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Genre, Register, Modality, and Participation Framework
Genre, Register, Modality, and Participation Framework
Participation Framework
Genre
• Metaphorical frame that refers to the
culturally shaped (and ever
transforming) sets of conventions that
establish broad boundaries for the
constitution of various discourse
types.
Genre
• Enables us to classify discourse, to
identify its general purpose, to
understand discursive messages and
hoe they work, and reciprocally, to
create meaning both within the
familiar, conventional generic
boundaries and beyond.
Genre
• Genre essentially is a metaphorical
frame that provides structure for
discourse.
• With structure comes consistency and
recognizability
• Provide us with ways of naming how
we use and understand discourse –
prose, conversation, narrative,
oratory, poetry, novel, novella.
Genre
• It associates discourse with function
and purpose and practice.
• It establishes limits and recognizable
boundaries, allowing us to identify a
particular instance of discourse as
belonging to the instruction or
advertisement, stand-up comedy, or
magic show.
Cookbook genre
• The genre of the recipe exists for the
triple purpose of sharing cooking
methods with others, verbally and
pictorially illustrating those cooking
methods as a means of verbatim
instruction or suggestion for
approximate replications, and
applying those cooking methods in
an attempt to replicate the dish.
Cookbook genre
• Cooking directions typically reflect a
basic chronological order –designating
steps that need to be taken first,
second, next, and to forth, sometimes
numbered and sometimes not.
• They provide guidelines for cooking
and desired outcomes.
Cookbook genre
• These stances, and more, become visible
as we examine discourse from the points
of view of language as conceptually and
interactionally meaningful and genre as
frame for social action.
• That is, the way each recipe is organized
and presented –through words and
graphics –reveals much about the
presenter’s stance
Genre: Content and Purpose of
Discourse
• What shapes the discourse into genres,
then, are essential and purpose
• Content or informational substance is at
the core of any genre. At the level of
informational substance or
“propositional content” genres serves as
rhetorical vehicles to communicate facts,
to present ideas, to question reality, all
within culturally influenced sets of
conventions.
Genre: Content and Purpose of
Discourse
• As frames of discourse, genres
instruct, entertain, inform, invite,
move, impel, or impassion.
• Genres succeed in doing all of this
and more, because they reflect our
individual experiences within our
social and cultural situation through
recurring conventionalized forms and
structures.
Genre of the Narrative
• Narrative is a common discursive genre
that crosscuts other genre.
• Narrative commonly occurs in ordinary
conversation and throughout
institutional discourse.
• Narrative are stories in purpose, stories
built in discourse to elicit emotion, to
portray a viewpoint, to convey moral
lesson, to judge and seek like-
mindedness, to persuade, to construct
one’s or others’ identities.
Guiding Questions
• What elements of the speakers identity are
revealed in the narrative? (gender, age,
education, profession)
• What sorts of feelings is the speaker
expressing? How? Does he/she actually
name the feelings?
• How are the details of the place represented?
• How are the details of time represented?
• How do the details of place and time work
together to depict this speakers feelings
during the event?
• By far the most emotional day of
school I've ever experienced was the
last day of year 6. I came to school
thinking it would just be another
normal last day of school. it turned
out to be the complete opposite.
• The thought of not seeing friends and
teachers again was very saddening.
This caused an endless amount of
tears to come out of everybody's eyes,
including the year six teachers! We
were all an emotional wreck. This
went on from about an hour after
recess til the start of lunch and even
during lunch there were still
innumerable people crying.
• After lunch was assembly. All the year 6's
were meant to do a flash mob for the last
part of the assembly, but I didn't know how
we were possibly going to do it in the state
we were all in. All of a sudden the music
started and everybody's face just lit up and
we sprung into action. It was perfect. The
entire assembly loved it.
• The bell rang and that's when all the
crying started again except this time it
was twice as bad. There were probably
only a handful of kids, including myself,
whose faces didn't look like a river was
flowing through it. Even though I wasn't
crying I still felt very sad because two of
my best friends were moving out of
Darwin and my other three best friends
weren't even going to the same middle
school as me.
• All the crying had eventually stopped
at around 3 'o' clock and everybody
went home.
• I always hated primary school,
but now I wish I was back there with
all my friends playing rugby with not a
worry in the world.
Basic patterns of language used that combine
to shape the structure of narrative