model describing mechanisms for genre change, rhetorical choices concerning genre, and the role of authority in mediating genre’s boundaries and the roles and actions of participants in a given genre. In some ways, however, the necessity