Genres Across the Curriculum

Chapter 11, “Writing in Emerging Genres”

A brief look at the chapter by Cindy Nichols

Palmquist’s initial thoughts

The beginning of this chapter (by WAC Clearing House editor Mike Palmquist) reaffirms the now familiar realization that…

we are living in a language revolution not unlike…

the one heralded by the invention of the printing press.

“Not since the fifteenth century, when Gutenberg perfected a

workable system of movable type, has there been such a change in how information and ideas are

exchanged" (219).

“Not since the fifteenth century, when Gutenberg perfected a

workable system of movable type, has there been such a change in how information and ideas are

exchanged" (219).

While electronic and Web writing may or may not cause anything as significant as the Protestant Revolution…

While electronic and Web writing may or may not cause anything as significant as the Protestant Revolution…

…Its Impact is Already Clearly Seen and Felt In:

• Everyday communications

• Changing notions of publication

• Broader range of expression

• The emergence of new genres as well as the remediation of old ones

Of course, these emerging genres are far from stable or clear yet.

"Although attempts have been made to define genres among Web documents, the pace of technological change works against their definition.

It remains uncertain whether the conventions that are beginning to emerge will withstand the continuing pace of technological development” (226).

Is Anything New Under the Sun, Job?

However, we can certainly see some new Web forms resulting from “recurring social situations”:

•The home page•The digital broadsheet •The resource list•The discussion list page

Likewise, a number of traditional print genres have been successfully remediated for the Web:

• The scholarly journal article• The press release• The opinion column

RE-mediating the familiar:

=

Anticipating the new:

=

Caddy Concept Car

Recall too how the credits in early films looked very much like play bills or the table of contents for

books.

Film makers finally realized that initial credits could appear very nonlinearly and even dispersed

among opening scenes.

My own first web pages looked almost exactly like the title pages of books (and some still do).

I was obviously drawing on familiar PRINT genres as I approached ELECTRONIC genres.

Certain Web elements in particular, according to Palmquist, work to keep emergent genres unstable and in flux:

•Navigational Tools•Structure or “Shape”•Illustrations

Navigation Tools

These include:

• Menus (both side and top)• Tables of contents• Navigation headers and footers• Site search tools• Graphical site maps

“Over the past several years, navigation tools have become somewhat conventionalized” (222).

Structure or “Shape”

Structure is closely allied with organization, but is nonetheless distinct.

Palmquist identifies THE LINK as key to the instability of web genres, since it is linked (har) to the possiblity of so many divergent structural patterns.

The structures of scholarly articles on the Web, for example, may be:

•Linear•Hierarchical•Interlinked•Combined

For Web readers, these highly varied structures can be difficult to internalize and predict.

However, some shapes (structures) “may be more appropriate for specific types of documents—such as news articles—than others. If so, and if some consensus can be arrived at concerning appropriate document shapes, we might find that certain shapes will become associated with emerging Web genres” (222).

Illustrations

“Illustrations” is Palmquist’s rather limited word for….

Pictures

Video clips

Java applets

Rollovers Popups

Hot spots

Sounds

“Behaviors” or triggers

AnimationsAll of these things together andintermixed

Used to be…

“Hypertext” was the big thing.

Now “new media” is the kicker.

“The expanded choices concerning document

structure, navigation tools, and illustrations have worked against the quick emergence of genre conventions” (224).

However…

Some Conventions Appear to be Emerging…

in page design.

“Page design typically reflects the social

and commercial purposes of a Web site…”(224).

The Elemental

“[S]earch sites such as Google and AllTheWeb.com [opt] for designs that highlight their primary function...”(224).

Google

My own homepage

Mark Aune, also at NDSU

The All or Nothing

Web portals, such as Lycos, Yahoo! and MSN.com [favor] a design that literally crams as much information as possible into a page…”

Yahoo

The Digital Broadsheet

The digital broadsheet, according to

Waters and Shepherd, mimics the front pages of newspapers and table of contents of many magazines:

CNN.com

Microsoft

Sears

The Framed or Bordered

This type of site shows material placed in columns and bordered by lists of links. Content, in other words, is framed.

Salon 1Salon 2

Me again

Other NDSU English Dept. Sites:

Betsy Birmingham

Kevin Brooks

Dale Sullivan

How, using Palmquist’s categories, would you describeeach of these sites?

We’re obviously in a period of “experimentation and

adaptation.”

Reader and Writer Issues

Web readers:

may experience frustration (somewhat like readers of early Modernist works)

Web writers (oldsters):

report creative freedom

Web writers (newbies):

tend to struggle with templates, code, and Web editor software

Educator Issues

How are teachers and students faring with these emergent Web genres?

Even good students may perform “much like basic writers” when struggling to acquire computer and Web literacy skills.

(Note that students described in Chap. 10 apparently did better.)

Palmquist’s work with students

Palmquist examines “the efforts of students in three writing and writing-intensive classes to create Web sites. He charts “the efforts of [these] students to understand the constraints and possibilities of emerging Web genres” (220).

What He Found

“Even after completing their courses, the idea that documents published on the Web might be classified into discrete genres would likely come as a surprise to the undergraduates who participated in the study.”

“In their interviews, they refer to Web sites in a fairly monolithic sense. Even the two writing majors, who had more than a passing familiarity with the notion that print genres can be classified by genre…

…tended to refer to Web sites as an undifferentiated set of documents—as though one Web site might be much like another despite differences in site structure, design, navigation tools, purpose, and audience” (230).

“[T]he grad students showed a more nuanced understanding of genre in Web documents” (230).

Palmquist’s students…

Turned to other web sites for page design ideas.

They also remediated print designs with which they were already familiar.

They used “illustrations”…

for unity, mood, and communication.

Other Findings• The lack of genre conventions in

this new medium = problems for teachers, who had to decide which would come first: coding or writing.

• The lack of conventions also complicated the student’s task, forcing her to contend in particular with navigation, page design, structure, and illustrations.

• If teachers emphasize the emergent nature of web genres, their students are more likely to appreciate Web assignments as experiments and adventures.

“What is certain, from a writer’s point of

view, is that the rules of writing have

changed” (219).

The End

Or is it the beginning?Ella Rupiper-Taggart,now 1 year old

Faculty meeting at NDSU

Notes and Works CitedThis brief look at Palmquist’s chapter of the

Herrington-Moran anthology was part of a summer 2006 course in Writing in the Disciplines at North Dakota State University. The course was lead by Dr. Dale Sullivan.

Any quotations, information or paraphrases which do not include a citation are from the Palmquist chapter and should be easily found there.

Palmquist, Mike. “Writing in Emerging Genres.” Genre Across the Curriculum. Eds. Anne Herrington and Charles Moran. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 2005.